“Daddy.” Emotion warbled through the word.
Misery tried to seep out from that wound. To crawl out and stake a claim.
“Someday, your heart will break free.” He chuckled low, his words turning to a dreamy wisp. “It’ll get stolen, more like it. Some man is going to storm into your life when you least expect it, and he’s going to steal this amazing, beautiful heart. You might not think yourself capable, but you’ll love again.”
For the first time in years, I believed it. Believed I could love again.
And I wanted it in return.
To be loved.
Held.
I wanted a family to call my own.
But what I was terrified of was the storming part.
Terrified of the one who’d captured me in a way I shouldn’t allow him to.
I smothered the feeling, the need, the fear, and I forced a smile. “Don’t worry, Daddy. I will. We both will. Heck, I bet you’ll find someone before me.”
He fumbled out a laugh. “I don’t think so, sweetheart. I think I’d prefer to live in the memories.”
But sometimes it was the memories that hurt us most.
Eleven
Trent
Fucking Juna Lamb.
I glanced at the clock on the dash again. She was forty minutes late, which meant I was going to be even later to pick up Gage.
Was she really going to pull this bullshit on me?
My eyes scanned the visible part of the obscured path. It led to a meadow hidden in the dense forest just off the road where I waited about an hour outside our mountain city.
Place we always met.
Secure and unseen.
Didn’t matter. Anxiety gripped me in a vise, ribs clamping around my heart that was a thunder of disorder and old rage.
Thing was, it wasn’t all that old, either. It was the kind that grew. Amplified and blistered. The kind that would never abate.
The dread. The worry.
The grief and the guilt.
The stark, unrelenting hatred I held for this woman.
Most of all, the devotion I had to my son.
All of it roiled and thrashed and overflowed.
Crashing over me.
Wave after wave.
Knew she couldn’t be trusted, but what the fuck else was I to do?
I met her here once a year, and every single time, I was on edge, wondering when it was gonna be the time she fucked me. When she betrayed me all over again. Pulled the motherfucking trigger.
And still, I somehow thought I owed her a debt. Came here year after year because there was one reason I was living my life, so I buried the rage and the animosity and did what I had to do to protect it.
Knew full well it was a precarious line I was treading.
Blowing out a sigh, I grabbed my phone, checking for a message or missed call.
Nothing.
Shit.
I sat there contemplating for a beat before I gave in, decided to ask for help because the last thing I wanted was to leave my kid waiting. Make him think I’d forgotten about him. Like he would ever in a million years slip my mind.
I tapped out a message to Eden, praying she’d get it, understand, praying harder that she wouldn’t ask any questions.
Me: Eden, hate to ask, but I got sprung with something messy. Can you cover Gage for 40? I’ll owe you big.
I was unable to stop the way my heart stuttered with thinking about her.
Seemed there was no chance of her slipping from my mind, either.
The girl’s face twisted through on a constant invasion that I couldn’t outwit or outrun.
I would have thought my reaction to her would have faded with time, but thoughts of her seemed to be coming on stronger with each day that passed. With each night she moved around my bar, possessing the air and fucking with my sanity.
More than two weeks had gone by since I’d followed her to her house and had spouted a bunch of shit I shouldn’t have.
A clear proposition.
Truth was, after that fucker had touched her, only thing I could process was the overwhelming need to gather her up and make sure she was whole.
Preferably without her clothes covering that tempting, delicious body.
I’d been half mad with the desire to drag her into her house.
Touch her and taste her and take her.
Problem was? It’d gotten clear really fast that need was more than just wanting to get lost in her tight body.
Knew there was a real problem when I wanted to start making her promises I had no business making.
Tell her I would never let anyone harm her. Tell her I’d fight whatever war she was fighting. Fix whatever in her life had gone bad, patch it back together because I’d come to crave those sweet, innocent smiles.
I wanted to dig around inside her to find why those eyes would dim, then set to work at filling whatever had gone missing.
The way I got the sense she might be able to fill a little of what had gone missing in me, too.