Chapter 6
Six
Colt
After four years in a Russian prison camp, I learned to sleep lightly and assess my surroundings before opening my eyes.
Always. And based on the uneven breathing I hear, someone is hovering over the bed.
Since I’m no longer in that prison camp, I’m not particularly worried, so I slowly pry my lids open.
There’s a pair of cobalt blue eyes just inches from my face, staring at me intently.
The eyes belong to a little girl with wavy dark hair, and she doesn’t seem to be at all uncomfortable watching a stranger sleep.
She’s beautiful, no more than three or four years old, but I’m not sure what she’s doing here at Briar’s—
Briar’s words from the other night suddenly come rushing back.
There have been a lot of changes since you’ve been gone… things you don’t know.
Is this little girl one of those changes? One of the things I don’t know?
Did one of the boys have a kid? I know Banks recently had a baby–it was all over the sports pages I scoured–but this kid is too old for that. I can’t picture Atlas or Dash having a kid, but Royal would… maybe. I probably shouldn’t assume anything since I’ve been gone a long time.
Maybe this girl is–
“Are you my dad?” she asks, interrupting my rambling and probably incoherent thoughts.
I blink, caught off-guard.
“I…don’t think so.” I clear my throat, frowning. Taking in the shape of her face. Her eyes. Even her hair color…
It’s not possible.
Is it?
“Then why is your picture in my room?” She puts a fist on her hip, narrows her eyes, and gives me a piercing look that’s going to send little boys scrambling in the near future. “And why does Mommy cry when she sees it sometimes? And how come—”
“Okay, give me a second, kiddo. I just woke up.” I rub my eyes and slowly try to stretch, see what hurts the most, and try not to aggravate it.
Mostly, I’m trying to buy myself some time to wrap my head around this little girl who has eyes… Just. Like. Mine. Cobalt blue with thick, dark lashes. In college, my teammates used to tease me about my lashes, asking what kind of mascara I use. It was funny then. Not so much now.
Looking at this kid is like staring into a mirror.
I think there’s a picture somewhere of me at a similar age—in my storage unit maybe?—where we might be twins.
It’s suddenly hard to breathe and myriad emotions rocket through me.
Guilt.
Shame.
Curiosity.
Excitement…
Do I have a kid?
“What’s… your name?” I finally ask.
“Frankie.” She cocks her head, like she’s waiting for something.
But I'm finding it hard to breathe.
Her name is Frankie?!
My father’s name was Frank. The only person who ever loved me. He was killed in Afghanistan after 9/11. And I told Briar all about him. This can’t be a coincidence. I don’t believe in them.
“What’s your name?” she counters when I don’t say anything.
“I’m…Colt.” I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell anyone who I am.
Briar was clear that we had to come up with a plan on how to announce that I was back from the dead, but it would be rude not to answer this adorable little girl who watches me like she knows all the secrets to my world.
“Colt. The guy my mommy used to love.”
Oh, sweet Jesus.
I don’t dare hope…do I?
“Aren’t you dead?” she continues.
I almost laugh. What else can I do?
“I was… lost,” I say after a moment. “In a place really far away. Everyone thought I died in an accident, but I didn’t.”
“Are you going to make mommy cry again?”
Not if I can help it.
Not if I can get her to forgive me.
Not if—enough!
I need information. Answers to questions I haven’t had time to think of.
“How old are you?” I ask, trying to still the wild beating of my heart.
“Four and three-quarters.” Her eyes are guileless as she watches me watching her.
“When’s your birthday?”
“February twenty-first… when’s yours?”
“October tenth,” I reply automatically, but I can barely think.
Briar and I made love around the twentieth of May. If she’d gotten pregnant, the baby would have come nine months later… around the twenty-first of February.
Fuck.
Is it possible?
Did I leave Briar pregnant with my baby?
I pull in a shaky breath. This is unexpected and all the things I was planning to say to her go right out the window.
If this is my daughter, that means I abandoned her when she needed me most. How the hell do we come back from this? I don’t think there’s a single thing I can do to make it up to her. To either of them.
My stomach churns with guilt and fury. At all the bad luck. Miscommunication, both on my part and that of my superiors. I run my hands down my face to buy a little time. Try to breathe through emotions that are hitting me so hard I feel a little nauseated.
“Are you sick?” Frankie asks after a moment. “Should I go get Mommy?”
“No. I’m okay.” I stare at her. My daughter. She’s my daughter. There is no doubt in my mind.
“You don’t look okay. Your face looks funny.” She reaches out a tiny finger, gently running it over my right eye. That’s one of the worst bruises, and it’s still a kaleidoscope of colors as it heals. “Does your booboo hurt?”
“A little.”
“Did you fall off your bike?”
I smile, shaking my head. “No. I was in a different kind of accident and needed an operation. But I’m getting better.”
“My mommy is really good at making people feel better. Whenever my tummy hurts, Mommy rubs it and lets me cuddle with her. Then like magic, it goes away.”
I can’t help but smile even though part of me wants to cry.
I have no doubt that Briar is a good mom.
Even if the man she thought she was going to have a future with abandoned her, she wouldn’t have let that stop her from doing whatever she had to do to make her child’s life safe and happy.
She must have been so damn hurt that she couldn’t reach me. And then, adding insult to injury, the organization I work for decided to tell the world—my family and the woman I love—that I was dead.
Horror washes over me.
If I were Briar, I would hate me.
What fresh hell is this?
I thought I’d reached rock bottom those last weeks in Siberia, when the cold and starvation and ongoing torture seemed to have gotten the best of me.
I was ready to die, to let go of the pain and humiliation, and succumb to the darkness.
As far as I was concerned, there had been nothing left to fight for.
It would have been completely different if I’d known I had a kid. That Briar had—No. I have to stop. There’s no reason to believe this little girl is mine. Pregnancy isn’t exactly nine months. She probably went out and fucked me right out of her system with guys who were going to stay around.
Except… as far as I can tell, she’s single.
And anyway, I know Briar wouldn’t do that.
The sweet, innocent woman who gave me her virginity and told me she’d loved me for a long time?
The one who laid in my arms and planned a future with me?
No, she didn’t fuck other guys right away. Probably not for a long time.
And no matter how many excuses I can think up, the truth is staring at me in a compact, sturdy little body. With my eyes. My nose. Even her eyebrows are the same shape as mine. Jesus.
“Where’s your mommy?” I ask Frankie.
“In the kitchen with Uncle Royal and Auntie Jade.”
Royal.
He’s right here in the house with me, basically just steps away.
I have to see him, talk to him—explain.
There are voices down the hall that are getting louder and I’m just about to throw off the covers to go intervene when I remember I’m naked. I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and couldn’t get my sweats back on, so I didn’t bother.
I glance at Frankie. “You have to turn around, kiddo.”
“How come?” She scrunches up her face and—she might look like me, but her expressions are one hundred percent Briar.
“I have to put some pants on.”