Unlike other mafia fathers who rule with an iron fist, Arden has never laid a hand on me. But now I wish he would. He didn’t deserve that.
His Adam’s apple bobs, his voice hoarse. “I was going to say that I still have you.” It’s like the chill of the air freezes the oxygen in my lungs. Then it ruptures into shards of ice and punctures through my chest when he says, “Just because I lostthe love of my life doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve to find yours. At least one of us deserves to find peace at the end of all this.”
I haven’t dated or fucked anyone since we lost Mom and Tayla. Just the thought of love has my stomach coiling into knots.
It’s so temporary.
Fleeting.
After watching my father for these last five years, I recognize that losing it makes you feel hollower than if it didn’t exist in the first place.
But it doesn’t matter because I’m not falling in love with Kate.
Kate just fell onto my lap when I found her in the tunnels.
And then my cock.
And now is somehow tied to every strain of thought, even when she shouldn’t be.
Arden sighs. “It was clear to me that there was something you were hiding when you brought Kate here. I’d rather you fuck Kate out in the open—date—whatever, than continue lying to me. You’ve been different since sneaking around, and it’s not hard to understand why. This life can be long, and you shouldn’t hide the good parts of yours just because I lost part of mine. What kind of man and father would I be if I didn’t want a better life for you than the one we’ve both been stuck living these past five years? It might be too late for me, but it's not for you.”
He doesn’t need to lay a hand on me because his comment punches me in the gut just as hard.
Maybe coincidences do exist. An anomaly that brought me a girl who has just scratched the surface, healing the parts of myself I thought were dead and too broken to fix. I never made the effort to try.
I used to think that there’s nothing to lose if you have nothing to begin with. But it’s an empty life all the same, avoiding love or losing it.
Kate’s sentence is nearing an end, and each day there’s more dread that circulates in my stomach and tightens my chest. Weeks ago, I thought there was no way out for her but death. I wouldn’t have been able to let her go knowing our secrets. The blood we’re drowning in. But I don’t want to let her go anyway.
I want to keep her.
Claim her.
Make her mine in more ways than that pretty collar around her neck.
And you say you’re not in love with Kate.
I tell my conscience to shut the fuck up. Because I’m not.
Would she stay if I asked?
Stay because I’m infiltrating her soul as much as she is mine, and not because she’s in survival mode running from someone?
If she wanted to stay protected behind my walls—even if she didn’t harbor the same feelings—I would let her. Protect her until I can slay her demons. Or watch her drain the life from his eyes while I peer up at her with admiration from my knees.
I know the feeling in my chest isn’t just fascination anymore, but putting a name to it terrifies the fuck out of me.
I shove my hands into my slacks, bringing my eyes back to my father’s knowing ones. “Peace. You make it sound so simple.”
Arden nods thoughtfully, his eyes far off. He’s thinking about my mother, I’m sure.
I always used to watch them. Their lingering glances. Their wandering hands around the estate. The muttered words between them in secret that I couldn’t hear, but my father’s smirk and my mother's sheepish smile were proof enough of the kind of conversation that flowed between them. For thosemoments, I’m glad they were whispering. I probably would’ve been scared knowing my father’s tongue can be as foul as mine.
After twenty-three years of marriage, they never extinguished their flame. It burned until it was snuffed out, and still, I see the love that loiters in his gaze. In the way he speaks about her. Thinks about her as if a part of her will never die, even if she did.
I flatten my lips. “Do you think you’ll find it? Peace.”
Arden is fifty-one. Still has half a lifetime, if he’s lucky, to find someone who makes him feel alive like she did.
