If his heart had given out, he’d have died not knowing he had a daughter. Because of me.
My insides started rearranging themselves just thinking about whether he’d stay or go. That parachute wasn’t sounding half bad right about now. But there was no jumping out of this one. I’d built it, and now I had to land in it.
I had a daughter.
I’d been saying it to myself since we boarded, and it still didn’t sit right.
A father. Me.
Cadence.
I caught myself grinning just thinking of her name. Curls bouncing, little glasses, chocolate skin, the widest smile I’d ever seen. My heart damn near leaped out of my chest when I saw her on that screen. And the fact that she’d been waiting on me, asking about me, made my once-jumbled thoughts clearer the closer we got home. Everything in me narrowed down to one thing. Getting to her. That was my first job as a father, and I wasn’t going to fumble it.
Her knowing I was her father, was the only reason I hadn’t left Skye back on that island. Somebody had a lot of explaining to do. Everyone knew. Skye’s sister. Her coworkers. My baby hada whole ecosystem I wasn’t a part of. That had my jaw locked through the whole flight.
I understood why she did it. I’d heard her say it on that beach, and I believed every word of it. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt or have me ready to yoke Skye’s ass up.
Skye had stopped trying to talk, and I appreciated that shit. I knew myself well enough to know I needed a minute before I opened my mouth. That was the attorney in me.
“Mr. and Mrs. Simmons, we’ve begun our descent into Coupeville. We should have you on the ground in about thirty minutes. Sit back and enjoy the last of the ride.”
The captain clicked off.
I felt Skye shift beside me, her thumb working the edge of her seatbelt, her knee bouncing, her teeth catching her bottom lip. I knew that energy. The closer we got to the ground, the more she needed to do something with her hands, her mouth, anything. Same as she’d always been. Get scared, start swinging.
“Ducane, just yell at me, please. Something. I can’t take it, and I will not have Cadence around this energy. No, sir.”
Here we go.
I stood and leaned over to meet her eyes. She inhaled sharply.
“We’re supposed to be seated, Ducane. We’re thirty minutes out, it’s protocol?—”
“Do I look like I give a damn about protocol?” I grabbed her by the back of her neck. “Back room. Now.”
I guided her up and back before she could get another word out. I closed the door, and the air shifted immediately. It was just the two of us, the low hum of the plane, and the faint smell of her sunscreen still on her skin from the island. I looked at her in the small warm light.
“Ducane—”
“Skye, I asked you to be quiet, but you keep pushing and poking. I just found out I have a daughter, and you think I want to joke and be buddy-buddy with you? Everyone knew I had a kid but me. What’s funny about that?”
She dropped her head. I brought it back up.
“Nah, don’t do that. No regrets, remember.”
“That doesn’t?—”
I kissed her before she finished the sentence. I wasn’t trying to hear whatever she was about to say. Skye had years to talk and chose silence and control. Now it was my turn, and we’d talk when I felt like it.
But God help me, I still loved the fuck out of this woman. My wife. The mother of my child. My mind was still trying to wrap itself around all of it. Everything I’d ever wanted dropped in my lap after I’d made peace with never having it again.
And I was mad as hell at her for it.
That was the shit giving me a headache. I could love her and want to wring her neck in the same breath, and both were true. She’d kissed me back hungry, desperate even, reaching for me, eager to make it right with her body the second words stopped working. That just pissed me off more.
Mostly because I’d kissed her first. All that warmth from the island, a whole week of having her back, I wanted that shit again, and I’d reached for it without thinking. I had no room to be mad at her for doing the same.
When she grabbed my shirt with both hands, I knocked them away and turned her around to face the mirror. Her eyes met mine in the glass, blazing, chest rising and falling fast.
