“Yes.” I keep my tone controlled. “The house next door to mine.”
He rubs a hand along his jaw, confusion crumpling into something worse. “So wait. Is my Frankie the girl you hooked up with? The girl you fell for? The one who you thought ghosted you?” His face drains of color. “Oh my God. The one I encouraged you to?—”
“Yes.” I scrub a hand down my face, steadying my breath. “I didn’t know, Mont. I swear. Every time you talked about Frankie, I thought you meant your son. She told me her name was Cami, and you’re the only one who calls me Ryder, so she only knew me as Knox. We agreed to no last names, no real life…and you know how the rest went.” I sit forward, elbows on my knees. “Then she lost the phone I gave her, and we didn’t talk for almost a week.” The truth edges out of me, unvarnished. “We had no idea, Mont. Not until the second you introduced us at the gala.”
Mont rises so abruptly, the chair legs scrape across the tiled floor.
My pulse spikes, every instinct telling me to brace for impact.
But he doesn’t come toward me.
He crosses to the floor-to-ceiling window that frames Central Park like a painting.
His hands slip into his creased pants pockets, jaw working, the silence stretching tight enough to make my chest ache.
A dozen thoughts sprint through my head.
If I were him…what the hell would I be feeling?
Shock? Betrayal? Disappointment? Maybe all three knotted together.
And I sit here, uselessly still, bracing for the moment he decides what version of me he’s looking at: a man he trusts…or the one who fell for his off-limits daughter.
Several long beats pass before he clears his throat. “When I adopted Frankie twenty-two years ago, it wasn’t just a promise to love her like my own. It was a promise to keep her safe. To giveher a home. One that her bio dad didn’t have the decency to give her and her mother when he abandoned them. I swore I’d never let another man fail her like that again.”
My throat works around a hard swallow.
“Then that mess at Oxford happened,” he says, jaw flexing as he stares out at the park. “Watched her get worn down emotionally from an ocean away, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.”
A muscle in my jaw tightens as I remember what Cami shared with me. How her ex chipped away at her confidence, made her question her worth, her brilliance. How she clawed her way back through therapy and grit until she could breathe sans tears again.
“She’s done a lot of healing since then,” I say quietly. “Editing her future by sprinkling in happiness like?—”
“Powdered sugar on pancakes.” Mont finally turns away from the window, head tilted when his narrow-eyed gaze finds me. “She shared that with you?”
I nod once. “And you know Cami doesn’t hand out pieces of herself easily. But I treated every piece she shared with me like precious gold. Still do.”
Mont drags in a slow breath, like someone trying to recalibrate an entire worldview.
He walks back to his chair, lowers himself into it, and leans back hard, hands steepled in front of his mouth.
“Look, Ryder.” He rocks once in his chair, controlled, restless. “Even though I love you like a son, every bone in my body wants to reach across this desk and beat the shit out of you.”
Sweat beads at my hairline, but I dare not move.
“And I could say you’re too old for my daughter,” he goes on, “but considering her mom and I had twenty years between us,I’m not interested in being that hypocrite.” He rubs his temple. “Plus, guys her age? Yeah, no thanks.”
A humorless breath escapes me.
“I could also say you’re not good enough for her…” he says. “But hell—on paper, you’re pretty damn close. Generational wealth like she has. Smart as hell. Good family. You built your own legacy with Luxe Properties.” He lowers his hands, eyes locking with mine—steely. “And then there’s trust.” He purses his lips. “I could claim I don’t trust you, but like I told her at the gala…I trust you with my life. And hers.”
My breath lodges somewhere between my ribs.
Being trusted with her life shouldn’t feel like a privilege I have no right to, but it does. And the truth is, I’d protect her at any cost.
Mont studies me, longer this time, like he’s searching for something beneath my skin. “Are you truly in love with my daughter?”
“Yes.” I bite my lip in hopes that it will settle my heartbeat. “Tried not to be. Told myself summer was temporary, that I’d walk away clean. But I can’t. I’m all the way in, Mont. Every part of me.”
