“Yes,” he bit out.
“You’re welcome!” came from the other end of the room.
She didn’t give Desiree the time of day. “You are a disgrace as a husband, a father, a man of the law, and a man in general. You let others suffer so you could keep the peace in your home. So you could keep your secret and not be shamed for what you did to your wife, my mother, Danny, me. How did that work out for you when Desiree killed her own mother, your precious Gayle, who stood by you even after you betrayed her?”
His face tightened with conviction. “Desiree would never do that.”
“She did. Tell him, Desiree.” Lucky kept her gaze on the sheriff.
Silence came from the other end of the room.
Lucky guessed her sister was all out of confessions. “No? I’ll tell him, then. The daughter you loved instead of me not only planned to kill her mother, your wife, she recorded it on her phone. According to the transcript I read, Desiree taunted Gayle while she struggled to take her last breaths that no way was Gayle going to call child protective services and get me removed from my home and placed into yours. She wasn’t going to share you with me. Ever."
Bob's face paled and she feared he might actually faint from shock.
"I was supposed to die, too, the night she killed my family, but you showed up and apparently said enough to get her to sparemy life. I suppose I should thank you for that, except you could have stopped all of it from happening in the first place.”
He leaned into the bars. “I love you. I never wanted to see you hurt or dead. Desiree needed her sister. I needed you.”
“Yes, to keep her in line, because you couldn’t. And youloveme? Bullshit. You haven’t shown me an ounce of love, not in the way I needed it. It’s too little, too late now. The time to save me was the moment I was born and you knew I was going home to an abusive man. He broke my mother and she hated me for not being her ticket out of that man’s clutches. If you’d done the right thing, Danny would be alive today. Do you ever think abouthimand what he suffered?”
The sheriff’s head dropped. “Yes. I do.”
“Then you must not have a heart, because you didn’t care even enough to make a phone call to CPS. You didn’t have to blow up your life. All you had to do was remove us from that hell. That’s all. That would have been enough. I would have been so grateful to be free.” She swiped the tears from her cheeks. “Now you will have all the time in the world to think about your choices and the lives they cost. You can think about Danny, the way I do every day, wondering what his life would have been like if he’d been given just a tiny bit of your time. One phone call. One act of kindness. One good thing you did for the daughter you made suffer. I could have lived my whole life without knowing you were my father, and I’d have been okay with that if Danny and I were together. You could have kept your family. I could have had mine. One call.”
“I’m sorry.” Tears streamed down his face, shame in his eyes, regret pulling his mouth into a mask of pain. “Please, Lucky. Let me make it up to you.”
She pressed her lips tight and shook her head. “What is a life worth? You can’t give him back to me.” She rubbed her hands up her exposed arms. “You can’t take away a thousand cuts and allthe vile words my father used to tear me down. You can’t change the fact Desiree wants me dead.”
“I don’t,” she called out. “You’ll take good care of Krystal for me. Won’t you, sis?”
The sheriff’s tears poured down his cheeks again. “What I wouldn’t give to see her grow up under your influence. What I wouldn’t give to go back and make that call.”
“You had the power and you didn’t use it to save me. You betrayed me every day you knew what was happening and you didn’t stop it. So this is it for us. I do not want to hear from you. I will not contact you. Let this be the end of our sad story.”
“But I want to make things right. I want to know what happens to you, to Krystal.”
“We will be happy and better off without you. I will love her enough, so that she never goes looking for love disguised as whatever kind of crazy Desiree is or the kind of neglect you inflicted on me. She’ll have a good man to show her what true love and protection looks like.” She glanced over her shoulder at Hawk, who winked at her. She turned back to her bio-father for the last time. “When you think about me,ifyou think about me, remember you’re the one who ruined any chance of us ever being father and daughter. I would have given anything to have the kind of love and devotion you showed Desiree. Now I’ll never know what that’s like. But I have him.” She pointed her thumb over her shoulder. “So I know I’m going to be better than okay, because he’s giving me a new family. One who’s already welcomed me with open arms.”
“You deserve it, Lucky. I know you don’t believe it, but I do love you.”
“If only you’d showed it.” She glanced one last time down the row of cells at her sister, then took Hawk’s hand and walked out, leaving her past behind and looking forward to her future.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lucky walked toward the helicopter hand in hand with Hawk. “This is yours?” The sleek black and chrome chopper looked like it seated six. The Gunn Brothers Distillery logo was emblazoned on the rear side panel.
“Ours,” he corrected, like every other time she referred to something of his that they now shared. At first, she couldn’t wrap her head around how simply and easily he’d brought her into his life and declared them an “us,” making it clear that everything they owned, hers and his, was now “theirs” and “ours.” She loved the sense of belonging she held in her heart now.
His family had welcomed her with open arms. She sat at their tables, sharing meals with them whenever one of them invited them to dinner. They wanted to get to know her. They wanted to be the family she could count on after she’d lost the one that never protected or loved her the way she deserved. She’d never felt connected to anyone the way she was with Hawk. And theirbond was growing stronger every day. And that included his family. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise. I want to show you our piece of the world and a place I found a while ago that I think you’ll like.” He opened the front passenger door for her and helped her up by the hand. He buckled her in and held the headphones out to her. “You’re going to need these so we can talk to each other.”
Hawk had already spent nearly an hour going over the helicopter while she enjoyed a mocha from the little café in the hanger at the small airport. He took his seat beside her and started flipping switches and checking the many gauges in front of him. He pulled on his headphones and radioed someone, letting them know they were ready to leave. Then he turned to her. “Ready?”
She wiped her sweaty palms over her thighs, straightening her dress. “Yes.”
His smile brightened. “Nervous?”
