His face crumples. “Her mother’s gone, Tate.”
“And I am so, so sorry about that,” I say, meaning every word. I know Sullivan never forgave Molly’s mom after the way she abandoned her. But she’s still her mother. This must be a horrible shock for him.
He crushes himself against me even tighter, and I stroke his heaving back as he struggles to catch his breath.
“I’m supposed to protect her,” he utters.
“You do,” I soothe, reaching up to stroke the hair at the nape of his neck. “No one loves and protects her like you do. You’re an amazing father.”
My words cause him to suck in a sharp breath, and he pulls away from me.
“I’m not.”
Any remaining light in his eyes extinguishes as he looks at me. My heart breaks for him. No matter what’s happened between the two of us, I can’t stand by and not feel like my soul is falling apart seeing him like this.
“Sullivan,” I plead softly. “Don’t do this to yourself. You told me Natasha had her struggles. This isn’t your fault. She chose to go down that path a long time ago.”
“Don’t make excuses for me, Tate.” He blinks away lingering tears, his eyes taking on a cold detachment. “This is on me. I failed.”
“You didn’t fail.” I search his eyes, begging him to see what I do, what everyone does. A loving father who will always put his daughter first.
He breaks my gaze and reaches for his phone. I sink onto my heels in front of him, not wanting to move any further away, because despite him regaining his composure momentarily I can see he’s dancing on a knife’s edge of losing it again.
I know him better than he thinks, and I can see when it’s taking everything in him to hold it together.
His brow furrows as he unlocks his phone and hands it to me. As I close my fingers around it, our skin touches and a bolt of energy bites me low in my stomach.
“Call it.”
“What?”
“Call it,” Sullivan repeats.
“Call what?” I look down at the phone, but only the screensaver image of Molly in her bunny onesie with a big grin looks back at me.
“You know what.”
Something about Sullivan’s voice makes my stomach sink. I open up his call history. The number with no name is listed line after line, filling the screen.
“I know you’ve seen me call it. But you’ve never pushed to know who it is. If you had, I’d have lied to you about it, anyway.”
His eyes are on his phone as I look up at him in shock.
“You’d have lied?”
He grimaces. “I wouldn’t have had any other choice.”
My throat thickens and I hover my thumb over the number.
“Call it, Tate,” he urges in a hoarse whisper. “I don’t have to lie to you anymore.”
A stupid, small part of me wondered if this was a number for another woman. It was a fleeting thought, probably brought on by Brandon cheating on me. But I never thought that was something Sullivan would do. Not with the way things were between us.
But then he left that key out for The Lanceford for me to see.
Maybe we were always more to me than we ever were to him.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper.
