Delilah’s dad—Will—sits in the armchair across from me, coffee mug clenched in his hand like he might throw it at my head if I breathe wrong. The television is on, muted, some late-night news anchor moving her mouth soundlessly in the background. A clock ticks on the wall. A lamp throws warm yellow light over framed family photos and old wooden shelves and all the proof in this room that I was never supposed to be part of this side of their life.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Every second feels like judgment.
Will doesn’t fidget. Doesn’t tap his foot. Doesn’t shift. He just sits there in brutal stillness, wearing a T-shirt and old jeans like he’s home, because he is. I’m the one sitting here in the wreckage of trust, trying not to look at the hallway where Delilah disappeared ten minutes ago like I’m expecting her to come back and rescue me from her father.
King is in the kitchen with her mother under the very specific threat of being “useful or silent,” which, knowing him, means he’s probably flirting his way through stacking mugs and getting warned not to touch anything expensive. I can hear the low murmur of voices in there. The occasional clink of a spoon against a cup. It makes this room feel even more claustrophobic somehow. Too normal. Too warm. Too far from what any of us actually are.
“So,” I finally say, because silence is going to kill me first. “How’s… work?”
Will doesn’t look at me.
“Retired,” he replies flatly.
No fucking shit. Throw me a damn bone, Will.
“Great conversation.” I grumble.
He takes a slow sip of coffee.
Doesn’t respond.
I rub a hand over my beard, resisting the urge to light a cigar in someone else’s house. That would absolutely get me murdered. Not metaphorically. Literally. And honestly, I’d deserve it. The house smells like coffee and lemon cleaner and whatever vanilla candle his wife keeps burning. My smoke would stain this place. My presence already has.
“You know,” I try again, because if I stop talking, I’m going to start thinking too hard about Delilah upstairs in her old room wearing one of her college hoodies and pretending she can fit back into a life she outgrew years ago. “I never—”
“Don’t,” he cuts in.
His voice isn’t loud. That’s worse.
“Don’t explain. Don’t justify. Don’t spin it into some heroic story.”
He finally looks at me, eyes sharp and exhausted and heartbreakingly familiar. The same man I bled with. The same man who once hauled me out of a collapsed stairwell by the straps of my vest and laughed in my face when I puked from the pain. The same man who trusted me enough to think his daughter was safe near me, even from a distance.
“You lied to me,” he says. “For years.”
“I know.”
“You put my daughter in danger.”
“She put herself there,” I say quietly. “And she earned every inch of it.”
He scoffs, a bitter sound. “She was twenty.”
“She was exceptional.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
No.
It doesn’t.
The truth lands between us and stays there. Heavy. Ugly.
