10. Kane
TEN
KANE
Did you ever have something hit you so hard and from out of nowhere that you felt like you’d been blown to smithereens? A bomb dropped that annihilated everything? What you knew and what you believed and what you thought your future was going to look like?
I stared down at the photo she had set in front of me.
Dumbfounded.
Shocked.
Heart a fucking battering ram against my ribs.
Dizziness rushed me as dazed disbelief clashed with the recognition.
This little girl with blonde hair the same color as Emery’s, fucking adorable as could be with her chubby cheeks and giant grin and dimple on her chin.
But none of those things were what had me trapped.
It was her eyes.
Eyes that were the most unique shade of green.
Eyes I hadn’t been able to fully make out through the window of the car .
A sheering emerald, though the irises were rimmed in gold, the same as the glinting flecks that were smattered throughout.
The same eyes as my mother had had.
The same eyes as mine.
Still, I was shaking my head, trying to fucking process what it was that Emery was trying to tell me.
Sickness rising from the gully carved through the center of my soul.
From that wicked place where all the darkness and ugliness reigned.
That place that promised I didn’t get this.
Unable to fathom that I’d actually created something as beautiful as this.
This little girl with the angel face.
Fear locked my throat and turmoil thundered through my veins.
“Are you going to say something?” Emery’s question was woven in a quiet affront, issued so low it was a wonder that I could even hear it, let alone that it would knock me from the trance.
But somehow, I lifted my head, staring over at her, gutted all over again that I somehow couldn’t remember touching this woman before last night.
I was sure that experience would have been engraved so deep in my mind there was no chance it could have been erased.
Sure I’d remember her taste and her scent and the shape of her body.
But no, I couldn’t remember a damn thing.
I blinked through the stupor, and she released a gust of disbelief. Her brow pinched as she leaned farther across the table. “I just told you that you have a daughter, and you have nothing to say?”
“I…” I tried to fumble through the chaos to form a rational thought.
But Emery was hissing before I could formulate a single word, “Her name is Maci. She is four years old, and her mother was my sister, Emmalee.”
She choked over the last, sorrow gushing out of her, overflowing as she gripped the edge of the table like it was the only thing that would keep her from being dragged away.
Taken into the nothingness.
That was when it finally dawned on me what she was saying.
This wasn’t her kid.
It was her niece.
And she’d used sister in past tense.
Oh, fuck.
This little girl’s mother was dead, and Emery had come here to tell me.
That’s why she was at my door. That’s why she freaked out when she saw me.
Nausea curled my guts. A ferocious, twisting turbulence.
“Emmalee Voss,” she pressed. “My sister was Emmalee Voss.”
I wracked my brain for the name.
For a face.
For the trace of a memory.
For the pieces of this disaster to come together, but I couldn’t make a single thing fit.
It wasn’t like I always caught names, but there was no question Emery thought I should know exactly who her sister was.
Because a torrent of disgust heaved from her lungs, and she mumbled, “Oh my God, I knew it. I freaking knew it.”
She grabbed her purse and pushed out of the booth, and she nabbed the picture from the table before I could stop her.
A whirl of blonde whipping around her as she hurried for the door.
While I sat there locked in the shock that wouldn’t let me go.
Darts coming at me from every direction.
Impaling.
Piercing.
I was a father.
A father .
A wedge of blinding light cut into the darkness when she ripped open the door .
Panic surged in to replace the numbness.
Spirit screaming so loud it was the only thing I could hear.
Urging me to move. To fucking do something.
I finally got my shit together enough that I jumped out of the booth and ran after her.
I grabbed the handle right before the door fully settled closed, and I whipped it back open and ran out.
Quick to scan the area.
I found Emery storming across the small front lot toward the street, tromping through the gravel in her wedged heels.
Repulsion radiated from the hurricane that surrounded her.
Horror and her own sickness.
I rushed behind her, and she started jogging like there was a chance I wouldn’t catch up.
“Emery!” I shouted.
She didn’t slow, she just increased her pace like she was running from a monster.
I might have been, but I would never fucking hurt her that way.
Neither of them. Devotion boiled inside me at the thought.
A swell of protectiveness so severe it made my head spin.
I might have been twisted by the confusion and shock, but still, I knew.
I fucking knew.
“Emery,” I shouted again, basically begging it that time.
I ran up behind her, catching up to her as she hit the sidewalk. I grabbed her by the wrist and whirled her around. I was struck again by the swilling of her presence when I looked at the torment that covered her face.
“Please don’t take off like this. We need to talk.” My words were grit. Ragged with the plea.
She tugged her arm free, though she remained right there, her head tipped back as she hit me with her potency. With her own protectiveness that crashed out on an inundating wave.
“I already gave you the chance for that.”
She started to turn and walk, and the words were flying off my tongue, “Yeah, and you showed up here and told me I have a kid that is four years old that I didn’t know about. You think it wouldn’t take me a minute to wrap my head around that?”
She was facing away, shoulders sagging when she blew the strained words out like sorrow. “You don’t even remember her.”
Anxiety buzzed through me, and I shifted from foot to foot. “That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize what is in that picture you just showed me.”
My spirit clutched.
My kid.
Shouldn’t be possible. I was careful. Always. But one look, and there was no question.
Emery stayed like that for the longest time, a tumult spinning around her, her body vibrating as she worked through whatever she was thinking. Then she shifted to look back at me from over her shoulder.
She was trembling as she forced out the words. “You don’t need to worry about Maci. I have her.”
She started back up the sidewalk.
I blinked, unable to believe what she’d said. What she’d claimed.
Like I was just going to forget what I’d just learned?
She’d made it ten steps when I called, “Know you think you have me pegged, but you’re wrong. Not going to turn my back on my daughter. She’s my responsibility.”
Emery slowed before she finally shifted to face me.
Nearly blew me back when I saw the deluge of tears that covered her face.
The grief.
The sorrow.
The torment she’d endured.
“She’s your responsibility?” Her head barely shook.
“She’s a four-year-old little girl who just lost her mother.
A four-year-old little girl who doesn’t understand what’s happened.
A four-year-old little girl who’s had her life turned upside down.
One who needs care and compassion. This isn’t about responsibility, Kane.
This is about family. This is about love . ”
She emphasized the last by jamming her index finger toward the ground.
Little Warrior fighting for what she believed was right.
“So, if there is any kind of compassion inside you? Any goodness at all? Then you forget I came here.”
Swiping the back of her hand under her nose, she turned and left me gaping behind her.
Her words stakes that pierced through me, pinning me to the ground.
She was right.
She was right.
I led no sort of life that would benefit a child.
I was a monster. Prone to brutality. Devolving into it without guilt or a second thought.
And still, as I watched her go, it felt like she was ripping my soul out of me.