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“You know, I truly did think she might have told you. I mean, for god’s sake, you’re Toren fucking Kane, practically a god to her. It’s ridiculous.” Every word feels mocking. LaBlanc’s eyes glint as he stares at me. “Do you have any idea how much of the last year of my life I poured into trying to fix her? How many nights I stayed up wondering if she’d try to do it again? She has no idea what she’s put me through. So goddamn selfish.”
Lily flinches, her body backing into me, then bouncing away from me as if just the contact has startled her. She’s like a bunny caught in a snare, looking wide-eyed around for an escape she can’t seem to find.
“No . . . I—”
“Stop it.” I try to spew the words at him with as much venom as he’s using on her, but I can’t. “Lily, let’s go—”
“You think being together again fixes anything? You think she’s stable enough for this? Look at her! She can’t even look you in the eye.”
Lily’s breathing is heavy and stilted, like she’s choking on oxygen and still can’t take a deep breath. I try to grab her face, try to get her to calm down, but she can’t meet my gaze, her eyes flickering everywhere but to me.
“I was going to tell you. I-I was—”
“Shh,” I breathe, tucking her into my arms and laying a shaking kiss on the top of her head. She’s so goddamn small it makes my chest ache, visions of her painted by his words swirling in my head. “Everything is fine. You’re okay. You can tell me when we get home—”
“She can’t even stand on her own two feet without clinging to you. Just like when you were kids. Just waiting for someone else to take responsibility for her. A fucking child.”
“She’s your child.”
He scoffs. “What has she ever done for me?”
Stop crying. Stop fucking crying. Only I can’t and my voice is shaking as I continue shielding her and spit out, “Look at her again, I’ll fucking kill you.”
LaBlanc shakes his head with a bitter smile. I’ve never wanted to hit him more than I do now, but that would mean letting go of Lily. And I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to.
“Every time I think maybe you have changed—grown up—I’m reminded that you’re still just a boy playing house with my daughter. Living in a fucking fairy tale. Throwing tantrums when you don’t get your way. Same as it always has been.”
I want to fight him, but I can’t. Like someone ripped my batteries out and I’m stuck.
“Just leave us alone.” I sound just like a kid—like myself as a kid, and frustration burns at my nostril. I press my fingers to the bridge of my nose, as if that will stop the tears that are already halfway to spilling. “Haven’t you done enough?”
LaBlanc slides his hands into his pocket and smirks at me.
But for a moment, the mask cracks. He looks down at Lily, just a little itch of concern there.
No part of me has ever believed that Christopher LaBlanc loves Lily. But she’s his daughter, and whatever strange way his brain works, he seems to find enough in that to have protected her and taken care of her—though his definition is much different from mine on those terms—in the way he thought was best.
In his own fucked-up head, he thinks he saved Lily.
And can you judge him? When you did nothing? When you didn’t even know?
I feel sick, but manage to keep it in, never faltering when I know my entire world rests vulnerably just behind my feet.
“For once, maybe you’re right, Kane. I have done more than enough for her.”
I shake my head, tucking both her bag and mine under my shoulder, and then I pull Lily as tightly as I can to my chest. I’d carry her if I could, but my entire body is shaking, and I don’t want to scare her.
“You’re making a mistake. Carson and I are the only ones who know what she needs—”
Spinning on my heel and extracting myself from Lily, I snap back, “You have no idea what she needs.”
And you do?
I push the thought away, along with the images it brings, rubbing at the burn in my chest as we head toward my bike.
Chapter 58
Lily
