Knight Life In Vegas (Sin City Omegas #3)

Chapter 36

T his was going to be a fucking disaster. I’d waited too long. I knew it. I couldn’t avoid Charlotte’s birthday party either, both because I wanted to be there for her, but also because that would probably piss off Bryce even more and make it blatantly obvious I was avoiding him.

Honestly, I was almost impressed with how incredibly shitty the timing of everything was. Bryce didn’t know about all of the plans I’d had before Charlotte rolled onto the scene, didn’t know I’d had Autumn book me flights twice a month for visits so I could start to rebuild my relationship with him and not miss too much of my granddaughter’s life. All of those were irrelevant since I’d moved here and I knew the only thing he would see was that I had done that for Charlotte, not for him.

I had failed him.

Again.

Regardless of my intentions, that was what it came down to.

We were all in the back room, getting outfitted at Dylan’s insistence. Bryce’s gaze kept sweeping over me, sharp as a blade. Ava’s curiosity was softer, as was the rest of their pack’s, waiting for some explanation I wasn’t sure how to give them. Charlotte had invited her friend Madison as well, and Madison’s alpha, who looked like he would rather be anywhere else. All the alphas, myself included, wore squire livery. The ladies were in the serving maiden outfits, and Charlotte was in one of the spare queen gowns, sparkling like the goddess I knew her to be.

“I need to talk to you.” Bryce finally approached me and I slammed down on my surge of panic, so it didn’t go directly to Charlotte. I wasn’t ready for this discussion, but it was my own fucking fault Bryce didn’t know what had been happening.

Francisco passed me his keychain. “You can use my office. Dinner service starts in fifteen minutes. We’ll announce Charlotte before the show begins an hour after that.”

I took the keys, squeezing the cool metal until it bit into my palm. I led Bryce to the office and locked us away inside of it. No one else needed to hear what he had to say to me.

“What the fuck, Dad?” Bryce rounded on me, hurt bright in his amber-brown eyes.

Emily’s eyes.

“You don’t call. You don’t text. You don’t fucking visit when you’ve moved to the same goddamn city as me. Why am I seeing you for Charlotte’s birthday and not before now?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Bryce carried on, letting all my failures pour from his mouth.

“Do I mean so fucking little to you that you can’t even be bothered to see me? You said you were going to be better. God, I can’t believe I fell for that.”

Each word carved into me. I deserved his ire. God knew I was familiar with the unique way parents could harm their children even when they didn’t want to. Even someone’s best left scars.

“Bryce.” I swallowed hard. “You mean so much to me. I love you.”

“Sure doesn’t feel like it.”

“I know, I know . I’m sorry.”

Bryce waved his hand dismissively and sat down on the edge of Francisco’s desk. “Well? What’s the excuse this time? Or should I pick one from the top five list? I know them all by heart.”

“I haven’t been the father you deserved since your mother passed. You’re bonded now, and thankfully don’t understand the full gravity of how much losing Ava would hurt. You simply can’t until such a horrific thing occurs, but I know you will understand that pain is haunting. It is eternal. I’ve gone through these years as barely half a person, and for a long, long time, seeing your resemblance to your mother was something I simply couldn’t handle without breaking. I used to love how much you look like her. After she was gone, I couldn’t appreciate it.”

“I’m not a kid anymore. What does all this have to do with our relationship now?”

“ Bryce , I’m trying to make you understand. Until I bonded Charlotte?—”

“You what ?”

Shit.

I’d thought it would be so obvious, but maybe the cacophony of scents surrounding us at his arrival had stopped him from noticing.

“It wasn’t on purpose.”

“I should hope the fuck not.”

“I know I’m not doing any of this right.”

Bryce grumbled, but I couldn’t quite make out the words.

“I didn’t realize the extent of how incredibly broken I was until the bond fixed it. It’s horrible, I get that, but looking at you now is the first time I haven’t felt like I’m about to fucking shatter.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about the bond? Why didn’t she tell Ava?”

“She kept quiet for me, because I wanted to speak to you first and I wasn’t brave enough to do it sooner.”

“Why?”

I sucked in a shaky breath and let it go slowly. “For one, it’s embarrassing. Forty-nine years old and accidentally bonding an omega? I didn’t blame myself for it when I did it thirty years ago, but I sure as hell felt the shame of it this time. And worse, ever since I found out Charlotte was a scent match, I’ve been worried about dishonoring your mother’s memory. I didn’t want you to hate me for it. I already know what a crushing disappointment I am to you and I can’t take back all the pain I caused you no matter how much I wish I could. I’ve been trying and failing every day since I arrived here.”

“I already told you that Mom would want you to be happy.” I didn’t miss the shine in his eyes, or his white-knuckle grip on the edge of the desk.

“That’s an easy thing to say, but a harder thing to feel. I know you miss your mother and I don’t ever want you to think I’m trying to replace her.”

“Better—” Bryce’s voice caught. “Better a replacement than what we’ve had for the last twenty years.”

“I did want to tell you, I swear it. I’m just so conscious of failing you that I end up doing it over and over again.”

I wasn’t too proud to get on my knees and beg. My son deserved to know I was serious. I dropped down like a supplicant.

“What are you doing?”

“Begging your forgiveness. I’ve been trying so hard for so long and I know it doesn’t feel like it. I could show you the therapy receipts and itineraries of all the flights I had booked over the next year to come see you, if it would help, but I’m here and I’m sorry. All this time I should have treated the resemblance between you and your mother as a gift, knowing a piece of her was still with me. I’ve only just started to get there, but I’m so fucking sorry that I let the my grief get in the way of my love for you. You deserve better and I wasn’t good enough.”

“Stand up,” Bryce ordered, rising to his feet in front of me.

I braced myself on the desk and stood so we were eye to eye. Tears tracked down our cheeks and I left mine to burn, a small penance.

I expected more derision, but instead he pulled me into his arms and I clutched him tightly.

“You probably think I don’t remember what you were like before she was gone. I do. I remember how much you both loved me, and that just made it all so much worse when you couldn’t even look at me and I had to fight tooth and nail for your attention.”

“I’m sorry. You were the only thing that kept me alive for a long time. It took everything in me to stay. If it hadn’t been for you, there were a thousand times I nearly followed your mother. I thought about it every day. I couldn’t even tell if it was better for me to stay or not. I didn’t want you to lose both parents, but I suppose in many ways you did anyway.”

Bryce didn’t say anything for a long time. Eventually, he whispered, “I didn’t know.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. You didn’t need that burden. You still don’t, but I have no other way to explain.”

“I’m glad you told me. I knew you were struggling, but you were so fucking good at your poker face. I always felt like I was a disappointment.”

I didn’t think my heart could break more than it already had. “Never! I’m so proud of you, Bryce. My issues shouldn’t have overshadowed being able to tell you that. I’m so fucking sorry.”

He pulled away slowly, wiping the wetness from his cheeks with a bitter laugh. “The poetic irony is so potent right now. You were so pissed at me for bonding a scent match and now you’ve shown up having done the same thing.”

“Finding out you had bonded Ava triggered me so deeply, knowing it was possible for you to feel what I felt. I hope to god you never experience it, and I’m glad now that you know the joy of it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not afraid of you one day being able to understand me too much.”

Bryce nodded carefully. “I don’t even want to contemplate it. I can acknowledge it would be devastating to look at Lucy and see Ava’s face if I lost her one day. I can’t think about losing her, only about keeping her. Is Charlotte okay?”

“As well as she can be in the circumstances. We still don’t really know what happened, but it was as out of the blue as Ava’s bond to you. She bonded Francisco only a couple of days ago, again by accident.”

“You’d better take care of her. Ava will feed you into a wood chipper if you hurt her, and I wouldn’t stand in her way.”

I winced at the visceral imagery.

“What happens now?” he asked.

“Nothing happens. My plan is still to stay until the bond calms down and then I return to my life.”

Bryce laughed sharply. “Good luck with that.”

“There’s no other choice. I can’t stay here and Charlotte doesn’t want to go to New York. Fate chose wrong, and we simply have to live with the consequences.”

“You could stay,” he insisted.

“The others are so much better for her. Fate was right about them, not me. I’ll support her and the boys until the day I die, but I’ve never deserved a life with them.”

Bryce’s brow furrowed and I took in all the details of his face. His eyes were the same shade as Emily’s. They shared the same smile and the same frown, the same crinkle in the corner of their eyes. It didn’t open the hole of burning agony in my chest to see those similarities now, but the guilt still weighed heavily on me, knowing the reason I could look at him and not want to break was because of my bond with Charlotte.

“You can’t punish yourself forever, you know.”

“I’ve done a good job of it so far,” I replied in an attempt at levity.

“Show me the receipts.”

I stared at him for a moment before recovering myself and pulling my phone out. I searched the name of my therapist in my email, years worth of payment receipts for sessions populating alongside panicked emails to the clinic’s crisis line during my darker nights. I turned it to Bryce, and he scrolled, his eyes widening at the years and years of proof that I had been trying.

“And the flights?”

I took the phone back and searched for the email from Autumn where she had canceled everything after I had moved out here.

Bryce surveyed the list, over two dozen flights booked and canceled for the next year with clear dates that they’d been booked before I realized the match with Charlotte. “You really weren’t kidding. You were going to come see me?”

“I didn’t want to lose you more than I already had, and I wanted to see Lucy grow up. I hoped I might be able to be a better grandfather than I was a father. I can’t ever make up for what happened and what you lost in your childhood, but I wanted to be sure you both know how much I love you.”

“Dad…” Tears snuck up on him again, and he wiped furiously at them. “Fuck. How am I supposed to stay mad at you?”

“I’ve done plenty of things to fuel that fire. If anger is easier, keep feeling it. I wouldn’t blame you for it one bit. I don’t expect forgiveness, however much I would love to have it.”

“Stay.”

The word was so simple, but it nearly brought me to my knees again.

“I can’t .”

“You can . Don’t do to Charlotte what you did to me. Don’t you fucking dare make her feel like she’s unwanted, like she’s not as important as your job. I know what that feels like and it fucking sucks. She deserves more than that.”

My whole body was taut with tension, muscles aching from holding so still, from the weight of both of our sorrow. Charlotte hadn’t said anything to me about feeling that way. We had both been adamant about not wanting the bond for our own reasons. Had things changed?

“I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“Then don’t. Put your money where your fucking mouth is and be here for all of us. Choose us.”

It wasn’t that simple, but I didn’t say that out loud. Maybe Bryce was right. Even if Charlotte didn’t want to keep me, I could still be here for my son, for my granddaughter, for the two little boys that were now legally my children. Would they care if I left? If they did…I couldn’t put another child through that.

I needed to stay.

“I’ll talk to my team and make a plan,” I promised.

Bryce stared at me for a long moment, confusion and pain clear in his eyes. “Really?”

“You’re right. I’ve let grief and fear have control for too long, been living a half life. You all deserve better from me, and the only way I can deliver that is if I step up and be part of your lives.”

Bryce laughed and hugged me again. “I’m really glad I dragged you back here to yell at you.”

We were a pressure cooker that had finally been released. I still had work to do, but the risk of explosive damage felt like it had finally gone away. “Me too.”

“Come on. Let’s go celebrate your omega.”

I let him pull me along so we could join the others, relieved and emotionally raw over our exchange. If leaving wasn’t an option anymore, how the fuck was I supposed to move forward?