“You don’t look old enough to have a daughter,” I said.
“Lots of thirty-five-year-olds have kids.”
“I mean … you’ve spent, what, fourteen years in here? That would mean you had a kid …”
“In high school.”
“Yikes.”
He chuckled. “Tell me about it. Missed the safe sex section of health class. One night, my girlfriend said yes, and—boom—I became a father.”
“How often do you get to see her?”
The shift was immediate. Something detonated behind his features. A quiet devastation that made my chest ache.
“I haven’t seen her in over a decade.”
God. The pain in his eyes. His daughter was his kryptonite, I realized. The thing that could bring this massive, intimidating man to his knees.
I couldn’t imagine being trapped in a cage with no way to see the people you loved.
“You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to,” I said gently. “But why haven’t you seen her?”
“They used to come visit me once a week. But after a while, my ex thought prison visiting rooms were no place for a little girl.”
My stomach dropped.
“She was right,” Knox added quietly.
“Yeah, but every daughter needs her father.” The words came out fiercer than I intended. “Trust me, I would know.”
Knox looked at me then, waiting for me to elaborate, but I shook my head.
“I didn’t say that to change the subject to myself.”
“She deserves a real father,” he said. “Not a caged one.”
“Knox …”
He sighed, and right then, I saw the weight of what this separation had done to him. His shoulders curved inward, his posture aging him a decade in a single exhale. The confident, dangerous man I’d come to know looked suddenly hollowed out.
Without thinking, I reached out and placed my hand over his.
Knox went completely still.
Neither of us moved. Neither of us breathed. My palm rested against the back of his hand, and I felt the rough warmth of his skin, the ridges of old scars, the steady pulse beneath.
His fingers shifted. Slowly. Carefully. Like he was afraid any sudden movement might spook me. And then his hand turned beneath mine, palm facing up, and his fingers threaded gently through the spaces between mine.
We both looked down at our joined hands.
The contact sent heat radiating up my arm, pooling somewhere behind my heart. It wasn’t just physical. It was something more profound. Something that felt like recognition. Like his hand had been waiting for mine all along.
When I lifted my gaze, his attention was already on me. Softer than I’d ever seen. Vulnerable in a way that made my throat tighten.
I should pull away.
I didn’t.
