The word felt heavy on my tongue, a mix of sugar and sin. "Daddy?"

His hand, which had been stroking my hair, stilled. We were in my room, the one he’d helped my dad paint when I was sixteen, and the air was thick with the vanilla scent of my birthday cake and something else—something heavy and unspoken that had been building between us for months.

"You promised," I whispered, my voice trembling. "You promised you'd give me something amazing for my eighteenth birthday."

He moved then, his large frame shifting on my small bed. He leaned over me, his presence immense, blocking out the light from the lamp on...