Chapter 3
THREE
Dakota
I didn’t know complete silence could be so exhausting.
Any kind of conversation would have been forced, and if he had asked me about my life, it would have come off fake and insincere, so Ezra and I spent the next half hour without saying a word.
Eventually, he fell sleep, and I took another ten minutes to simply watch him, my eyes scanning over his features.
Of course he’d aged over the last sixteen years.
My father had always lived large; it made his already rough-around-the-edges character downright jagged.
His once salt-and-pepper hair had gone completely gray in the years I’d been gone.
The wrinkles on his skin from years of being battered by the wind and sun as he rode his motorcycle were even more pronounced.
But time alone couldn’t have aged him the way he was just then.
The heart attack had managed to bring him down in a way I thought no one and nothing could.
For some reason I couldn’t begin to understand, seeing him like that scared me.
It caught behind my ribs like a hook catching in a fish’s mouth.
It tugged with each breath I took as I watched my sleeping father’s chest rise and fall, pulling painfully at the heart I thought had been deadened to him the moment I climbed into my car and walked away.
I hadn’t realized I’d been standing there, counting each of his breaths to make sure they were evenly spaced, until the door creaked open behind me, giving me a jolt.
The nurse from earlier came in, pulling her med cart behind her.
She shot me a kind smile before her eyes shifted to her patient. “Ah, I see he’s out.”
“Cold,” I verified. “He’s been sleeping for about thirty minutes.” My brows pulled together as I tugged my bottom lip between my teeth and bit down. “Is that normal? He’s okay, right?”
I didn’t want to care. In fact, part of me hated that I did. I couldn’t make myself stop, though.
She reached for my arm, her touch a comfort, her sympathetic smile full of warmth. Her fingers gave a reassuring squeeze. “I know it might not look it, but he’s getting better and better every day. Just give him some time.”
I forced my mouth into a smile, but it felt brittle and fake. My emotions were all over the place, swirling so fast I was weary in a way that I felt all the way down to my bones.
“Yeah, I’ll do that. Thanks.”
“You know, he’s probably out for the rest of the night if you want to go and get some rest. Come back tomorrow fresh and rested.”
That sounded perfect. I needed some air, and I needed some time to get my head together.
I left a few minutes later. The breath I’d been holding escaped my lungs in a whoosh when I stepped into the hall and found it empty. Not a single Wraith cut in sight.
The steel band that had wrapped around my chest, steadily squeezing since I pulled into the hospital parking lot, slowly loosened as I rode the elevator down to the ground floor and headed for the exit, past that hideous flower arrangement.
As I stepped through the frosted glass doors, I saw that the sun had set, and after the whirlwind that had stirred up inside me, all I could think about was finding a place to crash for the night.
I filled my lungs with the fresh, pine-scented air to cleanse away the smells of the hospital and closed my eyes as a soft breeze skated across my skin. Just a few more yards, I thought as I glanced in the direction of my car. Just a few more yards and I was home free. At least for a little while.
My relief came a few moments too soon. A second later, the scent in the air mingled with something new.
Leather and spice with a hint of motor oil.
I felt him a single heartbeat later. Sixteen years and my body’s awareness of Monroe Clifton hadn’t diminished one damn bit.
That magnetic field that had always surrounded us, forcing us to crash together time and again, was still as strong as it ever was.
“Dakota.”
His voice was pure grit and gravel. It raked across my skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake. I screwed my eyes closed against the wave of pain that crashed over me at the sound of it.
I forced myself to turn and face the man who’d destroyed me all those years ago. There was no way I could have prepared to see the man who stepped out of the shadows and closed the distance between us.
What was it with men aging so much better than women? It wasn’t fair. If karma cared for me at all, she would have given him a receding hairline and a beer gut that hung over his belt. Looking at him was yet another reminder of how much that bitch hated me.
I should have known better. Roe never experienced that awkward, gawky teenage phase the rest of us had to suffer through. He never struggled with acne or a weird, squeaky voice. But that beautiful teenager and that gorgeous young man had nothing on the guy standing in front of me.
He’d packed on muscle, but not the kind a guy got from spending all his time at the gym.
I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination but he also seemed taller.
A shiver worked through me when our eyes connected as he closed the distance between us.
The dark sky and the fluorescent bulbs inside the hospital backlighting Roe made his eye look like midnight.
His features were more mature now, sharper and more deeply carved, like the past several years had taken a chisel and hammer to his nose, jawline, and cheekbones.
More of his skin was covered in tattoos than it had been sixteen years ago, and his black brows rested heavier over his eyes than they used to.
His dark hair was shorter than he wore it when he was younger, but he was still the same Roe beneath all the physical changes.
That soul-deep connection we used to have was gone but there were still a few lingering pieces that tethered us, allowing me to see the boy who came into my life, thanks to my father.
The teenager who never made me feel like I was an unwanted third wheel.
The young man I’d developed my very first crush on that eventually turned to love.
And finally, the man who crushed my heart and destroyed me in a way that could never be fixed.
Just like that, the heartbreak I felt the day we ended came rushing back like no time had passed at all. God, it was a miracle I was able to stay standing.
“Dakota,” he repeated, like he was testing my name on his tongue, tasting it.
My arms came up and wrapped protectively around my middle as I reached deep inside to pull up the anger that had gotten me through the first few years after I left.
There were times when the agony was so great I worried I wouldn’t survive it.
Remembering how the bad had fanned the flame of anger inside me was the only thing that kept me from lying down in the fetal position and never getting up again.
“Do you have something else to say or are you just going to keep saying my name?”
I sounded good and pissed. That was good. Much better than letting him know how hurt I still was all this time later.
“It’s good you’re here.” I didn’t know what the hell I’d been expecting to hear, or how I might feel about whatever he said, but it wasn’t the disappointment twisting my stomach into knots at such a rote cop-out of a sentence.
My mouth twisted into a sardonic grin. “It’s good I’m here? Wow, okay.” A bitter laugh bubbled up my throat. “For who, huh? Because it sure as hell isn’t good for me.”
“For Pops then.” He took a step closer and it took everything in me to stay in place and not retreat.
To stand my ground. Pops. If my thoughts could sneer, my mental lips would have been curled up at that single word.
Pops. Because he was a surrogate father for so many of them, giving so much of himself to everyone but his own flesh and blood.
“You might hate him, but I know it means a lot to him that you’re here. He’s missed you more than you can imagine.”
The fight drained out of me just like that, and I went from angry and confused to exhausted. Heaving out a bone-tired sigh, I raked my fingers through my hair and looked out into the dark parking lot, staring out at nothing in particular.
“I don’t hate him,” I admitted wearily. “I tried to for a really long time. I just . . . I couldn’t do it.”
“That’s good.”
I turned back to him at those two words, the soft smile on his full lips setting off an irrational rage deep in my belly.
“I think it’s because I didn’t choose who my parents were.
It’s so much easier to hate someone you choose over someone you didn’t, you know?
Especially when they don’t choose you back. ”
Roe froze solid. I waited, my heart lodged in my throat, for him to say something. But he didn’t speak. Or blink. Hell, I wasn’t even sure he was breathing.
Pushing a gust of air out of my lungs, I forced my feet to move. “Goodbye, Roe.”
I didn’t allow myself to look back as I headed for my car.
Roe
“Ow, Daddy. You’re pullin’ again.”
I blinked out of the memory of the other night and back into the present, pulling my lips into a wince as the brush caught on another snarl in my daughter’s hair.
“Sorry, baby girl. But how do you get so many tangles in your sleep?”
My little girl met my gaze in the reflection of the mirror, the same deep blue as my own. Her face was more serious than I thought a seven-year-old capable of as she declared, “I was fightin’ off bad guys in my dreams.”
I bugged my eyes out in the mirror, making her giggle. That was the best fucking sound in the entire world. It never failed to make me feel better, no matter how shitty a mood I was in. And I’d been in a really shitty mood the past two days.
Ever since Dakota Riley came back into my life with the force of a goddamn hurricane.