The White Queen (S.Rogers)

Chapter 68

Brooklyn sat against the wall next to the slightly propped open door of the bathroom, listening to her father shower. She knew he would have been perfectly fine with her sitting in the bathroom, but as she looked at the phone in her hand, she was aware that if she decided to make this call, he would not be happy.

Not at all.

She kept scrolling down to Rogers' name, her finger hovering over it, before staring at it until the screen went black. Over and over.

She knew she should call Rogers. She knew if she did, all she had to say was, 'I found my father' and Rogers would be at the door of the hotel room within hours. She knew that if she called him, he would help her convince her father to return with them, to get the help he still needed. If she called Rogers, her family could be back together, and Juliana would have a father.

If she called Rogers, she wouldn't be alone anymore. Her father would be there to help carry the burden of daily life. She wouldn't have to do this all by herself, anymore.

But she also knew that if she called Rogers, now, all his detoxing would go to waste. He'd have to start over, and given some of the things he'd been saying, the way he had been saying them, she was aware that he wouldn't allow a separation a second time, no matter how good it was for him. He would fight her, tooth and nail, to keep her from putting space between them. She would have to push and push and push, and he would keep holding on, no matter how detrimental it was for him.

And her father would find out she had been a fool, and ruined herself with Steve Rogers. That she had allowed that man to get under her skin, into her heart, and mess with her head. That all his training had been thrown out the window, the minute those American sky blue eyes had met hers.

That really wasn't a can of worms she wanted to open, with her father.

She really didn't want to deal with the fall out of her father finding out that she had slept with his best friend. She couldn't imagine he would be particularly pleased with that. Every time he had even mentioned that one day she would leave him for a boy, or man, he had made it very clear that he believed there would never be one good enough for her, worthy enough of her. The idea that Rogers, who was by far the best man she had ever met, would still not measure up, in her father's eyes, was a valid one. That, and she was well aware by now, how people would view both the age difference and the relationship between the three of them. She had been reading. She had read how people thought women like her had 'daddy issues', and that she was seeking to replace the affection she craved from her father by sleeping or reaching out to men of her father's age or social status. She had read how people would view Rogers as some sort of predator, preying on her innocence, her ignorance, her vulnerability. There would be a belief that Rogers had found her, and proceeded to move in with the express intent of manipulating her into a sexual situation that would allow him to have control over her.

The idea that Rogers, for all the darkness he liked to pretend didn't exist, would deliberately go out of his way to tie someone with her issues up in a way that allowed him to try to control her was laughable. If, and she felt this was something that needed to be stressed, IF Rogers had wanted to do something of that nature, she had certainly played into his hands by deciding that she was going to take ownership of him.

Granted, there had been some obvious attempts, on his part, to try to seduce her in the beginning. Which, considering what they knew now about the suppressors, seemed like a lesson in futility. But then something had changed. She had started to respond, probably earlier than she had thought. She knew now that she had started to develop feelings for Rogers. Long before she had first let him touch her, well demand that he touch her, she had started to feel that pressure in her chest that she now knew meant she had been falling in love with the damned idiot.