Chapter 32
32
JOHNNY
I bristle at the tone the woman uses when she speaks to Aurora. The way she looks down her nose at her despite being shorter and purses her lips as she gives my girl an up-and-down glare tugs me forward half a step, making my presence known to everyone around us.
Whoever the woman is, she thinks she’s above us. Above Rory, specifically. It becomes even more apparent when she folds her arms across her chest and nods, as if giving us permission to speak.
“Who are you? And how do you know my mother?” Rory asks stiffly.
“I know of your mother. I’ve never met her.”
“Is that supposed to make a difference?”
“Yes, actually, it does. Now, I’ll ask again. What are you doing here?”
Rory pauses, but her expression is too closed off for me to read her right now. I fucking hate that but don’t let it clog my judgment.
I insert myself into the conversation without a care what this old woman thinks about it. “Where’s Lee? And who exactly are you to him? ”
She flicks me a disinterested look that lasts less than a second before glaring at Rory again. I huff a laugh, giving my head a shake.
“If you continue to glare at her like that, you’ll need to ask those guards of yours to come a bit closer.”
“Johnny,” Rory whispers, letting her mask slip when she stares up at me, revealing a whirlpool of appreciation and nerves.
I let out a breath and settle my hand on her back again. Fuck, I love touching her like this.
“Lee is not here,” the woman says, her glare lessening slightly. “Even if he were, he wouldn’t want to see you. I would have turned you away in the lobby had I not wanted to tell you that directly. Don’t come back—you’ll only be hurting yourself with hearing the same answer again.”
“When will he be back? I’m not leaving without at least seeing him,” Rory pushes, standing her ground the way I knew she would.
We both know she’s lying. There wouldn’t be an entire team of security parked outside of his apartment if he weren’t here.
“Not for a while.” Another lie.
“Then we’ll wait.”
“That won’t be happening. The building has a very stern no-loitering rule.”
“I really, really don’t want to make a scene. But I’m going to tell you again. We are not leaving without me speaking with my father,” Aurora snaps.
A hush falls over the lot of us as she drops that bomb. The woman in front of us is the first to gather herself. She snorts, a phony smile appearing. The shake at the edges of it catches my attention, and I latch onto that nervous movement, my mind turning a million miles a minute.
“You aren’t the first to claim such a thing, and you won’t be the last. Leave. Now .”
Rory pushes forward, ignoring the order. “No. I know he’s inside, and I didn’t come all the way here to be turned away. I’ve waited thirty years for this moment, and I’m taking it.”
The door guardian’s cheeks flare with red splotches as she glances at security, nodding quickly. They start in our direction on her demand, and I put myself in their path before they can get to the both of us.
Aurora levels the woman with an icy glare and steps toward her. “Tell him that I’m here.”
“No.”
“Please. Just tell him.”
The devastation in her tone crushes me. I’m too fucking helpless in this situation. Short of kicking down the door and hauling Lee out myself, there isn’t anything I can do to help her.
“No. Now, leave,” the woman hisses.
Rory’s shoulders rise and fall rapidly, her eyes trained on the door in front of her. I’m about to say fuck it to the consequences and kick that door down for her when it opens on its own.
If I hadn’t seen him a handful of times around town when I was a boy, the gasp that escapes my girl would be enough to tell me exactly who it is that opened it.
“What’s goin’ on out here? You itchin’ for a noise complaint, Beck?”
Beck. The woman at the door balks at his question and spins to scold him. “Go back inside, Lee. You’re doing exactly what you’re not supposed to right now. You have security for a reason.”
He peers at me for a moment, sizing me up before doing the same to Aurora. I wait for the recognition to hit him. For some fatherly instinct to come alive inside of him that says this is his daughter, but when he dismisses her with a scowl, I can almost hear her heart crack.
“Why have they not been taken back downstairs?” he asks, but I’m not paying enough attention to him to know who he’s speaking to.
I’m focused on Aurora instead. On the paleness of her skin and slow rise and fall of her chest. Lips parted on silent words, she just stares at him. I move as close to her as I can without taking her strength.
There’s no doubt that she’s Lee Rose’s daughter. Maybe I forgot what he looked like after all these years to not have pieced together their similarities. They’re not as obvious as mine to my mom, but seeing them so close together . . . it’s impossible to miss.
Rory’s eyes have always drawn me to her, and now, they’re the first thing I notice staring across the hall at Lee. It’s hard not to see those same angry, rough waves that dare you to jump in without a life jacket. There’s only one difference between them, and that’s that Rory swept me up and out of those waves, and Lee would have ordered the captain of the ship to leave me there to drown.
I close off all other thoughts of their similarities because while they may share the natural wavy curls in their hair and the small upturn at the end of their noses, they couldn’t be more opposite deep down.
“Do you know anyone with the last name Bennett?” Rory asks.
Lee visibly jumps at the sound of her voice, his cheeks blanching as if he’s seen a ghost. Or heard one, more like.
“No.”
Rory’s next words are little more than an exhale. “You’re lying.”
Lee’s face tightens when she speaks again. He looks at her, his eyes catching on hers before widening for the briefest of seconds, as if he’s seeing for the first time how similar they are to his. “Where did you hear that name?”
“Go back inside, Lee. We’ll have them taken back downstairs,” Beck says, attempting to usher him through the door.
He lifts a hand and takes a step around her, repeating his question. “Where did you learn that name?”
“It’s my last name,” Rory states bluntly .
“A coincidence,” he chuffs, turning his nose up at her.
“It isn’t, and you know it.”
Beck slips out from beside Lee, and I watch in slow motion as she rushes toward the security guards lingering nearby. They move toward us with predator-like stealth, following her direction without hesitation.
I’ve never had a reason to be violent in my life. Most of the time, I can solve my problems with a grin or an apology. But when the tallest of the guards rushes toward Rory, I act out on instinct. It’s only a shove, but when he stumbles back into the chest of another guard and levels me with a dark glare, I know I’m in deep shit.
“Back off,” I warn.
“I have questions for you, Lee. And I want you to answer them. I deserve the answers,” Rory says, raising her voice to be heard over the commotion happening around us. “My mother deserves the answers.”
Lee flinches, his eyes dimming at her last few words. It’s everything I need to confirm that while he may not know Aurora, some part of him remembers her mother. Whether from the Bennett name or whatever he saw in Rory moments ago.
“You deserve nothing. I don’t know who you are, but we’re done here. Whatever outlet asked you to come here today can go fuck themselves. You tell your boss that my past is nobody’s business,” Lee mutters, the dismissal lacking the heat I expected.
“I don’t work for anyone! Wanda told me where to find you. She?—”
“I don’t care what my daughter told you. She loves to get on my nerves, and this is only another example of that. Now, leave ,” he demands.
Beck takes his words and uses them to have us removed. She waves at the guards, who crowd me, and one heads directly for Rory.
I can’t do anything to stall that won’t end with my guts getting plastered on the walls, but even that’s a small price to pay to bring Rory peace. The devastation on her face as she stares at her father right now seals my fate.
Snapping a hand out at the security guard targeting her, I grip his shoulder and release a deep sigh. I tug on him, and when he snarls down at me, I wince, prepared to have my shit rocked.
“Let them go,” Lee says, his back to us as he grips the door handle. You could bounce a penny off his back with how tense he is. “Make sure they leave, but don’t touch them. The last thing we need is another damn scandal.”
Beck scoffs, staring at him in disbelief. “Lee?—”
“Let them go,” he repeats. I release the guard. “I don’t want to see them again. Either of them.”
“Are you that much of a fucking coward?” Rory blurts, drawing my gaze. She clenches her hands into fists at her sides, but her expression is more hurt than angry, her mask nowhere to be found. “It makes sense now, at least. You never deserved my mother, and you sure as shit never deserved me. Maybe it was a blessing for all of us that you never had a place in my life. I wouldn’t have known what to do with a pathetic excuse of a father like you anyway.”
She spins on her heel and leaves, taking off down the hallway. I swallow, every instinct inside of me screaming to unglue my feet to the carpet and go after her before she gets too far. With a heavy step, I stare at Lee, finding him watching her leave. There’s a heavy, deathly silence in the air as I leave, chasing after my girl.
I find her pacing in front of the closed elevator doors, her panted breaths too loud. The tears streaming down her face make my chest ache, a piece of it crumbling.
“Rory . . .” I start, approaching her slowly, my hand extended. It’s shaking, but I ignore that.
She shakes her head, not looking at me. “I can’t do this right now. I can’t—I can’t talk about it.”
“We don’t have to talk about it, sweetheart. ”
“Stop. Stop using that tone with me. I don’t want it.”
I clear my throat. “Alright. We don’t have to talk at all if you don’t want. Let’s just get you back to the hotel.”
“I’m not going to the hotel. I need fresh air. I want to be alone. Please.” The plea nearly breaks me.
“You don’t have to beg me for fucking anything, darlin’. Go and take your time. Just call me when you don’t want to be alone anymore, and I’ll come find you.”
She sucks in a hitched breath, nodding her head, still not looking at me. The elevator dings, signalling its arrival, and I take two quick steps toward her. I cup the back of her head and drift a kiss over her cheek, feeling her tears on my lips.
“I’ll see you later, baby,” I whisper.
Sniffling, she tips her chin and rushes into the elevator the moment the doors open. It takes everything in me not to follow her, especially when she turns to face me and I see how deeply that man back there has hurt her.
I knew it was a possibility just as much as she did. But having it happen like that just now . . . suddenly, it’s real. The pain is deep and scarring, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do to fix it right now.
The second the doors shut, I’m tugging my hair at the root and leaning back against the wall. Toronto’s a beast of a city, and neither of us knows a damn thing about it. She probably has as good of an idea as to where to go as I do. But if this is what she needs, then who am I to stop her? My only concern is her well-being, and that’s what got me so fucking stressed.
The apartment floor is still empty, and as I look anxiously around the small sitting area across from the elevators, I freeze. Abandoning my place by the wall, I drop to my haunches in front of the small garbage and the folded paper hanging off the edge.
I know what it is the moment I pick it up. My breath catches at the small photo hidden beneath it amongst the trash .
The young Lee Rose is grinning, a woman perched in his arms that looks like a brunette-haired, brown-eyed version of her daughter. Rory may share Lee’s eyes and nose, but her mother . . . she may as well be a carbon copy of her.
I tear my eyes from the photo to unfold the letter. The splotches on the pages warn me not to read the scrawled words, but I ignore them.
Hi,
That’s as much of a greeting as I think I can give you right now. Is there even a point bothering now? This is my thirty-fifth letter, and I’ve accepted that this will go unanswered as the previous ones have. I’ve grown to expect to find them returned in my mail box. That’s sad, isn’t it?
No. What’s sad is that I’ve been so stupid in the fact I can’t stop writing these letters in the first place. Yet here I am. Maybe I’ve always been stupid when it comes to you. Na?ve, too. But who cares? It’s too late to try and change that.
Aurora threw her rice cereal at me today. The whole bowl splattered all over my face and hair. I left her in her highchair and went to the bathroom to scrub it off. By the time I got back, she’d thrown what was left on her table and coated the walls with it.
I cried when I saw the mess. Something so small broke me. My emotions boiled over. All of the sleepless nights and complaints from my neighbours about the crying because she still can’t sleep for more than four hours at a time because of her colic. I sat on the kitchen floor and cried until our daughter started laughing at the cat that always sits on the ledge outside the kitchen window. Simple as that, the beautiful sound of her laughter pulled me out of the pit I’d fallen into.
I was reminded then that you’ve never heard her laugh. Never heard her scream or cry, or felt the slap of rice cereal on your cheeks. I’m almost glad of that.
They played your song on the radio again. I threw it and it broke. Shattered, really. Now my boss is taking the cost of a new one out of my pay. It’s a fair punishment, but I’ve had to cancel the trip to the zoo I promised my daughter because unlike you, I’m struggling with the pennies I have leftover at the end of every month. Oh, how grand it is to raise a baby girl on your own.
Do you remember that night in Blue River? It was our first time out of the province together, and we could hardly afford the gas to get there. We stopped at that small, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town, and you said it felt like home, so we found one of the few available camping stalls at the site just outside of town and put up our tent.
It took all of ten minutes to explore the entire town, but then we found Eleanor Lake. God, it was beautiful there.
We sat on the edge of the dock and watched the families playing on the beach, and you promised me that that would be us one day.
I told you then that I feared being a single mother, and that if we were ever to start a family, I wanted a ring on my finger. A promise that I’d never be left to raise a child on my own.
You proposed then and there. I laughed and told you to try again in a year because I’d say yes then. If we could just get through the rocky start of your career, and you could get your foot in the right doors. Once we weren’t struggling and stressed and fearful.
Well, it’s been three years, Lee, and I’m still waiting.
I hope you’re happy wherever you are,
Piper
My stomach turns at the smeared ink and tear stains all over the page. Every emotion written into that letter stabs at my chest.
I stand, gripping both the letter and picture in a tight fist. Warnings flare in my mind as I stride back down the way I came, to that penthouse at the end of the hall. I managed to avoid getting punched last time, but I don’t know if I’ll be getting away as easily this time.
Not if the anger pulsing beneath my skin has anything to do with it. I’m livid, every protective instinct I have demanding Lee Rose pays for all the hurt he’s caused. Not only to Rory but to her mother. Every doubt he’s placed in my girl’s head to make her feel like she’s not good enough or important enough. That she doesn’t deserve everything and more from those who care about her.
“Get me Riley Rose,” I shout, staring the security guards down from halfway down the hall.
“Not happening,” one replies coolly.
Another touches his ear and speaks again, and a moment later, the door is flinging open. I expect to see Beck, the woman who I undoubtedly know had some role in all of this mess, but it’s not her that steps out.
“Look at you,” I say, brushing off the warning looks from his security. “So brave. Where was this in front of your daughter?”
“Do you know how many people I’ve had claim to be my children over the years?” he asks, staring directly at the paper in my hand.
“How many of those women look like Piper Bennett? How many share your eyes? How fucking many would have access to letters like these?”
I close the gap between us enough I can shove the letter against his chest. He grunts at the impact and takes it from me. The photo falls to the ground, and he drops his eyes to it.
“Where did you get that?” he whispers, falling to his knees to pick it up. When I don’t answer him, his gaze lifts and sharpens. “Tell me.”
“You don’t get to make demands of me after how you spoke to her. How you treated her. I get that this was sudden and confusing and probably terrifying. But you’re a sorry excuse of a man to take it out on her. Believe it or not, all she wanted was a chance to speak to you just once. To have her questions answered. It would have taken one conversation with her to realize that she’s your daughter. You’re a fuckin’ idiot not to have realized it the moment you looked at her.”
He traces his finger along the edge of the photo and exhales a shuddered breath, not replying. I grind my teeth, not buying into the show he’s putting on.
“Read that letter, Riley. Read it and fucking weep.”
Shaking my head, I turn and leave, not sparing a single person another look.
They don’t deserve one.