Page 69 of Let Me Protect You

I crane my neck. He’s standing there with a bouquet of red roses. Red roses. Just like the flowers I found last time.

I cock an eyebrow at him. “What are you doing here?”

He laughs quietly. His light brown eyes hold pain. “Since I’ve been back, I … I’ve visited every week to bring her fresh flowers.”

I’ve known Sully my entire life, but I never knew he was close enough to my mother to bring her flowers after her death.

“Why?” I push to my feet. “Who was she to you?”

“She was the only woman I’ve ever loved.”

I stumble back a step and shake my head.

And then it all clicks with his conversation with Vicki. Something he wants to tell me now that my mother is gone. And now, I’ll finally find out what it is.

“Harmony—” He stops speaking and looks down at the snow-covered ground. He mumbles something under his breath that I can’t hear. Then he looks up at me and says, “Harmony, I’m your father.”

My heartbeat starts to race as my mind tries to catch up with the meaning of his words. “My father died.”

Sully shakes his head, his eyes never leaving mine. “Look; we share the same eyes and hair color.” He points at his eyes and then his hair. “Your mother and I fell in love when I was home on leave one year, and she ended up getting pregnant with you.”

Shock turns to anger, and I ball my fists. “So, you just left her then?”

He closes the distance between us and reaches to grab my hand, but I recoil.

“No. I didn’t find out until you were about four years old, after I came home from the military. I tried to send her letters while deployed, but I never received a response.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Then why didn’t you come to me? My mother struggled, and I could’ve used a father.”

“At first, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. Getting out of the military… Well, my time there wasn’t pleasant, and when she realized that, she told me to stay away.”

No, that’s not possible. She’d never do something like that to me.

He looks up at me again and gives me a small smile. “She didn’t do it out of anger but to protect her young child. But it’s why I moved to New York after you. I wanted to stay nearby in case you needed me.”

I take another step back. “I … I don’t know what to say.”

“I understand. Just know that I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

He places the red roses on my mother’s grave before whispering something I can’t hear. Then he gives me a small, sad smile and heads back toward the parking lot.

***

After I brought Elias’s car back to Frank’s Restaurant, he drove me to his place. Everything that happened at the cemetery is still on my mind, no matter how much I try not to think about it. He glances at me as we walk inside his home and picks up on my off mood.

He closes the front door behind us and turns to me. “What’s wrong?”

Now that Elias and I are back in a good place, hiding this bomb isn’t a good idea. “Sully was at the cemetery.”

Elias’s eyebrows draw together. “Why?”

I twirl my thumbs around and around. This is a lot harder to say than I thought, so I just spit it out, “Maybe he felt the same way I did, so he went to visit someone he loved.”

He tilts his head to the side. “And who is that?”

I take a deep breath, trying to calm my out-of-control pulse. “My mother.”

If this wasn’t such a serious subject, I would’ve laughed at how confused Elias looks. This must’ve been how my face appeared, too.