I was pretty sure Faith’s mom swooned right there, while her father slit my throat with a metaphorical knife.
Breaking the tension, Faith strode up the two steps, dropping a kiss to her father’s cheek and peppering a bunch of them on Bailey’s. “Be a good girl for Mommy, okay?”
“Okay, Mommy. You be a good girl, too.”
I would have laughed if her father weren’t clearly stabbing me over and over in his mind.
Faith’s mother took her by both of the cheeks, searching her face. A real mother. The way a mother should be. The way Faith in turn had become for her own daughter.
Sometimes it chafed, seeing it displayed so profoundly. So real.
“You go and have some fun and don’t worry about a thing. You deserve a night out, you hear me?”
Faith reached up and grasped her mom by both wrists, giving her a squeeze, something transpiring between the two of them. “Okay, Mama.”
Her mom smiled a wistful smile. “All right, then. Go on.”
Faith turned and passed by me on the walk. Pinned to the spot, I watched her go, feeling her unease, how hard it was for her to leave her daughter.
We both knew Bailey would be fine with her parents and that a cruiser was set to come by this address several times during the night, but the worry was still there.
Sometimes, knowing something and trusting in it was the hardest thing to do.
I blew out a strained breath, again wishing I could change it. Take it on for her. Let her know it would all be okay.
I watched her climb into my car, that feeling I kept trying to fight stirring inside me.
The fact that this woman was supposed to be mine.
I wanted to go after her. Comfort her. Make her promises I didn’t deserve to make, but I knew I owed her father a word or two.
I tried to work myself up to it, figuring out what to offer him, what I could say that would make any of this better, but he beat me to the punch. “You’ve got a lot of fuckin’ nerve.”
I swung my attention over my shoulder to where he stood glowering at me from the porch.
Bailey and her grandmother had already disappeared inside.
Anger surged through my veins.
He had no idea why I was there. What I was willing to give.
I beat it back.
He deserved his indignation. I’d let him have it.
“Excuse me?” I said, feigning like I hadn’t heard correctly, gearing myself up for him to lay into me.
I could feel Faith watching us from my car that idled at the curb.
“You know, I was right inside the day it happened,” he said, his teeth clenching as he gritted the words.
I frowned at him, not exactly sure what he was getting at.
“I heard the sirens. They just kept coming and coming. It seemed like it was going on for hours.”
Disquiet pulsed. Stretching tight against my chest as I slowly came to the awareness.
“I knew it.” His face contorted. “I just had this feeling that whatever it was, the sirens whizzing by, the helicopter flying in overhead, that everything was getting ready to change for us, and not in a good way.”
Grief and guilt.
It reached out and grabbed me by the throat.
Squeezing hard.
“I wasn’t even surprised when Mack showed up at my door, asking me to come with him to give Faith the news.”
Agony clawed at my spirit. This mix of hatred and sorrow.
His eyes squeezed closed, and his hands fisted at his sides. Preparing to fight against going back to that day. Or maybe he was just holding himself back from coming at me.
Taking a swing.
Blame it on me. It was my fault, anyway.
“Faith . . . she crumbled in my arms that night, Jace. Weeping. Screaming her denial.”
I could have stopped it. I could have stopped it.
Anguish pushed at the night, and I swore I could physically feel Faith’s in that moment. Could feel her from behind where I thought maybe she was chained inside my car, unable to bear witness to what her father was telling me.
Like she couldn’t experience it all over again.
His eyes latched on to mine. A dark threat, the brown color lighter than Faith’s but just as genuine and real, holding nothing back.
“And I have to wonder . . . wonder if her grief that night came even close to being as bad as it was when you left her.”
The man had to have sucker punched me in the gut. Or maybe got me with a swift kick of a steel-toed boot.
Because a pained wheeze gusted from my lungs, the impact of it close to buckling me in two.
Denial pulsed from the darkest place inside me.
She’d chosen Joseph. I had to remember that.
But her father kept right on, driving knives into my consciousness, the pain so intense I was sure I was seconds from blacking out.