Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
MADDEN
“Madden.” My father’s voice came over the line, clipped, precise. Annoyed.
“Yes.” I didn’t say his name. Didn’t call him Dad. I never did. There was no version of this conversation that benefitted from pretending we were the kind of people who used casual greetings.
“Why am I hearing about a fire involving my former brother-in-law’s boat from someone other than you?”
My step hitched. Of course he’d heard. And of course he couldn’t be bothered to ask after my wellbeing. He was just irritated that information had reached him without passing through the proper channel.
I leaned my shoulder against the wall halfway up the stairs. “I wasn’t aware I owed you a briefing.”
“You owe me common courtesy.” A pause. “And judgment. Which you’ve never had enough of when it comes to that island.”
My jaw tightened. Damn it. He knew I was here. That hadn’t been part of the plan.
Of course, the police would’ve contacted my uncle. He owned the boat. It would’ve been standard practice. For all I knew, Carson was trying to make a case that I was an arsonist. I should’ve thought of that and headed Uncle James off at the pass before he’d had a chance to contact my father.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
It didn’t really matter whether he meant my being on the island or the fire.
Unwilling to have this conversation near the others, I continued up the stairs and stepped into the guest room we’d been given. “I didn’t think about you at all.”
Silence snapped tight on the line. I’d broken protocol. I always did eventually. But I didn’t have it in me to be more than brutally honest, just now. Not with the image of Gwen’s terror etched into my brain.
“So you went back,” he said.
When we’d moved, he and my mother had effectively cut ties with Hatterwick. They’d assumed I had, too.
“I’m handling some things,” I hedged. “Temporarily.”
A sharp exhale. “Handling what, exactly?”
The weight of the last few hours pressed against my ribs—the images, the implications, the way Gwen’s face had burned itself into the backs of my eyes. None of that was information he was entitled to. None of it would be met with care.
“I’m working. That’s all.”
“That is not an answer.” His voice rose a notch—not shouting, but projecting. Commanding. “You disappeared from that place years ago, and now you resurface in the middle of a police incident tied to family property? Do you understand how that looks?”
I disappeared? As if they’d spirited me away in the night? But there was no sense in correcting him. Not when all he cared about was optics.
“Yes. It looks inconvenient.”
“It looks irresponsible.” Another pause, heavier this time. “You were supposed to be past this. Past them. Past that place.”
He’d never understood why I’d never be past Gwen. He never would.
I swallowed. “I am.” It wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t the whole truth.
“You’ve wasted enough time chasing problems that aren’t yours,” he continued. “I did not support your education so you could go back and insert yourself into island drama.”
Drama.
Something in my chest hollowed out, and I closed my eyes. “I didn’t ask for your support.” Because why would I ask for a thing that would never be freely given?
“No,” he snapped. “You demanded it. And I provided it with the expectation that you would apply yourself to something worthwhile.”
I demanded it. As if my Ivy League education had been entirely my idea and not a form of pacification I’d hoped might earn me a glimmer of acceptance.
Ignoring the bruise he’d struck so effortlessly, I forced my voice to remain even.
“This conversation isn’t productive.” It was a phrase I’d learned early.
The one that let me disengage without provoking escalation.
“If you have concerns, you can put them in writing.”
“You will not dismiss me,” he said sharply.
The phone disappeared from my hand.
I gasped and turned, heart slamming into my ribs.
Rios stood there, jaw set, my phone already at his ear as he shut the door. “That’s enough.” The calm of his voice was almost frightening.
Dad barked something I couldn’t hear.
Rios didn’t flinch. “You don’t get to speak to her like that.”
Another bark. Louder this time. Dimly, I registered the sound of engines outside. Everyone else was leaving.
Rios’s gaze flicked to me for half a second—checking, not asking—then turned distant again, like he’d locked onto something far more important than the man on the other end of the line.
“She’s been through a traumatic event. Someone attempted to murder her. And since you didn’t bother to ask—no, she’s not injured. She’s alive. She’s safe. And she doesn’t owe you an explanation on your timetable.”
I was frozen. Rooted to the floor.
Dad’s voice rose, sharp enough that I caught fragments. Who the hell are you? This is family— You have no right—
Rios didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. “If you can’t speak to your daughter with basic respect, you won’t speak to her at all.”
He ended the call. Just like that.
I stared at him, my heart still racing, my hands numb at my sides. My phone seemed heavier when he pressed it back into my palm, like it had absorbed the impact of something it had never been meant to carry.
Rios didn’t say anything right away. He just watched me—really watched me—with an expression I couldn’t read and didn’t have the strength to try.
I thumbed the phone entirely off, wanting to shut down my father’s last avenue of reaching me. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did.”
I swallowed. “He’s my father.”
“I know.” Something in his voice shifted. Not anger. Understanding. The kind that came too easily.
I folded my arms across my chest, as if they might keep me upright. “I usually handle him.”
“I heard how you handle him.” The words landed harder than anything my father had said.
I laughed once, short and broken. “Congratulations. You’ve just witnessed my childhood.”
His jaw tightened.
I waited for the familiar follow-up. The but he means well. The he wants what’s best for you. The rationalizations I’d started out repeating, then perfected myself over decades.
Rios didn’t offer them.
Instead, he stepped closer. “You don’t deserve that.”
The room tilted.
In reflex, I shook my head. “It’s fine.”
“No,” he insisted, firmer now. “It’s not.”
The truth of that hit me like exhaustion. Bone-deep. I slid down onto the edge of the bed because my legs stopped pretending to hold me.
Rios crouched in front of me, bringing himself level with where I sat perched on the edge of the bed.
He didn’t touch me yet, waiting instead with his hands pressed to the mattress on either side of my thighs, creating a cage of care I didn’t know what to do with.
The heat of him radiated toward me, but he held himself back, giving me space even as he invaded it. “I’m sorry for not seeing it sooner.”
I frowned, confusion warring with the exhaustion that weighed down my limbs. “Seeing what?”
“All of it. Why you don’t rest. Why you don’t ask for help. Why you think you have to be perfect to earn space.” His voice was low, steady, each word deliberate. “Why you’ve spent your whole life trying to prove you deserve to exist.”
My throat closed, the air suddenly too thick to draw into my lungs.
He exhaled slowly, the sound carrying a weight of regret. “I should’ve figured it out earlier. I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
That apology—quiet, unqualified, asking nothing in return—hit somewhere deep and tender, a place I’d armored over so thoroughly I’d forgotten it existed.
I pressed my lips together, fighting the urge to deflect. To joke. To minimize what he was offering me. “I didn’t ask you to—”
“I know. You shouldn’t have to.”
Something gave way then. Not dramatically.
Not with tears or broken confessions. Just enough that my shoulders sagged and my eyes burned with the pressure of emotion I’d been holding back for what felt like years.
Was this truly what it meant to be one of his people?
To have someone see the wounds you’d hidden and tend them without being asked?
Rios rose from his crouch and settled beside me on the bed, his weight causing the mattress to dip.
He pulled me into his chest with a gentleness that undid something else inside me.
I didn’t stiffen this time, didn’t brace against the contact.
I went willingly, forehead pressing into the solid warmth of his shoulder as his arms came around me like they’d always known exactly where to go, how to hold me together when I was threatening to come apart.
No one had ever stood between me and my father before. No one had ever believed I was worth the conflict, worth the risk of his displeasure. But Rios had done it without hesitation, had put himself in the line of fire as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
I breathed him in—salt and soap and something indefinably solid, something that spoke of safety—and let myself stay there, let myself lean into the strength he offered so freely. I could rest, just for a moment. Just long enough to remember what it felt like.
Then he murmured, “I’ve got you,” his voice rumbling through his chest and into my bones, and the last shred of my resistance faded like morning mist under the sun.
How was I supposed to stand against this man who’d had every reason in the world to hate me and instead seemed to be the only one who truly understood me? Who saw past all my carefully constructed defenses to the scared, exhausted woman underneath?
Lifting my head, I cupped his cheek, feeling the scrape of stubble against my palm, as I searched those deep, dark eyes that saw far too much. That had always seen too much, even back when we were younger and I’d been so determined to look anywhere but at him.