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I thought about it, wondered why I wanted to tell her, if it was for the warning or because I just liked to share things with her in general, which scared me.

In the end I think I did it because she might find out anyway, and I wanted to see her reaction when she did.

“Ida is my ex-wife,” I told her.

Her reaction was as gratifying as I could have hoped. I’d truly shocked her. Her mouth just kept opening and closing like a fish.

I wanted to stuff something in it. Stuff it deep.

I wanted to know what she had to think more.

“Ex-wife?” she asked finally.

“Ex-wife,” I affirmed with a world of self-disgust.

“You? You have an ex-wife? And she’s your stepmother?”

“Correct,” I said, eating all of her expressions, just gobbling them up.

“How did I not know this?” she asked.

“Not many people do. I don’t like to admit to it. It’s embarrassing as hell. She’s a nightmare, but somehow I thought it would be a great idea to marry her.”

“And then she married your father?”

“Correct.”

“When? How? What was the timeline for all this?”

“I was very young and stupid and met and married her before I understood what that meant. She and my father met and did something very similar.”

“So there was overlap?”

I was perversely gratified at how much disgust there was in her tone. “Not by choice on my end,” I remarked.

She looked so disgruntled and upset that I wanted to hug her. And hump her leg like a dog.

“That’s the most messed up thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Correct,” I said, a laugh in my voice. Only Ro could make me find the whole fiasco of my father and ex-wife just this funny. Her uncharacteristic, involuntary reaction put it all into just the right perspective.

“This isn’t funny,” she scolded me.

Our eyes clashed, both of us sharing a small smile as I said, “Sure it is.”

“They’re horrible,” said Ro sometime later. She’d just been staring off into space, absorbing it all.

I smiled fondly. “I’m glad we agree.”

I remembered that I came to see her for two reasons aside from looking at her adorably mischievous expressions. I got back to the first one. “What did my degenerate father say to you?”

She didn’t answer.

I glared. “Sleep in my room tonight.” I wasn’t joking, but I said it like that just to see her reaction.

She stared, her eyes doing something fascinating.

I smirked. “Not like that. At least, not unless you insist. I just… I don’t trust my dad.”