Forgetting Him Is My Only Salvation

Synopsis

In my senior year of college, I secretly spent an entire month in a basement with my father's nemesis, Chase Wilder, the expelled bad boy. I thought the rebel would change for me, that he'd take me away from my suffocating cage. All of that ended at my father's sixtieth birthday party. There, Chase projected an intimate video of us in a cheap motel onto the hall's giant screen. "Professor Shaw, you're always lecturing about morality. Why don't you take a good look at how shameless your precious daughter was in my bed?" With that, he threw a handful of condoms and a few crumpled bills in my face, then walked out. When we met again, I was like a broken-winged bird in a gilded cage, scrabbling for a living in a nightclub. Then Chase saw that yellowed abortion form. His legs gave way, and he crumpled to the floor before me, trembling.