Chapter Twenty-Six #4
He’s staring down at me with a kind of love so fierce it almost frightens me.
“This is not your fault.”
I shake my head, tears sliding into my hair.
“It feels like it is.”
“I know.” His eyes soften. “But feelings are not always truth.”
My breath breaks.
“Then what’s the truth?”
“The truth is, Rory hurt my family.” His voice grows colder. “And I’m going to make sure he never hurts anyone again.”
He carries me out of the basement, out of the house, and into the night.
The cold air hits my face, but Maverick’s arms tighten around me before I can even shiver.
Spike is already outside with Livy in his arms. Foster stands beside them, one hand near Livy’s back, his face tight with worry as he watches her hold her injured arm against her chest.
“Mama,” Livy cries when she sees me. “Daddy saved us.”
The word hits Maverick again.
Daddy.
I feel it move through him.
Feel the breath he takes.
Feel the way his arms tighten around me like he has to hold on to something or fall apart right there in the driveway.
“Yeah, baby,” I whisper as he carries me to the waiting car. “Daddy saved us.”
Maverick lowers himself into the back seat with me still in his arms, careful not to jostle me too much. Spike settles Livy beside us, and she immediately leans into Maverick’s side, still crying.
He shifts one arm around her, keeping the other around me.
Both of us tucked against him.
Both of us breathing.
Both of us alive.
His mouth presses to Livy’s hair first.
Then to my temple.
“I love you, baby,” he tells me, voice rough and broken. “I love you both.”
Livy sobs harder.
I close my eyes and rest my face against his chest.
“I know,” I whisper.
His heartbeat pounds beneath my cheek.
Fast, hard, and real.
“I love you too,” I say.
His hand trembles once against my back.
Only once.
Then the car door closes, shutting out the night, the house, and the monster who almost took us from him.
Maverick keeps us wrapped in his arms as the car starts moving.
No one speaks for a moment.
There’s only Livy’s quiet crying.
My uneven breathing.
Maverick’s heartbeat.
Then Livy whispers, “Can we see Uncle Steffy now?”
Maverick’s chin dips against her hair.
“As soon as the doctors check you and your mama, yes.”
“He’ll be mad I snuck into the car.”
A sound almost like a laugh breaks from him.
“Yes, piccola. He’ll be very upset.”
“But happy I’m alive?”
His voice turns soft.
“So happy.”
Livy nods like that answer settles something inside her.
Then she closes her eyes and curls closer to him.
I look up at Maverick.
His face is turned toward the window, but I know he isn’t seeing the road.
He’s somewhere else.
Somewhere dark.
I lift my aching hand just enough to touch his shirt.
“Maverick.”
His eyes drop to mine instantly.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I whisper. “What happened to them wasn’t your fault.”
His throat works.
“I’m not sure I can ever fully believe that, bella,” he says. “But I think I can finally move past it.”
His eyes flick to Livy, tucked against his side, then back to me.
“They would want me to.”
I nod, tears burning my eyes again.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “They would.”
For a few seconds, the only sound in the car is the hum of the road beneath us and Livy’s soft, uneven breathing.
Then her eyes open.
“Did your first daughter call you Papa like Sabrina calls hers?” Livy asks softly.
Maverick goes still.
Then he smiles a smile so sad, it breaks my heart.
“Yeah, piccola,” he says. “She did.”
Livy nods like she already knew the answer.
“I thought so.”
Maverick looks down at her.
“I didn’t want to make you sad,” she says. “So I decided not to call you Papa. Is that okay?”
The question breaks something open across his face.
He stares at her for a second, and I watch the grief and love move through him together.
Not fighting this time. Just existing in the same place.
“Oh, piccola,” he whispers.
Livy’s chin trembles. “I didn’t want to take her word.”
Maverick closes his eyes as a single tear slips free.
When he opens them again, he turns his face just enough to press his mouth to the top of her head. It’s awkward with me still curled in his lap and Livy tucked against his side, but he makes it work.
He always makes it work for us.
“You didn’t take anything from her,” he says, voice rough. “Do you hear me? Nothing.”
“But if Papa was hers, then I don’t want my voice to replace it.”
“It was,” he says gently. “And it always will be. But do you want to know something amazing?”
Livy’s eyes fill.
“What?”
“I know without a single doubt that Elena would have loved having you as a sister,” he says. “Which means if you wanted to call me Papa, she wouldn’t care at all. You won’t take her voice away, baby.”
“Maybe,” she whispers. “But I’ve been thinking about this really hard. I don’t want to take her word.” She swallows. “Can papa be hers, and daddy be mine?”
Maverick’s arms tighten around both of us.
His voice breaks when he answers.
“Yes, baby. Daddy can be yours.”
Livy lets out the smallest sob and curls closer to his side.
“Good,” she whispers. “Because I picked it special.”
A broken laugh slips out of him, soft and full of pain.
“You did?”
“Yeah.” She wipes her face with her good hand. “Because Daddy feels like pancakes and bedtime and someone who comes when bad people take you.”
I press my face into his chest, crying silently now.
His hand moves over Livy’s hair again and again, careful and shaking.
“Then I will be Daddy,” he says. “For as long as you want me.”
Livy sniffles.
“Forever?”
His throat works, and I feel the answer move through his chest before he says it.
“Forever, piccola.”
She nods against him, like that settles something important.
Then she looks up again. “And you can still be Papa to Elena.”
Maverick’s breath catches.
I feel it.
The way his whole body locks around us.
Not because she hurt him.
Because she understood something most adults would have stepped around.
“Yes,” he whispers. “I can still be Papa to Elena.”
“And Daddy to me.”
His heart is racing.
“And Daddy to you.”
Livy closes her eyes, exhausted and hurting, but there’s a tiny bit of peace in her face now.
“Okay,” she whispers.
Maverick presses another kiss to her hair.
Then he lowers his mouth to my forehead.
I don’t think he means for anyone to hear what he says next.
But I do.
“Thank you for giving me back a name I thought I’d never answer to again.”
I don’t think she’ll ever realize it, but my daughter just healed this man.
Not all the way.
Maybe never all the way.
But enough for him to breathe around the grief instead of beneath it.
“You have to marry Mama,” she says, half asleep.
Maverick’s chest stills beneath my cheek.
“Is that so?” he asks.
“Yep.” Her eyes stay closed, her voice soft and slurred from exhaustion. “If Elena would love me as a sister, then I think her mama would love my mama as a wife.”
Despite everything we’ve just gone through, despite the cold still biting at my fingers and the pain pulsing through my body, despite the fear and the blood and Rory, I laugh.
Maverick looks down at me, and something warm moves through his eyes.
“You think that’s funny, bella?”
“I think our daughter is bossy.”
Livy’s eyes barely open. “I’m not bossy. I’m helpful.”
Maverick’s arm tightens around her.
“Very helpful, piccola.”
“And right,” she mumbles.
A broken smile pulls at his mouth.
“And right.”
I look up at him, my throat suddenly tight all over again.
He doesn’t ask me.
Not here.
Not in the back of a car while Livy is hurt and I’m half frozen in his lap.
But the question is there in his eyes.
In the way he holds us.
In the way his thumb moves slowly over my shoulder like he’s reminding himself I’m real.
I rest my forehead against his chest.
“Maybe she’s right,” I whisper. “Adriana would love me as a wife.”
Livy sighs, already drifting again.
“Good,” she whispers. “I like being right.”
And for the first time in hours, Maverick laughs too. Not much. Not enough to erase the nightmare waiting behind us.
But enough.
Enough to remind me we’re still alive.
Enough to remind me that monsters don’t always get the final word.
Sometimes little girls do.