Page 97 of Deacon

Then he left, and the silence changed with the door closed. No club. No audience. Just Lila, Jade, and me facing the part none of us had been ready for this morning. Maybe none of us ever could have been.

I took the armchair across from the couch. Lila sat with Jade tucked against her side, one arm around her shoulders in a hold that looked as automatic as breathing. Jade leaned into her without taking her eyes off me.

Those green eyes hurt worse up close.

“Well,” I said, forcing my voice steady, “first things first. I’d like to know my daughter’s name, please. And her birthday.”

Lila’s arm tightened slightly around her before she answered. “Her name is Jade Jaclyn Morgan,” she said quietly. “And her birthday is April twenty-second.”

The middle name caught me first. “Jaclyn?”

Then the rest followed. “Morgan,” I repeated. “Not Hayes?”

Pain moved across Lila’s face before she shook her head. “I wanted her to have a little piece of you, so yes, Jaclyn,” she said. “But I couldn’t give her your last name, Jackson. You were gone. I couldn’t tell my parents and Matty she was yours. What was I supposed to say? That you got me pregnant and ran off?” Her voice tightened around the old hurt. “You heard what my dad said down there. You saw how he took it just now. Imagine what it would have been like for seventeen years.”

There wasn’t a defense in me strong enough to stand against that. Whatever reasons I had for leaving, she had lived with the consequences while I was gone. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “I get it. I understand.”

I scrubbed a hand over my mouth, wishing I could reach backward through time and find something that didn’t exist. “I’m sorry, Lili. So damn sorry. I missed so damn much.”

Jade’s voice pulled my attention back where it belonged. “Where have you been all this time?”

I looked at her, really looked. Not at the resemblance. Not at the years I had lost. At my daughter, asking where her father had been.

“I was in the military,” I said. “Special Forces. Deployed a lot. Special missions.”

Lila made a sharp sound. “You could have died,” she said, staring at me. “And I never would have known?”

The hurt in her voice went deeper than anger. I had left her with silence, but I hadn’t left her out of everything. “You would’ve known, Lili,” I said. “You were my beneficiary. You were the one they would’ve come and told, and you would’ve gotten the money if somethin’ had happened to me.”

She shot to her feet. “You think that makes it okay?” Her anger rose faster than I could explain. “You think that makes it better?”

Then she stomped her foot.

Actually stomped it.

A laugh broke out of me before common sense could stop it.

Her eyes flashed. “What the hell do you think you’re laughing at, Jackson Hayes?”

For one ridiculous second, she was seventeen again, furious and beautiful and mine in every way that had mattered back then. “You still stomp your foot, Princess?”

Jade covered her mouth, but the laugh escaped anyway. “Actually, I have never seen her stomp her foot. You must bring it out of her.”

Lila whipped toward her. “Don’t you dare team up with him. You are mine. I have taken care of you all these years, so you are on my side. Always.”

The familiarity of it loosened something inside me. “Now, Lilabug, that’s just bein’ childish.”

Her glare promised death.

I lifted my hands before she could find something to throw. “I wasn’t sayin’ making you my beneficiary made it okay,” I said. “I was just sayin’ you would’ve known. And that I’m damn glad I chose you, because it would’ve taken care of you and our daughter if somethin’ had happened to me. So the money was goin’ to the right place, darlin’.”

Some of the fight left her shoulders. Not forgiveness. Just recognition that I meant it.

I looked between them and found myself empty of anything useful enough for the moment. “I...” I rubbed my jaw once, then let my hand fall. “Hell, I don’t know what to say. Lookin’ at you out there...” My gaze settled on Jade. “It was like the earth droppin’ out from under me.”

Concern tightened her face, and I corrected myself before she could misunderstand. “In a good way.”

The faintest smile touched her mouth.