Chapter Thirty-Two
Katrina
Patch, the club’s doctor, finished wrapping Frankie’s ankle with practiced efficiency, his hands gentle despite their size. “Just a mild sprain,” he said, looking up at me. “Keep it elevated; ice it regularly. She’ll be fine in a few days.”
“Thank you,” I managed, my voice still shaky.
The house had emptied out gradually as the search party dispersed. Most of the members had already left, their bikes rumbling off into the distance. Aside from those who lived here, the only people that remained were Derek, Frankie, and me.
Frankie sat on the couch with her wrapped ankle propped on a pillow, looking far too pleased with herself for someone who’d just put everyone through hell.
Maggie stood with her arms crossed, her expression thunderous as she stared down at Nox. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?”
Nox’s head dropped. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You could have been seriously hurt,” Maggie continued, her voice rising. “Both of you. You were out there in the dark, in the woods, with wild animals and God knows what else—”
“We had a plan,” Frankie interjected weakly.
“A plan?” I turned on my daughter, all the fear and terror of the past hours crystallizing into fury. “Your plan was to run away in the middle of the night and hide in the woods? That was your brilliant plan?”
Frankie’s chin lifted stubbornly. “We knew you’d find us.”
“What if we hadn’t?” My voice cracked. “What if something had happened to you? What if you’d gotten lost, or hurt worse than a twisted ankle, or...” I couldn’t finish. The possibilities were too horrifying.
“But we didn’t,” Frankie said quietly. “Derek found us.”
“That’s not the point!” I was shaking now, all the adrenaline and fear pouring out of me. “You can’t just... you can’t manipulate people like that, Frankie. You can’t put yourself in danger to... what? To parent-trap us?”
Rhoda looked up from where she’d been sitting quietly. “Derek said that earlier. What is parent-trapping?”
Derek’s voice was calm, measured. “It’s from an old Disney movie from the sixties. About twin girls who were separated at birth and meet at summer camp. They switch places to get their divorced parents back together.”
Frankie shifted on the couch. “We watched the newer version. The one with Lindsay Lohan from 1998. That’s where I got the idea.”
“You got the idea,” I repeated slowly, “from a movie.”
“It worked in the movie,” Frankie said defensively.
“This isn’t a movie!” Maggie’s voice cut through the room. She took a deep breath before continuing, “This is real life, where real consequences happen to real people. You could have died out there, Frankie. Both of you.”
Cami spoke up from her corner, her voice small. “I told her it was a bad idea.”
“But you didn’t tell an adult,” Maggie said, turning to her sister. “You kept the secret, which makes you just as responsible.”
Cami’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Maggie.”
Nox looked up at Maggie, his young face serious. “I was there to protect her.”
“You’re ten years old,” Maggie said, her frustration evident. “You might be big for your age, but you are not an adult.” Nox rolled his eyes, and even I had trouble holding back a smirk.
I looked at Frankie, at her stubborn expression and the defiant tilt of her chin, and something inside me broke. “Do you understand what you put me through? Do you have any idea what it felt like to know you were out there, alone, scared—”
“I wasn’t scared,” Frankie interrupted. “I knew you’d find me. I knew Derek would find me.”
The certainty in her voice made my chest ache. She trusted him completely, absolutely, in a way I still couldn’t.
“That’s not the point,” I said again, but my voice had lost its edge.
Derek had been standing quietly by the door, watching the exchange. Now he stepped forward. “What you did was reckless and dangerous,” he said, his voice firm but not harsh. “You put yourselves at risk, and you put everyone who cares about you through hell.”
Frankie looked down at her hands.
“But,” Derek continued, “I understand why you did it.”
My head snapped toward him. “You understand?”
“I understand wanting to fix something that feels broken,” he said quietly. “I understand being desperate enough to do something foolish because you can’t stand watching the people you love hurt.”
Frankie’s eyes lifted to his, shining with unshed tears.
“But that doesn’t make it okay,” Derek finished. “And it doesn’t mean you get to do it again.”
“I won’t,” Frankie whispered. “I promise.”
I turned to Maggie, guilt twisting in my stomach. “I’m sorry Frankie dragged Nox and Cami into this.”
Maggie’s expression softened. “Kat, don’t.
Cami made her own choice. She knew what Frankie was doing, and she chose to stay quiet.
That’s on her, not on you.” She paused, then added quietly, “And Nox... he thinks he knows everything and nothing can hurt him. I swear that kid will turn me gray before I’m thirty. ”
Maggie chuckled, giving me permission to smile.
“Thank you,” I said softly.
Maggie reached over and squeezed my hand. “We’re in this together, you know. The chaos of raising them.”
I nodded, grateful for the moment of connection. Grateful for a new friendship that was healing some of the hurt inside of me.
Derek stepped forward. “I can take you and Frankie home. If that’s okay.”
I hesitated, then nodded. “Okay.”
The drive to my house was quiet. Frankie dozed in the back seat, exhausted from her adventure and the emotional aftermath. Derek’s hands were steady on the wheel, his profile illuminated by the dashboard lights.
When we pulled into my driveway, Derek came around to the passenger side and carefully opened the back door.
Frankie was completely asleep, her head back against the seat, her breathing deep and even.
Without a word, Derek gently unbuckled her seat belt and carefully lifted her into his arms, cradling her against his chest like she weighed nothing.
Her head lolled against his shoulder, one arm dangling loosely at her side.
I followed him inside, watching as his silhouette moved through the darkened hallway. He navigated carefully, avoiding the creaky floorboard near the bathroom, and pushed open Frankie’s bedroom door with his hip.
A few moments later, I heard the soft click of her door closing. Then his footsteps returned down the hallway, and he emerged back into the living room where I was waiting, his expression unreadable in the dim light.
“She’s asleep,” he said quietly.
I nodded, unable to find words. The image of him carrying her so carefully had shattered something inside me. Some wall I’d been building against him.
Derek stood in my living room, looking uncertain for the first time since I’d met him. “I should go.”
“Wait.” The word came out before I could stop it. “We need to talk.”
He nodded slowly.
I gestured to the couch, and we both sat down, careful to maintain distance between us. The silence stretched out, heavy with everything unsaid.
“I talked to Sam,” I said finally.
Derek’s jaw tightened. “What did she tell you?”
“I’d like to hear it from you.”
Derek’s expression remained carefully neutral.
I listened as he told me about his relationship with Sam. And what struck me most, what made my chest tighten with something I couldn’t quite name, was that Derek took all the blame. Every single ounce of it.
He didn’t deflect. Didn’t make excuses. Didn’t point to Sam’s infidelity or her lies and manipulation as reasons for what happened between them. Instead, he took responsibility for his own failures with a brutal honesty that felt almost painful to witness.
I watched his face as he spoke, searching for signs of the monster I’d been told to fear. But what I saw instead was a man wrestling with guilt and genuine remorse. His hands were clenched in his lap, his jaw tight, but not with anger, with the weight of his own culpability.
My throat felt tight. My hands were shaking slightly as I gripped the edge of the couch cushion.
This wasn’t what I expected. This wasn’t the narrative I’d been building in my head. The dangerous man who hurt people and felt nothing. Derek was showing me something else entirely. He was showing me a conscience. A capacity for remorse that seemed to contradict everything I’d been afraid of.
And that terrified me more than his violence ever could.
“Sam told me about Carrie.”
Something flickered across his face at the name.
“About the child you had and lost. I’m sorry, Derek.”
He stood up and paced the room, towering over me, and his jaw ticked in frustration. “How much did she tell you about Carrie?”
I swallowed roughly, thinking back to what Sam had shared with me.
“She told me about how Carrie had manipulated her into thinking you were stalking her, and that she kidnapped Charlie. She told me about her bringing Charlie to your motel room and pretending she was the child you both lost. About how you saved Charlie by killing Carrie.”
Derek blew out a breath and confessed, “We didn’t lose our child, Kat. She was taken away.”
“What?”
He ran a hand over his face and sat in the chair on the far side of the room. He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, and held his head in his hands.
“We had only been together for a few months when she told me she was pregnant.” He lifted his head and looked me in the eye.
“I had told her I didn’t want children. I gave her money to get an abortion, then I walked away.
” Pain crossed over his face as he said the words.
“I got a vasectomy shortly after to make sure it would never happen again.”
He stood up and paced again, his hands clasped together around the back of his neck as he faced me.
“There was something wrong with her. Something I hadn’t seen until that day in the motel room.
She gave birth to our child and abused her.
The child was taken away and put in foster care.
Only, she wasn’t happy about that. She attacked a social worker trying to find out where the child had been placed and she went to prison where they stripped away her rights. ”
The room tilted slightly. I gripped the edge of the couch to steady myself, my mind suddenly moving in slow motion, processing his words like they were coming through water.
A child. Taken away. Foster care.
My stomach clenched.
But the pieces were there, scattered across the floor like a puzzle I was afraid to assemble.
A child in foster care. A mother who was dangerous.
Derek’s inexplicable connection to my daughter from the moment he’d walked into our lives.
The way his hand had trembled when he touched Frankie’s hair.
The bunny, oh God, the bunny that Frankie carried everywhere, that she’d left behind like some kind of message.
My heart was hammering against my ribs so hard I thought it might break through.
I opened my mouth to ask, but something held me back. Fear, maybe. Or the desperate hope that I was wrong, that my mind was making connections that didn’t exist, that I was seeing patterns in chaos because I was terrified of what the truth might mean.
“When they stripped her rights, they came looking for me. They wanted me to take responsibility for the child. But I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t raise a child. I was so fucking afraid of turning into him, Kat.
I went to see her. I wanted to meet her just once.
Tell her how sorry I was she got stuck with the parents she got. ”
“Derek—” I started, my voice barely a whisper.
But I couldn’t finish. Couldn’t ask the question that was clawing at my throat, demanding to be spoken. Because once I asked it, once I heard the answer, everything would change. Everything would shatter.
And I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.
“I held her in my arms and told her I was sorry. That I loved her, and that was why I had to let her go. I gave her something. So she’d always have a piece of me with her. A piece that was safe.”
My breath caught.
“You’re her father,” I whispered.