Chapter 23 #2
“Daughter?” Nash’s chin jerks back.
I would love to unsay that.
“Uh.”
I look at Cap like he can help. He looks back like, good luck, kiddo then pulls a flask out of his pocket and takes a slug, eyes bouncing between Nash and me. When I force my gaze to Nash, there’s nothing smiley or smug about him. This is bad.
Slowly, I say, “I do.”
The admission sticks between us. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, but his face says he’s hurt. I personally would love nothing more than to climb to the top of the sixty-six-foot pinnacle of the tree and plummet to my death.
I need to tell him—this is a moment presenting itself if there ever was one—but the hurt in his eyes won’t let me say it.
If he’s upset by that, then the full truth will be ugly.
It will be big. Big enough he might not want to help me find the gold I desperately need.
Big enough he’ll leave. I rub my chest and force myself to stay calm.
“Anyway,” I say cautiously, “she carved her initials into the tree last summer, and I was th—”
“How old is she?” Nash asks, zero play in his voice.
I am so thirsty.
“Young.”
His brow creases.
“Five.”
Cap grunts and takes another slug from his flask.
“Who’s the father?” Nash demands.
“Who?” I echo.
“Yes, who? Your fiancé?”
“Um.” I justify what I say next by the fact that, yes, in some ways, Jonathan has been a father-like figure to Bennie. He’s been in her life for two years. Sometimes he picks her up from school. “In a sense.”
Another jerk of his chin and his brows pull so tight it looks painful.
“In a sense? What the hell does that mean? He either is or he isn’t.”
This is the perfect time to tell him the news of his surprise child.
I could make it funny with a Maury Povich-style “You are the father!” But none of this is funny, and the words refuse to be said.
They’re trapped on my tongue while guilt worms its way through my chest. I have to tell him or my mom won’t get the surgery, but I can’t tell him because if he gets mad, he might not help me get the gold so she can have the surgery.
And as wrong as I know I am for not telling him, at the end of the day, he’s still the one who left.
He missed out on the last eight years because he made a choice, and that choice was another city.
Then another and another. That’s all the reminder I need to match the fight in his voice. “It doesn’t concern you.”
“Doesn’t concern me?” He scoffs. “You’re still my wife, Rue. She could be mine for all I know.”
Cap grunts; I choke. Because: Fuck.
“She’s five,” I repeat, hoping I believe it as much as him.
“Still not an answer.”
“We haven’t seen each other in eight years!” My shout draws attention from a nearby family. “Our marriage is just a piece of paper. And you’re seeing someone. Why do you care?”
“Why do I care?” He’s flabbergasted, stepping toward me. “Are you fucking kidding me with that question?”
“Does it look like I’m kidding?”
He sniffs. “Just to be clear that I have this right—”
“Oh, here we go.” I roll my eyes.
“You marry me—”
My voice fills with as much pissed-off as his. “And that was my first mistake.”
“Then you tell me you don’t want to be married to me because I’m too irresponsible.”
My heart rate ticks up along with my desire to slap him. “Your shirt proves that point.”
We exchange heated looks but he doesn’t back down. “Then you tell me to leave—so I do.”
“Finally!” I smile the biggest smile of my life. “My favorite part of the story.”
“And you never send divorce papers.”
“That was my mother!” I throw my hands in the air. “I can’t control that woman.”
“While I write you postcard after postcard, begging you to come get me. So I can be with you. For years.”
“I didn’t—what?”
He cannot have been writing come and get me in the literal sense. Come and get me is a taunt. A thing kids say when they’re playing a game.
“And you’re telling me that you had a kid, and it doesn’t concern me?”
We glare at each other, so much tension between us we could bring the whole damn miracle of a tree down.
Jaws locked, breathing labored, if we weren’t fighting, it would feel an awful lot like foreplay.
Like if either of us took one step closer, it would be all we needed to rip our clothes off right here.
“Fine,” I finally say. “He’s not the father.” I fold my arms over my chest. “Happy?”
“Happy?” His laugh is angry. “Not even close. And you let a four-year-old have a knife in a tree?”
My eyes narrow. “Four?”
“You said she was five, and last year she climbed a tree with a knife. Guessing that would have made her four.”
“Right.” I laugh robotically. “She’s spirited.
” When he opens his mouth, I talk over him, redirecting this disastrous conversation.
“The point is, I think we should try to get closer to the tree and look. Anson wrote ‘you will never believe it and need to touch every branch and crack of the bark just to know its real.’ Maybe that was the clue. We should come back.”
“Come back?” Nash lets out a preposterous laugh. “And what? Climb it?”
Bennie must have been onto something with her observation of the need for being daring in a treasure hunt, because I glance from him to the tree. “Yes.”
Cap barks out a laugh, and I pin him with a look.
“What?” He shrugs and scrubs a hand through his beard. “I never could have made it up there. Never thought of it. Ain’t a bad idea, kiddo.”
His needed alliance overrules my annoyance at his term of endearment.
“Please, Nash.” I put my hands together and bounce with my beg. I have never felt more desperate in my life. I need to see what’s in that tree. I need it yesterday. And I need his help. “I’ll climb, you just—I don’t know—be the lookout or something.”
“The trunk is probably thirty feet tall, Rue,” he argues. “How’ll we do that?”
“A ladder.”
“You want us to climb over this fence”—he gestures at said fence, tall and lined with barbed wire—“with a thirty-foot ladder?”
He has a point. Dammit.
“We can climb up one of the branches.”
Cap chuckles, waving his hand like a white flag when I give him yet another glare.
Nash’s gaze is loaded. Like he has more questions, and they aren’t about this gold or my plan to climb a sacred tree. But to my surprise, when he opens his mouth, it’s with a torn, “Fine.”
I clap, bouncing up and down with a genuine smile. After yesterday’s bust, I need this win.
Nash, however, doesn’t react. He’s pissed. And he doesn’t even know the full truth.
“Let’s go,” I tell him, ignoring my lie and wrapping my hand around his inked forearm to drag him in the direction opposite of where we parked.
“Where?”
“To case the joint.”
Cap snorts a laugh; Nash says nothing.
“I’m serious.” I tug his arm twice. “We need to scope out the security. Check the fence. Come up with a plan.” I raise my eyebrows. “Case the joint.”
He doesn’t say yes, but with his lips in a tight line, he lets me lead us, his well-warranted anger coming along for the ride until my loudmouth of a conscience stops my feet.
“Bee’s my daughter,” I admit. “That’s why my mom asked about her. I lied because it felt like too many things with her and—” I blow out a soft breath. “Everything.”
He’s quiet and I’m quiet; I wish I could tell him the truth as much as I wish he already knew.
He looks up at the tree, tongue batting around his mouth. “Who’s the father?”
You.
Say it.
Tell him.
Right the hell now, Rue.
“A fling.” Another lie on top of the millions.
“I didn’t know how to tell you. Eight years away from each other is a long time, you know.
I just—” At the look in his eyes, I nearly double over.
I need to say something real—something honest—or the guilt of this alone will eat me alive.
“I don’t know how to be around you yet, Nash.
Does it feel like that for you? Like you constantly think of two things you want to say every time you open your mouth? ”
Silent and looking anywhere but at me, I can’t read what he’s thinking.
If he gets it. If he hates me. If knowing that I’ve lived a whole life separate from him gnaws at his chest the way it does to mine.
If when he thinks of me with Jonathan it stings like a bitch-slap the way it does when I think of him and Emma.
Slowly, he walks away, and I drop my face into my hands. I might cry again. Nash is done, and I can’t even blame him.
I’m a liar, but I need him.
He left me, but I need him.
“You coming?” he calls over his shoulder.
I look at him, the slightest of smirks tugging his lips.
“Yeah?”
“These joints won’t case themselves, Rue Conway.”
I don’t hide my smile as I jog the few steps to catch up to him.
At the perimeter of the fence and without looking at me, he says, “Tell me about your kid.”
I hesitate.
Then I do.
Every wonderful little detail except who she really is.