Marcus Returns
~Lyra-
She straightened up, wiping a tear from her eye, still giggling like she’d just pulled the world’s most expensive prank. Her laugh had that high–pitched, wheezy chaos to it – the kind of sound that came from the gut, like she was unhinged and delighted and fully prepared to emotionally destroy me before breakfast.
“You should’ve seen your face,” she choked out between gasps. “You looked like you were about to s**t yourself and cry at the same time. Like a constipated Disney princess mid–breakdown. I thought you were about to pass out, b***h. Like faint, fall, and land in your own sin.”
I blinked again. Jaw dropped. Soul missing. Pride on life support.
“Haha,” I said stiffly. “Yeah. Right. So funny. Such a good joke. Bestie things. Love that for me. This was a very expensive joke, emotionally, mentally, spiritually… but sure. Let’s laugh about it. Let’s all just ha–ha our way through the gaping hole in my soul. Let’s sprinkle some trauma seasoning on it while we’re at it.”
She didn’t stop smiling.
Tasha reached across the counter and tapped her fork lightly against my forehead like she was trying to see if my skull was hollow.
“You’re too easy, Lyra. Like, comically easy. I could tell you the sky was green and you’d pack your bags for
therapy.”
“I have trust issues!” I hissed, clutching my glass like it was a holy relic. “My childhood was full of lies and waist trainers and broken promises from MTN! I don’t do well with surprises!”
–
She snorted but then gave me a weird look – something in her expression softening just slightly, like she was remembering something.
“Do you know this girl from my old class?” she said suddenly, serious now, almost low–key. “Back in secondary school. Her name was Miracle or Melody or something that didn’t match her actual behavior. Anyway, she f****d her best friend’s dad once.”
I froze.
Tasha went on.
“No one even knew how it started. But one day she came late to school with this limpy–ass walk and a fresh hairstyle and new iPhone and everybody was like, ‘okay, she either has a sugar daddy or sold her kidney. Turns out it was her bestie’s dad. s**t hit the fan so fast. People stopped sitting near her. She couldn’t walk past a classroom without hearing ‘daddy’s girl‘ or ‘call me uncle.‘ Her whole rep was ruined. Like gone. Flushed. She left the school three weeks later. Vanished.”
My heart was thudding like someone was banging on my chest from the inside.
“She said it was just once,” Tasha added with a shrug. “But the class didn’t care. You f**k someone’s dad, you get branded. That’s how it works. You don’t recover from that.
I swallowed, hard.
Why the f**k was she telling me this?
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Marcus Returns
My palms were sweaty. My hoodie suddenly felt tight around my neck like it was trying to strangle me with gullt. My legs crossed tighter beneath the stool and I could practically hear my heartbeat behind my ears
Tasha leaned in just a little, eyes locked on mine.
“I’m just saying,” she said carefully. “If that ever happened to someone I knew someone close to me -I’d want them to be honest. Because secrets like that? They never stay secrets for too long”
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again like a fish gasping for air.
Then I finally managed a sentence, though it came out in a whisper like my dignity was trying to backspace
itself in real time.
“Damn. That girl is really nuts,” I said, eyes wide, pretending my stomach wasn’t currently dissolving from anxiety acid. “Why would she–like, seriously, why would she f**k her best friend’s dad? What was she thinking? That’s crazy. That’s literally insanity. That’s like mental illness wrapped in daddy issues and dipped
in betrayal.”
Tasha didn’t respond. She just stared.
And I, being the emotionally unstable chatterbox that I am, kept going like my life depended on the speed of
my voice.
“Like I get it, maybe the man was hot or rich or wore suits or whatever, but that’s someone’s father. Like not sugar daddy, not zaddy, not anonymous Twitter DILF. That’s your best friend’s actual dad. As in the man who changed her diapers. The man who probably has cholesterol and back pain. That’s not sexy. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
Still no reaction.
She just blinked.
Which of course made me spiral more.
“I mean, what kind of girl even lets it get that far?” I continued, because silence makes me panic. “How do you go from ‘hi sir, good afternoon sir, happy birthday sir‘ to ‘wreck my p***y, Daddy‘? Like where’s the transition? Where’s the moral compass? Where’s the shame? Is it dead? Did shè bury it beside her self–respect?”
I laughed. A high–pitched, unhinged kind of laugh that sounded more like a scream in therapy.
Tasha didn’t crack a smile.
At all.
My stomach sank like the Titanic. My throat went dry. My hoodie felt like a noose.
But my mouth?
Oh, she kept running.
I slammed my hand on the counter dramatically.
“Some people really don’t fear.
Marcus Returns
Tasha leaned back slowly, her eyes dragging over my face like she was peeling back my skin with her stare.
She wasn’t amused.
Not anymore.
And me?
I was sweating like I’d just been interrogated by Jesus.
She crossed her arms and tilted her head again, that same tilt that made the air go cold.
Like she knew.
Like she didn’t need me to say it because my face was already spelling it out in guilt–font Times New Roman.
And then.
Her eyes narrowed like a hawk zeroing in on prey. Her whole posture shifted – no longer casual, no longer teasing just still. Focused. Suspicious.
Her voice dropped, slow and curious.
“You’re acting… weird.”
I blinked, too hard.
“What? No. I’m acting totally normal. This is my normal. This is my exact personality.”
Her eyes narrowed further. “Hmm.”
Oh God.
“Hmmm.”
Stop hmmmm–ing me!
Then she leaned in just a little, elbows on the counter, voice low like she was about to deliver a sermon.
“Are you… lying to me?”
Boom.
That was it.
My body betrayed me instantly.
My fingers jerked, my knee hit the stool leg, and the water bottle I’d just grabbed to calm my panic decided to betray me in public. I tilted it up too fast, missed the timing, and nearly drowned myself on the spot. A full spasm of coughing exploded out of me as the cold water shot down the wrong pipe, up my nose, and straight. into my frontal lobe.
I slammed the bottle down, choking and coughing and sputtering like a possessed blender, eyes tearing, throat burning, chest heaving like I’d just run from the police.
Tasha didn’t blink.
She just stared.
Then–bam.
She laughed.
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Marcus Rehens
Again.
“Got you again,” she wheezed, pointing at me like I was the world’s dumbest sitcom character: “You gullible
bitch.”
I stared at her, still coughing, still wheezing, water dripping down my chin.
“Tasha!” I rasped, clutching my throat like I was dying. “You can’t just-
She grinned wider.
“Gullible. As. Fuck.”
I was about to talk about what my mum told me about me finishing high school here, then there was a sudden flurry of movement from down the hall, followed by the sound of very expensive shoes slapping against the marble.
Damon.
Oh God.
He came rushing into the kitchen like a goddamn storm in a designer suit, looking like a snack with his crisp white shirt unbuttoned at the collar and his charcoal jacket half–thrown over one shoulder like he’d just finished destroying the world and was headed to brunch.
I blinked twice.
Right. I forgot. He’s actually a billionaire. And an Alpha.
He didn’t glance at me immediately. He went straight to the counter, grabbed his keys, a folder, his phone, and then finally–finally–he looked up and locked eyes with me.
And Jesus Christ.
My uterus tried to stand up and salute.
“Where are you in a hurry to, Dad?” Tasha asked with a casual grin, biting into her toast like this wasn’t the most awkward tension–filled room in the country.
“I need to be in Spain,” he said briskly, eyes still on me. “Something important came up. I have to catch the jet
now.”
Jet.
Right.
Because this man doesn’t do cars or buses or economy–class living. He does jets and power and probably orgasm schedules.
He walked over to Tasha, leaned down, kissed her on the cheek, and muttered, “Text me if you need anything.” Then, like the climax of a goddamn drama series, he looked at me again.
Just for a second.
But it was loaded.
He didn’t kiss me. Of course he didn’t. He didn’t touch me. He didn’t say a word about what had happened last night–about the things he’d done to my body, about the way he’d destroyed my entire perception of
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5 Marcus Renuine
pleasure and made me whimper Daddy while my mom was on the phone trying to tell me about boarding
school.
He just… looked.
And our eyes said everything.
My stomach flipped so hard I almost fell off the stool.
“Take care, Lyra,” he said softly, his voice like a velvet threat, and then he turned and walked out like a man with kingdoms to conquer.
The silence he left behind was thick.
I just sat there staring at the doorway like it might suck me into an alternate universe where I wasn’t the horniest, most confused, mentally unstable teenage girl on the planet.
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