Page 68 of Thunder

"How long?"

"Since the spring."

The number hits my father like a fist and I see him absorb it, the months of it, all the Sunday suppers and church meetings and shared cups of coffee, every one of them with this secret sitting underneath.

"The spring." Pops’ chest is heaving now. "Months. Months of sittin' at my table, breakin' bread at my house, lookin' me in the eye in church, and the whole time you're—" He can't even finish it.

He scrubs a hand down his face and when it comes away his eyes are bright and terrible. "You looked me in the eye, Thunder. Every week. And you lied. Not once. Over and over, for months, you chose the lie."

"I did." Thunder's voice doesn't waver but I can see how it’s affecting him, the set of his shoulders, the way his hands stay open at his sides. "And I'll answer for it however you need me to. But you point that at me, Harlan. Not at her. This was my call as much as⁠—"

"Don't."

Phantom's on him then, fast for a big man, one hand fisting in the front of Thunder's cut, shoving him back into the equipment shed wall hard enough to rattle the tin.

"Don't you tell me where to point."

"Pops, stop—" I grab his arm and he doesn't even feel me.

Thunder could put him down.

That's what guts me, watching it.

Thunder is bigger, and even hurt he's the most dangerous man on this ranch.

He could break my father's hold and drop him in the dirt without half trying.

He doesn't.

He takes it.

He lets Pops slam him into the wall and fist his cut, getting right up in his face.

He keeps his hands open and down and his eyes level, because this is his president, and by every law of the world they both live in, Thunder's the one in the wrong.

And I can't stand it, watching the man I love hold still and let another man rattle him against a wall.

Every muscle in me wants to throw myself between them.

I've got my hands on my father's arm and I might as well be pulling on a fence post for all the good it does.

Thunder catches my eye over Pops’ shoulder, one flick, and there's a warning in it, a plea, a don't, and I understand what he's telling me even as it kills me.

He needs me to let this happen.

He needs to give Pops this, the shove and the fury and the right to it, because it's the only apology the club's world lets a man make with his body.

So, I let go of my father's arm.

I stand there with my fists clenched so hard my nails bite my palms and I let them have it out, and it's the hardest thing I've done since the day I learned what my mother did.

"You're an officer at my table," Phantom says, low and shaking, their faces inches apart. "You took an oath. You of all of 'em. And you decided my own daughter was somethin' you could just take and not tell me. Like I don't matter. Like twenty years of brotherhood buys me nothin'."

"It was never that."

"Then what was it!" It rips out of him, and for a second under the rage there's something that looks horribly like hurt. "What was it, if not you deciding I couldn't be trusted with the truth about my own girl?"

"Because I told him not to." My voice cracks out of me before I can think, and finally, finally, my father's head turns, his hand still fisted in Thunder's cut. "It was me, Pops."