Page 100 of Keep Her Safe
How can she be getting married?
“You said she wasn’t dating anyone seriously.”
“I said I wasn’t sure but that things with this guy didn’tseemserious,” my younger brother, Trey, corrects.
“I told you to keep an eye on her. Don’t you think that this is something that I would have wanted to know? Before she had a Goddamn ring on her finger?” I’m pacing the length of my small office, trying my best to keep my voice down with the thin walls separating all of the doctors on the floor.
“Youaskedme to keep her safe,” he retorts. “You didn’t say anything about cock blocking her or interfering in her dating life or whatever the fuck. I do have a life of my own, you know. And what difference does it even make? You broke it off withher. So, you’re subscribing to the belief now that if you can’t have her, nobody can?”
That’s exactly how it is. Whitney Monroe belonged to me regardless of our current relationship status. I don’t know who this guy is, but there’s no way in hell she’s walking down that aisle with him.
“That’s exactly what the fuck I’m saying.” I decide to tell him the truth because I told Trey everything. Even about the intense two-year long relationship I found myself in with my best friend’s daughter. The relationship that left her broken-hearted when I ended things and me with regret, raging self-loathing and anger at myself for letting things get so far. I hadn’t ended things to be cruel or because I didn’t love her, I ended it because I felt we didn’t have a future. I was not only her parents’ best friend but her godfather which meant according to every rule in life, she should have been off limits to me. I’d been there the day she was born and through all of her milestones, all of her birthdays and even helped teach her to drive. I’d been there with her father threatening the boys with what would happen if any of them ever hurt her.
The irony that I also taught her to fuck and ended up hurting her way worse than any of those boys is not lost on me.
It all happened so fast. The summer she turned eighteen somehow coincided with the summer I lost my mind when the girl I’d known for eighteen years became a woman right before my eyes. A woman that suddenly had all my attention and we found ourselves unable to keep our hands off of each other and sneaking around behind everyone’s back. At my office, my car, my house on weekends, there was no chance her parents would drop by unannouncedand if they did, we always had contingency plansand practically every Four Seasons Hotel in the State of California.
I don’t know how no one caught on to be honest.
Our affair was intense, bordering on a burning obsession with each other. I hadn’t felt that way about anyone maybe ever. I woke up consumed with her. I went to sleep with her on my mind if she wasn’t curled up in bed next to me. If I was away from her for more than a few hours, my hands itched with the need to touch her. My mouth desperate to kiss her, taste her skin or the wet flesh between her legs. I was enamored with her. I was in love in a way that I’d never felt before and it hit me hard and fast.
I had been engaged once before breaking it off a few weeks before the big day at which point, I vowed never to get serious with anyone again and I had a series of flings and short-term relationships throughout my thirties.
Enter legal-aged Whitney Monroe.
I’d learned that she’d been infatuated with me for years, praying for the moment she turned eighteen and that I’d maybe reciprocate her feelings. “Or at very least one night of sex.”
That one night of sex where I took her virginity turned into another night and another until it was almost every night and some days. Weekends away. Secret vacations where she’d told her parents she was away with friends. Sneaking out in the middle of the nightbecause she still lived at home at the timeso we could fuck in my car.
The sneaking around was fun and the thrill of the forbidden kept us both coming back for more but it grew to be more than that.
There wereI love you’sand talks of the future together. There were nights when we were drunk on tequila and each other as we whispered our vows of devotion. We’d been together two years and her parents still didn’t know. The only people she had told were friends at school that weren’t as familiar with our family dynamic and her cousin Chloe who almost lost her shit when she found out. And that was only because Trey had accidentally slipped up and told her during their pillow talk or whatever.
I’d gone so far down this road with her that I didn’t know how to explain it to my best friends who just happened to be her parents.How could I have let things go on this long without telling them? How did I let things get so far?How did I let myself fall in love with the one person I knew I couldn’t have? Shouldn’t want?
I went back and forth for weeks, wondering what was the worst thing they could do. They could forbid me from seeing her. But Whitney wouldn’t listen and suddenly there would be this irreparable rift in their family that I would have caused. Uncomfortable holidays and family functions, heated arguments, and tension so thick and able to divide a family. Not to mention, on top of all of that, I’d lose my best friends.
It wasn’t until Doctors Without Borders needed me on another team, this time in Mexico to help when COVID-19 hit that I decided it was time for Whitney and me to have a talk about us. The look on her face still haunts me when I told her the news that I was leaving and that it would be best to use this as the ending point of our relationship.
Three Years Ago:
“I can’t come with you…?” Her brown eyes are brimming with unshed tears, realization dawning on her that I wasn’t telling her to pack a suitcase. “Doctors are supposed to just up and leave their families?”
“Technically yes. If it’s your first time, you’re not allowed to bring family at all.” I wince, wishing I’d left out that part, knowing she’ll have a rebuttal for it.
Her brows furrow and I can see the wheels turning in her head. “But it’s not your first time. You opened that hospital in Mexico years ago…” She bites her bottom lip and under normal circumstances that visual would have prompted my mouth between her legs. “JP, I don’t want to be without you for eighteen months or possibly even longer.” She crosses her arms and curls her lips into a pout which is a look I’d been on the receiving end of many times and always ended with me giving her whatever she wanted. I flinch at her calling me “JP,” the nickname she’s had for me for years. She’d stopped calling me that when we first started this, opting to call me by my first name instead in an attempt to shift the dynamic of our relationship. She’d only called me that when she was feeling extra vulnerable or at times in bed when we’d tapped into her daddy kink.
“Whitney, sweetheart, you have school and a whole life ahead of you where you have to decide what you want to do. And furthermore, how would you explain being in Mexico with me? Do you think your parents would want you traipsing off to another country while the world is in such chaos?Idon’t even know what I’m walking into.”
“Classes are going to be virtual anyway next semester. But I can also take some time off. My parents would be fine if I was with you. They know you’d take care of me and maybe this is the sign we need to tell them about us. I mean, we’ve been hiding this for almost two years now. Maybe it’s time they know?” She lists off the exact counter arguments I knew she’d use. Ones that made sense in a perfect world. But our world wasn’t perfect. It was messy and intertwined with so many other players that would be less than pleased about the news of our relationship.
The idea of telling my two best friends that I’m head over heels in love with their daughter and have been sleeping with her regularly for two years has the anxiety slithering up my spine.
Kevin and Michelle Monroe have been my best friends since freshman year of college. I was roommates with Kevin that first year and Michelle lived across the hall. It was love at first sight for Kevin and Michelle and before long, the three of us were inseparable. I’d even dated her roommate for a while making the four of us annoying co-dependent assholes. I’d been the best man at their wedding, godfather to both Whitney and her older brother Mason and had been a part of every memorable date of their lives until now.
How was I supposed to tell them this? I’d lose the two most important people in my life outside of those I was blood related to, the two constants I’d had for almost twenty years.
But the trade-off was losing Whitney, and I didn’t love that either.