Chapter 8

The air inside the vintage theater had grown thick, heavy with the scent of popcorn butter, old leather seats, and the musk of our own unspoken desire. We had watched the silver screen flicker through its final reels, but I barely registered a single frame of the movie. My eyes had been glued to the back of his head, the way his shoulders rose and fell with a steady, commanding rhythm, and the way his hand rested on my thigh, a warm, heavy weight that grounded me when my mind threatened to spin off into the dizzying reality of who he was. He was my father in every sense that mattered, a man who had built empires and commanded boardrooms, yet here, in the dim light of the drive-in, he was simply mine. The title of "Daddy" had hung between us like a physical object, thick and suffocating and delicious, a secret kept in the pockets of our jeans and the curve of his jaw. The credits began to roll, the white letters stark against the black, signaling the end of our escape. The spell was breaking. We had to return to the world of mortgages, and careers, and the