Shit, I wish I could sleep. I can’t believe I’m still too amped to sleep after that last fuck. I wonder if it’s true what Bobby said, that my hypersexuality has something to do with my unresolved issues with my dad. Nope, don’t want to think about that one tonight.

I climb from the bed and pull Bobby’s t-shirt over my naked flesh.

He sets aside the joint and sits up. “You’re not leaving, are you? I thought you were staying the night.”

“I’m just going to the kitchen. I’m hungry. Want anything?”

Bobby relaxes back against his bed and shakes his head. “Try to be quiet, will you? My folks know you stay the night, they’ve given up on trying to stop that, but they would prefer not to see you. Get it?”

Frowning, I run my fingers through my hair. “No. Actually, I don’t get it.”

“If Linda doesn’t see you, she doesn’t know, then she isn’t lying to Chrissie. OK?” He watches me as I grab his UGG slippers. “Where does Chrissie think you’ve been spending your nights?”

“With Zoe. I’m a good girl, remember? Chrissie never checks. Doesn’t have to because I’m so good.”

I make a cutesy sort of face, expecting Bobby to laugh.

His expression changes into that one that pisses me off, the one he only gets when he feels a little sorry for me. “I love you, baby,” he says. “Everything is going to be fine. We’ll get through it together.”

Fuck, abrupt shift into emotional landmine territory again. A lump rises in my throat and a flash of anger pulses through my veins. I narrow my eyes at him. “Fuck you. Don’t do that. I don’t need a pity I love you when you feel sorry for me.”

Bobby’s eyes flash, surprised. “I don’t feel sorry for you. Not ever.”

“Well, you should. I’m not just here tonight because I love you. My mom wanted me fucking out of the house so I wouldn’t hear the shit going down and I didn’t have anywhere else to go. OK? I’m not here because I want to be. I’m here because I have to be.”

Crap, why did I say that? It’s not even close to reality and I’ve tapped into his anger when I didn’t want to.

He stares at me with harshly penetrating green eyes. “Then you shouldn’t be here. You should go home or to Zoe’s or anywhere else. But not here, if that’s how you really feel.”

“Fuck you.”

He picks up the joint, takes a hit, and then another one before setting it aside. “You only think you’re in control, Kaley. I let you be in control. It is the submissive who is really in control. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that?”

I stomp my feet into his UGG slippers until I have them on securely. “Well, fuck. I guess I’ll have to think about that one the rest of the night.”

He grabs my wrist to stop me from leaving. “Kaley, listen. I get it. I know seeing Alan is going to have you all fucked up for a while. That you’re working through a lot of shit. It’s OK. I’d rather you let it out here. With me. Because I love you and I will love you through anything.”

Now, on top of everything, he is doing it again, being a really great guy when I am being a total bitch.

I sink my teeth into my lower lip to hold back the tears.

“I’m glad that you’re here, Kaley. I’m glad that I’ve got your back through this. I don’t want you getting hurt before you resolve this junk with your dad.”

The tears come this time. I can’t stop them. He doesn’t climb from the bed, doesn’t close the space between us, but somehow I am surrounded by the feel of him, comforted without being touched by him.

He runs a hand through his hair and waits for me to look at him. “And don’t ever tell me to fuck off again when I tell you I love you. I love you, Kaley.”

“How come you’re such a good guy?”

“I don’t know that I am.”

I slip out the door, leaving Bobby naked on the bed in a cloud of pot smoke that follows me outside. I make a careful trek from the pool house to the sliding glass patio door, stepping where Bobby showed so I won’t trigger the automatic floodlights, preserving his parents’ ability to continue in non-denial denial about what I am really doing every night here since they never see me after midnight.

Carefully I close the door behind me, hear a sound and tense. After two months am I finally getting busted sneaking into the family room? Shit. I turn slowly to look into the room.

The earth drops away beneath me as I spot Alan sleeping in a chair. The house is dark, and I would have missed him if he hadn’t done the lightest bit of snoring then.

So my dad is still in Pacific Palisades. I didn’t expect that. He didn’t run off. I wonder if my mom told him about Khloe or if she lost her nerve.

What the hell is he doing at the Rowans’?

I sink down on my knees beside the chair, sitting there quietly, just studying him. Everything about me I can find in prototype on him, everything except my too-small nose and my crooked smile that I hate because it lends a flash of Chrissie’s sweetness to my features. Those are the only things I got from Chrissie’s gene set. The rest of me is him, down to the shape of our hands, the length of their fingernail beds and the shade and texture of our skin. Even our hair and eyes; the exact same shade.

I run an angry hand across my face, disappointed in myself because I can feel dampness on my cheeks. Seeing my dad is like going to see the pyramids. I look, never touch, marvel and stare. I am fucking seventeen years old and that is the sum total of my relationship with the man who gave me life. Staring at a pyramid.

I’m halfway to convincing myself to wake him up, to get the confrontation over here in the safety of the Rowan household, but Linda comes into the kitchen, sets a pair of keys on the counter, and locks me in her all-powerful stare. The look stops me cold in my tracks.

Linda’s severely beautiful face slowly softens with a look of motherly sympathy and knowing. With her brown eyes still sharply fixed on me, she gestures with her hand to be silent and follow her.

I am taken to the end of a long hallway I’ve never been down before, to a small day room that Linda has clearly appropriated for her own use. She points to the sofa and stands against the door almost in a way that suggests she is barring exit.

After a long while of silence where Linda does one of her thorough Dr. Phil searches of my face, she says, “Aha. So that’s it. That’s the anger I feel inside of you these days. I thought it was. I wasn’t certain. I didn’t want to press.”

Everything about that observation only adds to my frustration. Shit, why doesn’t anyone just talk about it to me? It’s emotionally devastating to learn how obvious I am to everyone, that no one will approach me directly, but at least Linda eventually got around to it in her no-bullshit kind of way.

I stare at her. “What makes you think he’s my dad?”

“Christ, girl, it’s the worst-kept secret in the industry.” Linda sits down on the sofa close beside me. “Everyone knows. It is still talked about sporadically when he can’t hear.”

“You’re not telling me anything,” I say in frustration.

Linda rolls her eyes. “What do you want? Do you want me to say I was in the bedroom the night you were conceived? Well, I can’t say that. Do you want me to say that your mother told me? Well, I can’t say that either. But, Christ, it is so glaringly obvious just to look at you. Chrissie has loved Manny since the age of eighteen. That’s it. Married to Jesse. Married to Neil, but in love with Manny. Only him. It’s simple logic. Only him. No one else. Obvious.”

I’m encouraged since Linda seems willing to talk about things that people in the know never talk about with me. I pull my legs up in front of me, hug them, and study Linda as I consider where to start to get the most out of this rare opportunity.

Before I can frame my first question, Linda lights a cigarette and gives me a reproaching glare. “I’d feel a lot more comfortable talking to you if you’d put your legs down so I wouldn’t have to see that you forgot to put on panties, dear.”