Seducing My Dad’s Best Friend

He chokes me.

“Cal–” I manage out, coughing.

The world narrows to five points of pressure and the brick wall slamming into my spine.

I claw at his wrist, useless against the adrenaline in his grip, and hear myself make a sound I've never made before, wet and strangled and small. His face is inches from mine, red and furious, and for one horrifying second I think he won't let go.

The restaurant patio is too bright, too loud, too full of people who'll remember this if I let it get worse.

Cal doesn't care about that. He never has.

"You're not listening to me," he snaps, stepping closer, his cologne thick enough to choke on before his hands ever touch me. "Don't act like you're better than me."

"I never said I was better than you," I hiss, my voice climbing over the clink of wine glasses two tables away, trying to breathe. "I said you embarrassed me… In front of my father's donors. Again."

"Because your father's donors matter more than I do," he spits, and something in his face tightens, the way it always does right before it gets ugly.

"That's not what I—"

His hand closes harder around my throat before I finish the sentence.

People finally notice – shouts, camera flashes, whispers.

Then there's shouting, and hands that aren't his, and Cal stumbles backward with a curse.

Air rushes into my lungs so fast it burns. I press my palm to my throat and gasp, dragging in breath after breath while my vision swims back into focus.

That's when I see them — a wall of phones and camera lenses, all pointed at me, capturing my mascara-streaked face and the red marks blooming on my neck like a trophy.

"Liv—" Cal starts, reaching for me again, but I'm already moving, shoving past shoulders, past the flashes.

Past every whispered “isn't that the mayor's daughter?”.

I'm folding into the back of my car and my driver is pulling away like he can outrun what just happened.

He can't.

My phone is in my hand before I've caught my breath, and Marta picks up on the second ring.

"Okay, so the food better have been incredible," she says, "because you texted me like four hours ago and then just—"

"Cal choked me," I say, and my voice cracks right down the middle. "In public. There were cameras everywhere, Marta, I think — I think it's already online."

"Wait, what? Slow down, what do you mean he choked you—"

"I mean his hand was around my throat and I couldn't breathe!" I groan, pressing my knuckles hard against my mouth to keep from sobbing in front of my driver. "We were arguing about the donor dinner and he just — he grabbed me."

"That psycho," Marta says, and I can hear her moving, a door slamming somewhere on her end. "Liv, I've been telling you for weeks that man is a walking red flag with a jawline. Why are you still with him?"

"I don't know," I choke out, "I don't know, I thought—"

My phone buzzes against my ear, then again, then three more times in quick succession, Cal's name lighting up my screen over and over like a countdown.

"He's calling me," I say. "He's calling me right now."

"Don't you dare pick up," Marta says, sharp as a blade. "Liv. Don't."

I don't. I pull the phone away from my ear and type with fingers that won't stop trembling:

We're done. Don't call me again.

The reply comes back before I've even locked the screen.

You're only doing this because I embarrassed you in front of the cameras. Admit it. This has nothing to do with what you're feeling and everything to do with your precious image.

All you care about is your status.

I stare at the words until they blur, my thumb hovering over the keyboard, and then I just block him instead, tossing the phone onto the seat like it burned me.

By the time I get home, my father is already waiting in the expensive foyer, his jaw set in the way that means he's seen the news.

"It's everywhere, Olivia," he says, holding up his phone, the screen full of my own terrified face. "Every outlet. They're saying my daughter was assaulted in the middle of a public street."

"I'm fine, Dad," I say, tossing my bag onto the bench by the door like this is nothing, like my throat isn't still throbbing. "It'll blow over in a few days. It always does."

"It always does," he repeats, and there's something in his voice I haven't heard before — not anger, something closer to fear. "Liv, this is the fourth boyfriend of yours the press has crucified me over. And now one of them put his hands on you where every camera in the city could see it."

"So what, you're going to lecture me about my choices?" I say, folding my arms, chin lifted the way I always do when I refuse to look small.

"No," he says quietly, and that quiet scares me more than shouting ever could. "I already made the choice for you.”

For a moment, silence lasts.

“You're leaving the city, Olivia. I'm sending you to stay with Will."

"Will," I repeat, like the name itself is a joke. "Your army best friend? Dad, I've never met that man in my entire life."

"He's the only person I trust to keep you safe," my father says, and for once he doesn't raise his voice, just looks at me like I'm still eight years old and he's terrified of losing me too. "He has a house outside the city. No press, no news, no Cal. You'll stay there until I know it’s safe for you to come back."

"And if I refuse?" I ask, even though we both already know the answer.

"You won't," he says simply, turning to walk back toward his study, and I stand there with my throat still aching and my whole carefully built life of status and money — quietly collapsing behind me.

"I'm not going," I say, standing in the doorway of my closet while my father drags a suitcase off the shelf like this is already decided, which apparently it is.

"You are," he says, unzipping it and setting it open on my bed. "Pack whatever you need. The car leaves in an hour."

"An hour," I repeat, my voice climbing an octave. "Dad, you can't just exile me to some stranger's house because a scandal happened. I have a life here."

"You have cameras outside our gate right now," he says, and for once he doesn't soften it for me. "This isn't a punishment, Olivia. This is me trying to keep you breathing."

"Keep me breathing," I echo, folding my arms so tight it almost hurts. "I'm not a child, Dad. I can handle a few photographers."

"This isn't about photographers anymore," he says, and something in his tone makes me stop arguing, just for a second. "It's about the next headline. I won't have you be it."

I don't have a response for that one, so I just st