Chapter Six – Avda
I leaned outside the staff entrance, shooting periodic looks toward the door. I had checked the schedule, and I knew she would be finishing her shift soon enough. I wanted to speak to her. No, not wanted – I needed to speak to her. Because I hadn’t had a chance to wrap my head around exactly what her confession to me the other night had meant – and exactly how I was meant to deal with the news that I had a daughter.
She had been doing her best to avoid me since then, and, the few times I had managed to get her on her own, Sasha had been there to get in the way, push his cocky attitude into the middle of our conversation, and force us to pay attention to him. I knew he thought he was being cute, trying to come on to her when he knew I was interested, but he had no idea just how serious this all was.
My head had been a mess ever since I had found out the truth of what had come from that fateful night we had spent together, and I didn’t have a damn clue how I was meant to deal with the shock of it. I had a daughter. A child. A fucking child. She hadn’t denied it – I hadn’t managed to bring it up again directly, but I had dropped a couple of hints, waiting for her to contradict me and tell me that I had gotten it all wrong, but there was nothing. If there was any chance that this wasn’t the truth, any chance that I had someone managed to make a mess of this, she would have put me right now, I was sure of it.
Which meant I needed to figure out what in the hell I was going to do now that I had a kid. I had been trying to figure out exactly how I felt about it this last week, since her confession, but all I’d managed was to spend hours tossing and turning in my bed, head reeling, body tense and on edge as I wrapped my head around the enormity of it. I didn’t understand how I was just meant to move through the world again like nothing had changed like nothing had happened when it felt as though everything I had been resting on for support had just given way beneath me.
Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to meet her. That was the least I could do, right? I might not have known about her existence until a few days ago, but that didn’t give me the right to be a completely useless deadbeat dad. Now that I knew she was out there in the world, I wanted to at least show my face around her. I wanted to show her that I hadn’t just turned my back on her. Shit, it wasn’t as though I had been given much of a choice in the matter.
And that made me angry, to some extent. But I knew that wasn’t fair on Jo. She hadn’t even known my name, after all – back then, I had been into those hot, anonymous hook-ups, and that didn’t exactly lead to exchanging addresses at the end of the night. She’d had no choice but to go it alone...
And now that I had managed to walk back into her life, by pure chance, I could tell she wasn’t exactly enthused about the idea. And maybe she was right not to be. I was Bratva, after all, and we were talking about a little girl who had, as far as I knew, been raised with nothing to do with that part of the world – she was young, innocent, and likely didn’t know a damn thing about how dark this world could get.
But I wasn’t going to turn up there with a gun to discuss my body count. I just wanted to meet her. The curiosity was killing me, this need to see what a daughter of mine would look like, sound like, talk like, act like, and I figured the only way I could start to get a little closer to her was if I went through Jo. I wanted to give her the respect she deserved as her mother, but at the same time, I felt as though I deserved some too.
I checked my watch again. Any minute now, and Jo would be coming out of the Flood. I knew this was the only way I was going to be able to get her alone, given the way that Sasha had been intimating himself into our conversations every time he saw the two of us together. Irritating, yes, but he wasn’t my priority right now...
”Avda?”
I turned, and there she was – pulling on her jacket, her hair wrapped in a ponytail at the back of her head, staring at me in complete surprise.
”Jo,” I breathed. God, she was beautiful, even in the dim half-light of this alleyway behind the bar.
”What are you doing here?” she asked, crossing her arms protectively over her chest.
”Let me give you a lift home,” I replied, pointing to where my car was parked a few feet away. She hesitated.
”It’s late,” I pointed out. ”You don’t want to be wandering this city by yourself at this time of night. Please, Jo.”
She sighed, her shoulders slumping down. She knew there was no point in arguing with me.
”Sure,” she muttered, and she let me lead the way to the car. Sliding in to the seat beside me, she glanced over at me, the silence between us almost too intense to handle.
”Can we talk?” I asked her. She tensed.
”About what?”
”What do you think?” I replied, turning to face her. ”Come on, Jo. You know what I want to talk about. My daughter.”
She sucked in a sharp breath when I said those words. It was the first time I had come out and spoken them aloud, and, yeah, I had to admit, it felt kind of strange to be coming out and saying it out loud like that. But it was the truth – it was the truth, and I would have been crazy to try and pretend it wasn’t. I didn’t care how difficult it was for her to hear. We needed to face up to the reality of the situation, no matter how difficult it might have been, no matter how messy.
”Okay,” she muttered, staring down at her hands in her lap. ”What do you want to talk about?”
”I want to see her.”
Her head snapped up and she stared at me, brows furrowed.
”What are you talking about?” she exclaimed. ”No. No way. Not a chance.”
”Why not?”
”Because...because of who you are!” she protested, gesturing to me.
”What? Her father?”
”No, Bratva,” she corrected me. ”You’re Bratva. And I can’t risk letting someone who’s involved with that kind of...that kind of work into her life. She’s just a little kid, she doesn’t need to be exposed to that-”
”I’m not going to expose her to anything,” I replied, keeping my voice as calm as possible. ”You don’t even have to tell her I’m her father. I just want to meet her, that’s all.”
She fell silent again, chewing her lip. I could see her green eyes glinting in the light from the dashboard.
”I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she muttered, her voice dropping slightly.
”Why not?” I demanded. ”You don’t think I have a right to see my daughter?”
”It’s not about that!” she shot back. ”You haven’t been a part of her life at all, not for a moment. I’ve gotten used – we”ve both gotten used to living without you. Do you know how confusing it would be to her, to have someone turn up out of the blue?”
”I told you, you don’t need to tell her my relationship to her,” I replied, doing my best to keep my voice steady.
”All we did was have sex a few years ago,” she told me bluntly. ”I don’t owe you anything because of that-”
”But you owe her the chance to know her father, surely,” I pointed out. ”You owe her that.”
She turned to me. I could see the doubt in her eyes, all the questions that were spinning, out of control around her head.
”Can you please give me time to think?” she begged. ”I...all of this is so much for me to wrap my head around. I can’t just let you walk into my life again, not when I’ve spent so long trying to get it just how I like it...”
I nodded, letting out a sigh. It was the best I could hope for. Not exactly what I had been dreaming of, not the perfect answer, but at least it was something. At least she was willing to give me the chance. Considering it might not have been exactly what I wanted, but shit, I knew the chances of her just agreeing right off the bat and going along with this were pretty damn slim.
”That’s fine,” I replied, and she let out a long, shaky breath.
”Good,” she muttered, and I found that she was still looking at me – her eyes, softening, into something sweeter, more gentle.
”What is it?” I asked her. The air seemed to have shifted between us. It was the first time we had really been alone together, out of sight of anyone else, and it suddenly struck me that we were just a few inches apart.
And I knew that look in her eyes. Even in all the time that had passed, I could remember the way she had looked at me back in the club, the night we had met. Lids heavy, eyes wanting, her face a mask of need.
”Nothing,” she murmured, and she tried to turn her face from mine – but I reached up, hand on her cheek, guiding her back towards me.
”It’s not nothing,” I corrected her, and I watched as she drew in a sharp breath, chest rising beneath her coat.
”No, it’s not,” she confessed. Her voice was lower now, breathy, and I could tell exactly what she was thinking – as clear as if she had spoken it out loud already. I smoothed my thumb across her soft cheek, grazing it down to the edge of her lip, and she sucked in another breath.
”You have no idea how often I’ve thought about that night,” she confessed. ”The night...the night we spent together, I mean. It’s been on my mind ever since...”
”It has?” I prompted her, a grin curling up my lips. She nodded, her cheeks darkening.
”Yeah,” she admitted. ”I...I haven’t been with anyone else since you.”
”Really?” I asked her, surprised. It was hard to believe someone like her wouldn’t have had her pick of guys if she had wanted it. Hell, Sasha was clearly into her, and he wasn’t doing a good job hiding it.
She nodded again, unable to speak. I brushed my thumb across her bottom lip, feeling the heat of her breath against her skin, enjoying how she stared at me, as though she could hardly believe this was happening.
”You want me to show you what I’ve wanted to do since I first saw you at that bar?” I asked her. I needed to hear it from her. I needed her to tell me, no matter how crazy it might have been, no matter how reckless it was to let ourselves get drawn into something like this, that she wanted it, too. She nodded again, her lips parting slightly, her tongue grazing for the briefest moment against the pad of my thumb.
Slowly, slowly, taking my time, I drew her into me. And, at last, I planted my mouth to hers, my hand slipping to the back of her neck, as we came together once more.