If it’s me they want, I’ll go back home and face them.
They probably want me back in the life, but it’s better than them suspecting Lexi, Rory, Wyatt or Weston knows anything about the life I came from, or specifics like names or deeds.
I would never go there, but if they suspect it… I’ve seen crazier shit go down for less.
Standing back up, I inhale my last breath as a free man, feeling the oxygen burn my nostrils on the way in.
“I’ll go back,” I tell them. “I’ll make sure they never come for your families.”
TWENTY
LEXI
Dad draws a rough breath in through aging lips and runs a hand down his face, rubbing his cheeks a few times.
Explaining the fight with Rory to him was painful, but I’ve been leaning on him for more than two years now. I need the calm patience he exudes, it sucks the air out of my fire and tempers me. He’s been doing it my whole life, and he might be the only one who knows how.
I never cut him out of my life wholly, not the way Rory did. But after Mom passed…I sure started spending more time with him.
Can’t say I care much for his wife—or what he did with her—they’re homewreckers, the both of them. But I’ve come to accept that life is messy, people are imperfect, and sometimes a girl just needs her daddy, even if he wasn’t a great husband to her mama.
“You can’t let me get in between you girls,” he says, voice gentle, like he’s dealing with a lamb. Or maybe a firecracker. “You two’ve been through enough.”
Sitting in my living room right off the foyer, enveloped in a plush emerald armchair, his green eyes have a sheen to them, and it only amplifies the regret shining there. He pushes back what’s left of his hair and leans forward to speak again.
“My mistakes are mine, and I’m the one who has to pay for them.”
“But you’ve made up for them,” I argue back. “I’ve forgiven you. She won’t even listen!”
He shakes his head, not accepting my words. “I might have hurt her worse than you, Princess. You two have always needed different things from me. Your brains work different from each other, and that’s okay.”
“How?” I ask, leaning back in my jewel-tone Queen Anne chair across from him.
“Well, how about when you took a tumble playing out back? You needed your knee kissed better and that was it, you took right off again, ready to tumble again.”
I smile, memories stirring at the tale. Mom on the porch out back, glass of lemonade in hand as Dad picked me up, dusted me off, and sent me running.
“Rory, she needed to know why she fell. What did she do wrong. How she could do it better next time.”
It’s true. She would go over to Mom, asking for a play-by-play from her vantage point, thinking that she had a better view and could put forth a better analysis on where she messed up.
A smile wrinkles Dad’s eyes as he thinks back on it too. “You two were best friends, but complete opposites in all the ways that counted,” he goes on. “She may never forgive me, Princess, and you can’t let that ruin your relationship with her.”
“What if I never forgive her?” I whisper the words, scared that they might be true.
Sounds of a car door interrupt us, and seconds later I recognize the click-clack of heels up the walkway to my front door.
Eyes wide, I push my hands up off of my knees to rise and face the whirlwind that’s about to knock on my door.
Swinging it open, her fist is poised in the air, like she wasn’t sure if she should knock, walk right in, or maybe text me first.
To be fair, if Dad hadn’t talked me down I probably would have barricaded her out and not answered at all.
But here I am, standing in the doorway, blocking her entrance.
I can only guess she didn’t see Dad’s car parked on the street behind mine. She wouldn’t even recognize it if she did.
“Lex,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “Don’t do this to me.”
