Page 95 of Deacon

The words formed inside me before I had any right to them, and they still fit with terrifying ease. I knew nothing about her except her name, her age, and that she had enough fire to stand crying in a parking lot and order two grown men out of her life. Somehow my chest already ached with the need to know everything else.

Evan wrapped an arm around her shoulders without trying to quiet her.

“There she is,” he murmured. “My gemstone has entered her uprising era.”

A wet little snort escaped her, and even that landed somewhere tender.

Lila had gone past anger into something colder.

“If you don’t want to irrevocably hurt our relationship,” she said, “you will return to Wicker Falls now. I will call you later and let you know I’m okay.”

Richard stared at her, then at Jade, me, and the whole wreck of the scene around us. The pizza boxes lay where he had dropped them. Matty stood red-faced between Priest and Ink. His granddaughter was crying beside a man she had known all her life while the father she had never met stood bleeding ten feet away.

Whatever argument he had left died there.

“You better call me by nine,” he said at last, voice low and hard. “Or I’ll be back here in a flash. With the police.”

Lila rolled her eyes, exhausted fury making her painfully familiar.

“Yeah,” she said. “Got it, Dad.”

Matty still wanted a fight, but Richard had decided for both of them. Priest and Ink released him carefully. He yanked free, gave me one last murderous glare, and followed his father toward the truck.

The doors slammed. Richard drove out faster than necessary.

Afterward, the lot felt stripped raw. My jaw throbbed, blood still coated the inside of my mouth, and none of it ranked high enough to matter.

Lila looked nearly as wrecked as I felt, hair coming loose around her face, shoulders locked tight. Beside her stood Jade. Sixteen. Lila’s eyes. My mouth. Enough attitude in the lift of her chin to make something inside my chest crack open wider.

I had come here to help Lila move boxes. Instead I was standing in front of a daughter I had never known existed, trying to understand how a man could become a father sixteen years late.

I looked from her to Lila.

“I believe,” I said slowly, because calm was the only thing keeping the rest of me contained, “we need to go have a talk.”

My attention returned to Jade.

“And you, miss sassy, won’t let yourself get left out of it, I’m guessing.”

She lifted her chin higher, wet-cheeked and fierce.

“Sixteen years of not knowing who you are gives me the right to be involved in any talk about where you’ve been,” she said.

The laugh escaped before I could stop it. Nothing about this was funny, but there she stood looking like me and burning with her mother’s fire, and I already knew I was done for.

I looked at Lila and shook my head once.

“Definitely our spawn.”

26

Deacon

“Definitely our spawn.”

Priest snorted under his breath before the words had fully left me.

Nothing about this was funny. Jade still had tears drying on her cheeks, Lila looked held together by temper and pure refusal to fall apart, and my jaw throbbed where Matty had caught me. The whole damn parking lot felt scorched.