Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THANE
My entire world is currently on fire, and the flames of my fuck ups keep finding more gasoline.
Kara didn’t even speak to me when we stepped onto the private plane, and a full twenty-four hours later, she’s still giving me the silent treatment.
Boone lent us what he called a camper, which is essentially a roach motel on wheels. Fine, a roach motel without the bugs. Kara immediately claimed the one bedroom, which leaves me to a foldaway bed that doubles as the kitchen table.
It’s uncomfortable as hell, but Rafe was adamant that it wasn’t appropriate for me to let myself into Lottie’s place until we had patched things up, and since my house blew up, we’re now living in a van by the lake.
If my father learns of this, he’ll definitely find a way to use this against me when we go to court over Kara. And we will be going to court—I have no doubt about that.
In the fire that is my life, there’s the wildfire that is Lottie, our relationship and her company on the left. On the right is the forest fire of my father fighting for custody of Kara, and I appear to be the dumpster full of accelerant smack-dab in the middle.
Kara exits the bedroom, and we’re practically nose-to-nose. I don’t know how long I can stay in this metal box. Boone played it off as though it were big enough for a family of four, but unless it’s a family of magical fairies, I don’t know how that would be possible.
When she sees me, she slams the door.
Telling her to go easy, that it’s not even my door, would just be wasting my breath. Right now, it’s probably easier to just replace whatever she breaks.
“Kara, we have to talk.”
Her gaze had been pointed straight at the floor, but she cuts me with it now.
“Are you going to tell me what you did to make her hate you?” Her words don’t match the viciousness of her stare. This must be what sadness sounds like.
“She doesn’t hate me, but I should talk to her before I tell you, don’t you think?”
She tucks her hands into the sleeves of her sweatshirt and crosses her arms as though she’s protecting herself.
We’d come so far, and I’ve managed to push us right back to square one.
“She’s the only one who gets me. She’s the only one who understands.” Despair bleeds from the corner of her eyes, and I trace the tear down her cheek. I can practically feel her pain, and it sucks.
“I did make a mistake with Lottie, but I’ll fix it. I promise. But that’s not what we need to talk about. Something else happened at the event last night, something that concerns you.”
Her big green eyes shutter behind a mask. It’s as though she’s shielding herself from something she knows will hurt her. I hate it instantly.
It also stuns me that I recognize it in her.
“Jonah,” I start, but she flinches as soon as the word is out of my mouth. “I need you to trust me, okay?”
She sinks into the spot opposite me but doesn’t say a word as she breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth, each one deeper and longer than the last.
“You’re sending me back to him, aren’t you?”
“What? No.” I stand as the room begins to shrink in on all sides, but there’s no room for me to pace in this fucking metal box of outdoorsy hell. “Not unless you—you want to go back?”
“I don’t want to,” she sputters. “I told him that when he texted me last night, telling me to pack my shit.”
I lean forward, placing my palms flat on the table, and drop my head to my chest. I can’t stop him from texting her, even if I want to. He is still technically her father. “Okay. I’m glad you don’t want to go back. I don’t want you to go back either.”
“Why? Don’t I just complicate everything?”
Slowly, I lift my head, praying that the right words will come to me by the time I meet her gaze. When they don’t, I say the only thing I can.
“Before you, there were no complications in my life that I didn’t have immediate solutions for.”
She shrinks in her seat. I’m screwing this all up.
“But I wouldn’t say I was really living either. I worked, I ate, I went to the gym, and then I worked some more. Rinse and repeat, and I honestly thought that was all I ever needed. Everything was neat, organized, simple, and in perfect order.”
I glance around the small space we’ve crammed our stuff into. The rubber bands she uses to pull her hair back are on three different surfaces. Her library books were dropped in the passenger seat of this hell on wheels. Her backpack is on the floor, taking up precious space in the three feet of walkway that we have here.
“My life is no longer black and white, Kara. You and Lottie have burst through my world in colors so bright they’d give a clown a headache.”
She stares at me with a trembling lip.
“That doesn’t sound like a good thing.” She looks away, but her words make my chest expand.
“Two months ago, it would have sounded like a nightmare to me. But it’s not. Not even a little. You’ve taught me to live, but to always have sunglasses in my back pocket, so when your light blinds me, I can at least fumble through the world beside you.”
She leans back and scowls at me. “Who are you and what have you done with my brother?”
I chuckle and drop back into the seat across from her. My knees instantly slam into the pole holding the tabletop upright. “Damn it, that hurt.”
“So what you’re saying is that you need me so you don’t turn back into a robot?”
Reaching across the table, I pat her hand awkwardly, but she pulls it away.
I shrug. “Guess I’ll always be a little robotic.”
She gives me a hint of a smile, and I hate that I still have to tell her about our father. That man ruins every good thing he touches.
This time, she pats my hand. It sounds less like a slap when she does it, so I suppose I’ll need some lessons on affection too.
“I was only teasing, Brad. Dad is the robot. You’ve tried harder in my time with you than he’s done in thirteen years.” Her eyes fill with tears, and she drops her chin to her chest, breaking our connection. “I’m just so scared all the time. Like, I don’t know where I belong or where I fit, and it makes me so angry sometimes. I’m sorry I take it out on you.”
“Kara, I’ll be your punching bag any day. I won’t always respond appropriately, and I won’t always get it on the first try, but I will try. You deserve a better life than being ignored and raised by bodyguards who don’t give a shit about anything except keeping you physically safe.”
“So did you, Thane.” She says it softly, but the words explode in my heart like dynamite.
“Yeah, so did I.”
She squeezes my fingers, then places her hands in her lap.
After a deep exhale, I look her square in the eye. “Jonah was at the event last night. He’s going to take me to court over you.”
“I know. When he texted me to, and I quote, pack up my shit because he won’t allow me to ruin his image by leaving him , I was pretty sure you were going to force me back there. I was mad about Lottie, but I was terrified of going back to Dad.”
Jesus. She’s just a kid. No child should be terrified of their father. “This will get messy, Kara, but I’m willing to fight for you. I’ll always fight for you, if that’s what you want. I can’t promise that living with me will get any easier, but I can promise you that I’ll try my hardest to give you the very best version of myself every single day.”
She swipes at her cheeks with the sleeves of her sweatshirt, harsh, aggressive swoops that make me fear for the delicate skin on her face.
When she returns her gaze to mine, I hate all the uncertainty she’s trying to hide. “You already do, Brad. I don’t need you to change who you are. I just need someone who cares enough to see me for who I am too.”
“I see you. I’ve always seen you. I’ll probably never understand you, but I see you.” That draws a laugh out of her, at least.
She sucks in a breath and takes in the tin can I’ve moved us into. “There are such things as hotels, you know that, right?”
“Obviously. But I made a very big mistake with Charlotte, and I need to be here to fix it.”
She raises a brow, and I frown.
“Fix it, or steamroll through Lottie until you get your way? And before you answer, they are two very different things.”
She’s too damn smart.
“You can’t bully her into a relationship, Brad. You don’t want that anyway. You want her here because she wants to be with you, not because you made her or tricked her, right?”
“I’d really like to hear the answer to that as well.”
Kara and I turn toward the door that’s propped open to allow some airflow. Charlotte stands outside it, staring at our tin can and biting back a smile that tears my heart in two.
“Lottie! You came back.” Kara jumps up, and I stay seated while she flings herself at Charlotte for a hug. “Whatever Brad did, he’s sorry. Like, really, really sorry.”
Charlotte holds her tight. “I know he is, Kare.” She finally turns to me, and it’s a lightning strike to every pleasure point on my body. “We had a lack of communication that needs to be sorted out.”
“Good luck with that.” She snorts. “He basically told me that we’re his rainbows and he’s a grumpy old raincloud.”
“That’s nothing even close to what I said.” When my words echo against the tin can, I pinch the bridge of my nose.
I hate this thing, but leaving Charlotte isn’t an option either.
“Kara, why don’t you take Hercules up to my house and give her some dinner?” Charlotte says.
The ratdog has been outside on a dog run. Her yapping inside the tin can was making my ears bleed, and she yips now as though she understood every word.
“Okay.” Kara turns and points at me with her pointer and middle fingers, then brings them to her eyes. “Don’t mess this up, Brad. I mean it.”
I know what she’s saying. Kara and I may be biologically related, but we’re a family because of Charlotte Sinclair.
She’s the glue that holds us together and makes us work.
Charlotte stares after Kara for a long time before entering the tin can and closing the door behind her.
I should warn her that it’s about to turn into a sauna in here, but I can’t get my mouth to work. Again.
She takes the seat that Kara was in only moments before and primly folds her hands on the table. I don’t know what to do with this version of her.
“Thane.”
“The words froze in my mouth.” The explanation fires from my lips in a rush of air and now I can’t stop. “Last night, at the event. It hasn’t happened to me in years. I could hear them all clearly in my mind but there was a disconnect from my brain to my lips and everything came out a jumbled mess. Watching you walk away sliced me to the bone, and I was helpless to do anything but stand there screaming the words in the confines of my own mind.”
“Stress.” She’s not whispering. She’s gentle and precise with her words. It causes sweat to form at the back of my neck. I was expecting anger. I was prepared for anger. This subdued and relaxed version of her is not what Siri told me were likely outcomes. The urge to fidget under her stare is overwhelming. “I read about sensory processing disorders on the plane. Stress can trigger your fight-or-flight response.”
I must make some kind of face because she flashes me a wide smile.
“I asked Rafe to send me some information. I only had time to read it while I was on my flight.”
Unsure how I feel about that, I pin it in my mind to worry about later.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” She sits stiffly, as though she’s afraid to breathe. It’s not the push me and I’ll push you right back Lottie I’ve grown to love, bossiness and all, and it makes unease slither across my skin.
I itch everywhere.
“The beginning. Okay. Well, it all started with an app I built. A dating app for people who struggled in social situations. But the connections were off, and no matter how I tweaked the algorithm, something was missing. In beta trials, the matches were abysmal at best.”
She’s nodding as though she’s already heard the story, but I know that’s not possible. My company locks down new tech better than the Pentagon.
“I couldn’t figure out what was missing. Then I took custody of Kara and my world imploded. My CFO is friends with the CEO of a media corporation in California who had used the Single Dad Hotline, and he got me the number. As soon as I took your assessment, I knew why I would never be successful with my matchmaking app.”
“The human element.” Her eyes sparkle and crinkle at the corners. Happy. It’s a good look on her.
“Yes. The human element, and imagine my frustration from that. Humans, by nature, are flawed. How could they produce something so precise that my algorithms couldn’t?”
“Because people are human, and relationships are unpredictable.”
“That’s it exactly.” I swear my blood pressure is rising. It happens whenever my body matches my mind’s enthusiasm. “So when I took your assessment, I knew I had to have it, and yes, I created LotiTech, named after you, because I was certain that if you understood the magnitude of what you had created, you wouldn’t give it up.”
It’s so damn hot in here that I’m panting worse than Hercules.
“Can we go sit outside? I can’t breathe in here.” I pick up a folded blanket and hold my arm toward the door.
She slow-blinks but follows me out toward the lake where the breeze picks up and whips my hair around my forehead.
The shift in air makes spreading the blanket out in the tall grass harder than it should be, but finally, we settle in.
“Anyway, then I met you at the nanny event, and I was being honest when I said Kara was drawn to you instantly. In fact, she never stopped talking about you, so yes, I put some pressure on your asshole of a neighbor and drastically overpaid for that ticking time bomb he called a house to get close to you, and I don’t regret that for a moment.
“But then I got here, and I spent time with you, and I knew instantly that I would never try to take your company away from you. I called my broker, that asshole Roger, who was standing with your dad, and told him to back off. I didn’t want him making any more offers or aggressively courting you anymore. I shifted LotiTech into a joint trust—my plan for LotiTech was always for it to be a partnership, similarly to how you’ll now run with the Fitzgerald Group.
“Roger and I had an agreement. He wasn’t supposed to release the information we’d collected due to the nature of my NDA. He’s been added to my takedown list, too.”
Lottie nods, shifting her focus from me out to the lake.
“But then, I realized you weren’t just fighting the lawsuit, but a hacker too, and yes, I accessed your network—but only to make sure no one else could. I was never trying to steal anything, and as soon as I got in, I set traps to alert me whenever anyone broke your security wall. I was not at all surprised to find out it was Jonah trying to get information he could use. He’s behind half of the investors you had planned to meet with, so I quietly bought those investment companies. They also went into a trust, and I have always intended for them to be yours. I don’t need the money. I have more than I could ever spend. My only goal is to see you succeed.”
“Thane.” Her voice is low and throaty, as if she’s holding back tears, and new panic rises in my chest.
I can’t lose her, I can’t.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about LotiTech,” I say in a rush. “I really am. I honestly never thought of it again after that conversation with Roger.” I tug on the back of my neck, then scratch my scalp to ease the full-body tension that won’t go away.
“Okay, I did think a couple of times that I needed to tell you about LotiTech, and that I had installed more security patches in your network, and I would have, but I didn’t know how. Since I’ve had you and Kara in my life, I seem to be fucking up the most important things at the worst possible times, and because I’ve never allowed myself to fail, I don’t know how to fix it when I do.”
She continues to stare straight ahead over the lake. The sun will set soon, and I wish I’d grabbed her a sweater.
Am I supposed to keep talking? I quickly run through everything I’ve said to ensure I didn’t leave anything out, but the words in my head are muddling together again.
Panic. Anxiety. Fight-or-flight.
If my body chooses flight again, I might lose her forever. That’s not an option. Choose to fight. Fight for her and Kara. Fight for happiness I have no right asking for but want anyway.
Fight.
Fight.
Fight.
She rests her head against my shoulder and sighs.
Love.
Love.
Love.
The long straw-like grass brushes against her bare arm, and she snuggles in closer to me. “I’m still furious with you.”
My arm freezes in the air, hovering just above her shoulder, where I’d been about to wrap it around her.
Furious. Okay. Furious is a higher level of angry, but not as volatile as rage. I can work with furious.
“I’m sorry.” I don’t know if I’ve ever apologized to someone and meant it before. It’s a strange sensation that is not the least bit pleasant.
“I can be mad and still love you enough to not make you sleep in a camper van.”
Relief courses through my limbs. Sleeping in that thing was the very last thing I wanted to do.
She loves me.
“But if this is going to work.” She splays her hand against my chest and puts a tiny amount of space between us, her cornflower-blue gaze crashing into mine. “We have to communicate about everything, even if you think we’ve already discussed it. We can’t end a conversation until we both feel fulfilled and heard. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.” Push through my boundaries to make room within my castle walls for my girls.
Her body sags into mine, and I welcome it, even encourage it by drawing her in closer with my arm around her shoulders.
“My father will fight dirty to keep me from moving forward. He takes our announcement and me partnering in any way with a Wilder as a personal slight against him. When the judge rejects the injunction, I’ll have to move quickly to put Rowan in charge, but how long until he strikes again?”
She sounds so damn tired. Did she not sleep last night either?
“We’ll figure it out,” I say. “All of it, I promise.”
We sit in comfortable silence, but my thoughts are wild and chaotic in my mind.
“My father doesn’t know it yet,” I blurt, “but his board will be voting him into retirement at the end of the month, and he’s already told me that he’s taking Kara back.”
Lottie jumps to her feet. “Like hell he is.” My little warrior is fierce tonight.
Rising up on my knees, I wrap my arms around her middle, pressing the side of my face into her chest. “I’ll fight it. I don’t know how good my chances will be. I’m not known to be a very loving guy.”
Her little palms lift my chin when she cups both of my cheeks. “We, Thane. We will fight for her. He may be her father, but he’s never been a dad, and she needs a dad. I own the most successful nanny match company in the country right now. Who better to help raise that little girl than the woman who built her career on helping families? We’re in this together. All in.”
“All in.” My voice cracks, the emotion sitting heavy and permanent in my throat.
Her legs wobble before she gracefully lowers herself to my side again. “It’s going to be rough, Thane. We’ll have battles coming at us on all sides. We’ll have to prepare for an all-out war with both of our fathers. If I thought my father wanted my company before, knowing I’ve partnered with you will only make the insanity ten times worse.”
“Let’s allow them to hang on to their petty grudges, okay? Their battles are not ours, so while they might both be fighting us, we’re coming at them as a team. Three to one will always be better odds.”
“We’re going to be tested. As a family, as a couple, at work. Nothing about moving forward together will be easy.”
I press a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Nothing worth the risk was ever easy, Charlotte. But I’m putting all my chips on you and Kara, and remember, I never fail. I simply regroup and come at it from a different direction. You girls are my family now, and we’ll get through all of this. I promise.”
“Together, Thane. We’ll get through it together. No more cutting me out.”
“Never. You’re going to know so many details going forward that you’ll beg me to shut up.”
“Ha. I never beg.”
A feral, animalistic sound gurgles in my throat. “Only in bed, right?” I drag my nose into her hair and nuzzle into her neck. “In bed, you love to beg for me.”
She swallows hard, then shrugs as if she’s not fazed, but even in the waning light, I’d recognize her shade of blush anywhere.
“Sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
“And fuck, do I love it when you do.”
“Lottie? Brad? I’m hungry.” Kara’s voice gets closer with each word. “Oh, there you are. Do we have a plan for dinner?”
“Not yet. How about pizza and salad?” I ask.
Charlotte gives us an exhausted smile. “Sounds good to me.”
I stand, then offer her a hand. Kara walks beside her, filling her in on every detail from the private plane we took here.
This is us, and I’ve never been happier about two little letters. Us—it cements itself in my memory and my heart. Us—it’s the foundation we’ll build our future on—regardless of how it looks or how many obstacles we have to overcome.