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“No, Dickie.” She held her hand out, pushing Mark’s hold off. She hadn’t expected him to see Mark, and register their intimacy, let alone call her out for it. “I can explain. He’s—”
“He’s dead, is what he is. No one takes my girl and lives to tell of it.”
He lurched forward, shoving the guy holding him aside like he was nothing, and before either of them could react, he swung for Mark. The sound of bone meeting bone was horrifyingly real as her father’s fist connected with Mark’s nose. Blood poured out immediately. He staggered back and tripped over a tipped barstool, and he went down hard. His feet caught her father’s on the way down, and they fell in a tangle of feet and curses. After Mark shoved her dad off him, he groaned, burped, and then passed out on the dirty bar floor.
Mark lay there for a second, staring up at the ceiling, breathing heavily through his mouth, blood smeared all over his face. He locked gazes with Daisy, and she saw it. The absolute shock and pity coloring those dark brown eyes of his black. And she felt sick. Physically sick.
I shouldn’t have brought him here.
One hand over her stomach, the other over her mouth, she shook her head, unable to move or think beyond the pure humiliation rocking her, and whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He touched his nose, rolled over, and spit out blood, not meeting her eyes again as he checked her father for a pulse. And she just stood there. Doing nothing. Wanting to die.
She’d thought she could let someone help her, let someone in, and this was what happened. Her father literally tried to kill him. If this wasn’t a wakeup call for them both, then she didn’t know what was. After this was over, Mark would make some kind of polite excuse and end it.
And she wouldn’t blame him one little bit.
This is hell. I’m in hell. And nothing will ever save me.
He rolled to his feet and dusted off his hands. “What do you want me to do, Daisy?”
“I…” She eyed her father passed out on the floor. “You’re staying?”
Walking right up to her, Mark touched his nose and winced. “What did I tell you?” He caught her chin. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Tears choked her, trying to escape, but she swallowed them back.
As he stared down at her, blood dripping out his nose, a bruise already forming under his eye, in a dirty bar…she did it. She dropped the last brick.
And she scrambled to catch it before it hit the floor.
Chapter Seventeen
Last night had been awful. When Daisy told him her father was an alcoholic, to be honest, he hadn’t really thought it through beyond the fact that the man liked to dr
ink a lot. Alcoholic was a term that could describe so many degrees of a dependency on booze, and he hadn’t jumped to the conclusion that her father was the extreme version of the word.
That things could be that bad.
He hadn’t pictured the full reality of what she faced every day, and what she’d had to do to grow up to be as near to normal as she was. To become a cop. The amount of respect he had for her tripled after last night. And he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
About it.
He just wanted to pull her into his arms, hug her close, and make it all go away.
Pressing two fingers to his throbbing nose, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He had a hell of a headache, and the sirens blaring in the distance did nothing to help that. After they got her father home last night, and after they spent a good four hours cleaning his filthy home, Daisy had fallen into Mark’s bed and immediately passed out.
When he crawled into bed with her, she mumbled something about losing a brick, curled up against him, and let out the cutest snore he’d ever heard. He quickly followed her into slumber, and she’d been gone when he woke up. He was trying not to read too much into that.
There were two taps on the door, and a way too loud voice exclaimed, “What the hell happened to you last night? Did Steven finally lose his temper and punch you?”
Internally, he rolled his eyes, but on the outside, he calmly said, “Nah. I ran into a door.”
Holt snorted. “A door shaped like a fist?”
“Something like that.”
“Seriously, man.” He eyed Mark with a concern that was almost touching. “What happened? Everything okay?”
