17. Emery #2
Staring and staring because I wasn’t sure I had the strength to look back at him.
Not when there wasn’t a buffer between us.
“She’s incredible.” Kane’s gravelly voice cut through the tension that pulsed in the bare space between us.
“She’s the most incredible person I’ve ever met,” I whispered, still turned away. “The only light I’ve been able to find in the middle of this darkness.”
I shored up all the power I possessed, fortifying my walls, before I finally shifted around to look at him.
It didn’t matter I’d prepared myself. It still knocked the breath from my lungs.
The awe that was written on his fierce, distinct features. A pain I didn’t quite understand because the man didn’t know her.
But there it was.
Inscribed in the lines of his face and flooding from his being.
“Thank you for giving me this.” It was raw.
My throat nearly closed off. “It’s why we came here. To find you.”
“And how did you know how to find me?” His brow curled, his voice this gruff, abrasive thing that unfortunately sounded far too nice.
I wavered, then pushed out a sigh. “My sister had left me a letter in the event of her passing. For years, I believed that she hadn’t known who Maci’s father was, but in the letter, she named you and said she wanted me to find you and tell you about Maci. Your address was listed.”
Those brows slashed down farther.
Surprised .
Confused.
Maybe…disturbed.
I attempted not to feel ruffled by it. Attempted to quell my hackles that rose. My defenses rising, sure he’d hurt my sister in some way.
My teeth ground in restraint.
Waiting.
He roughed his hand through the longer pieces of his hair. Antsy as he contemplated, gaze flitting away for a beat before it was pinned on me.
“What happened to her?”
The familiar sting of tears burned at the backs of my eyes, and my throat clogged with the horror of it.
“She fell off her roof.” I could barely force it out because there was that unsettled piece of me that believed it was a lie.
No way to accept it.
Especially after the things I’d found.
But the authorities had said it was cut and dry.
Obvious.
She’d had a couple of glasses of wine and had misstepped.
And that was it.
She was gone.
“It was always our thing…climbing onto our roof from our window in the middle of the night so we could talk when we were growing up. And even though we were adults and lived in the same town, once in a while we would still do it. She’d crawl out onto her roof, I’d climb out to mine, and we’d reminisce.
She’d called me that night and we’d talked for two hours. ”
And then she’d slipped, and my sister had been stolen from me.
Sympathy dimmed Kane’s bright eyes. “Fuck. I’m sorry, Emery. That’s awful.”
“Absolutely awful.” The words were hoarse. Close to a cry. “Her neighbor found her the next morning, thankfully before Maci woke up.”
He inhaled a shaky breath, and he rubbed one of those big, tatted hands over his face, blinking hard when he dropped it, voice dipping even farther .
“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize her name.” He hesitated before he muttered the question, “You have a picture of her?”
God, this was brutal.
My nod was bumbling, and I grabbed my phone from the table and swiped into my gallery, heart fisting in a wrench of pain as I searched to find a good one of Emmalee.
I settled on one of my favorites, a slow smile twitching at the edge of my mouth as I looked at it.
It was a picture from last Christmas Eve. I was hosting the family at my house, and she and Maci had spent the night. It was late, and she was in my kitchen, walking my direction and shaking a can of whipped cream, sticking her tongue out at me as I held up the camera.
We both had been laughing.
A flicker of those defenses flared as I passed him the phone, but it was different than it had been earlier.
As if I’d been soothed in some way by this interaction.
“We’re twins, but not identical,” I told him.
Kane accepted my phone and looked down at it.
My attention was probably too focused on his expression.
On the way he searched it before he flinched. The way that for one beat, his golden flesh turned ashen.
“Do you recognize her?” I couldn’t help but demand it, my voice cracking with the plea. Unable to stomach the idea of her being forgotten.
I watched him stall and work up the single gruff word that rose from his thick throat. “Yeah.”
“And?” Anger surged out with it.
I couldn’t help it.
His head dropped low as if he didn’t want me to see whatever was written on his face.
“And I didn’t really know her. She was vacationing here in Moonlit Ridge one winter. Skiing with a group of friends. They came into Kane’s a couple of times. We hooked up once, and that was the last I ever saw of her.”
His jaw ground as he said it .
Disquiet tied a knot in my stomach. A feeling that something was off. That there was something he wasn’t telling me.
“That’s it?” I pressed, almost frantic.
He lifted his face back to mine. “Yeah. That’s it.”
His tone was wholly convincing.
But those eyes…
They churned and roiled.
Magic eyes.
That’s what I’d always called Maci’s.
Enchanting.
Mesmerizing.
But I was sure his could glamour and mask.
Cast a curse.
Because I felt some sickness come on when he suddenly stood, itching and antsy, those hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans that were still completely drenched. “I need to go. I have somewhere I need to be at four.”
Disbelief burst out of me on a scoff, and I shook my head. I didn’t even know why I was upset.
It was the plan. The way I wanted it. The way it needed to be.
But the thought of him walking away like this, after I’d just shared one of the most traumatic parts of my life, sent a razor raking across the raw, abraded parts of my spirit.
He started around the far side of the table, and I thought he was going to walk straight to the parking lot where I’d seen his motorcycle when we pulled in.
Only he stopped, facing that way, his being vibrating with intensity.
I jumped when he suddenly whirled in my direction.
A storm that came within an inch of me.
Towering.
Intimidating.
His breath hot and intoxicating. That distinct cedar and clove scent making my head spin.
He leaned in close, and I prepared for his goodbye .
I could already feel the regret pouring from his body.
“Know you’re going to hate me for this, Emery.” His voice scraped low. “And the last thing I want to do is hurt you more than you’re already hurting. But that’s my daughter, and I can’t turn my back on that.”
Cold slicked down my spine, and I jerked back. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m her father. It means she stole my heart the second I saw her. It means I have every intention of raising her. Meet me at Twisted Moon at nine, and we can discuss the details.”
Horror pinned my feet to the ground, the shouts and rejections and denials trapped in my hemorrhaging throat as I watched him turn without saying anything else and stride through the park and over to the playground.
I was unable to move as I watched him lean down in front of Maci.
She giggled and laughed at whatever he said, then he touched her chin and ruffled his fingers through her hair as he stood.
I couldn’t look away as he strode the rest of the way to the parking lot and climbed onto his bike.
The roar of the engine echoed through the air like a thunderclap.
That menacing, vicious man I’d thought I’d recognized that first night in full force.
I’d thought somehow in it he was a moment’s comfort.
But no.
He’d come to completely obliterate my heart.