Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 74766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
The young girl had harbored fierce resentment against the man who was her father and his nuclear family that did not include her and had no space for her, not that she’d even been invited. Seeing them around town and later as a teen when she’d been allowed to have a social media presence, spying on their lives, her resentment had only grown much deeper.
That all changed when Ryan came into the picture, though. For the first time, there was a man in their lives, someone who seemed genuinely interested in her and wanted to do fatherly things with her. Like take her out for ice cream, or out to the park where they’d play for hours. She was over the moon when he and her mom got married and had dreamt of him one day adopting her and making her officially his.
Nothing has ever been said about it, but she knew it was just a matter of time. She’d been very good since the wedding with only a few slipups here and there when she didn’t get her way, but other than that, she was sure that Ryan loved her and her mom and that their lives would be ten times better than the one her dad had with his new wife and kids.
“How was school today, kid?” Ryan asked his stepdaughter as he opened the truck door for her. Connie smiled appreciatively and climbed up into the seat before answering him. “It was fine; the chemistry test Mr. Foster surprised us with was killer, though.”
“You should’ve been prepared for that; we went over everything in the last week, didn’t we?” Ryan walked around and got into the driver’s seat. “I know, dad, I think I aced it, but the other kids were mad that he did that.” Ryan didn’t correct her when she called him dad. She’d just started doing it, and even though he was a tad bit uncomfortable with it, his wife Misty had convinced him that it was not a big deal.
He wasn’t sure that he agreed with her assessment, but she was the girl’s mother and would know better than him. Ryan has always been and always will be childfree; something Misty knew when they met and started dating. He didn’t mind Connie since she was older by that time and would be out of the house in another few years for college, but he had no interest in being anyone’s father.
In fact, it was the deal-breaker in their relationship once he learned that the woman he’d met on Tinder was a single mom, something she’d neglected to mention in her profile and had only shared after the first time they’d been to bed together, which had been a good two months after they first met.
By then, he’d already been somewhat invested, since he liked Misty fine. She lived in the next town over and had worked her way through night school to become a paralegal. She was professionally driven with a good head on her shoulders, and she fucked like she was starved for it.
He didn’t quite believe her when she said in one of their earlier conversations that she hadn’t been with anyone in almost fifteen years because she was a very attractive woman with a well-paying job and a whole lot more going for her that any man with sense would jump at. But that first night, her hunger had convinced him—that, and the fact that she was almost as tight as a virgin.
At thirty-two, she was the tightest female he’d ever fucked since high school, and maybe that was part of the reason he’d let her talk him into carrying on with the relationship after she’d dropped the bombshell about her being a mother. Ryan didn’t hate Connie; neither did he resent her existence. Had she been younger, he would’ve walked away from the situation.
But since she was already a teen and didn’t need him to do anything for her, and his wife wasn’t asking him to parent her in any way, he figured he could handle it for the few years it was going to take before Connie headed off to college. He and Misty had already decided on no kids, and he’d been smart enough to make sure she was protected for the next five years because he didn’t want any oopsies.
He’d been upfront and honest with her about the fact that he would leave if she ever tried to pull a pregnancy stunt on him, and after learning about how the other man had left her hanging after she became pregnant with her daughter, he was sure she wasn’t looking forward to going that route again.
Things between him and Connie were fine; he didn’t ostracize the kid, but neither did he go out of his way to father her. So when she started calling him dad a few days ago, he started to freak a little. He talked to Misty about it and asked her to talk to her daughter, but she swore it was just a phase and didn’t mean anything.