Page 72 of Thunder

I don't say a word.

This part's hers.

All I do is move a half step closer so she can feel me at her shoulder, so she knows without looking that whatever she throws down, I'm standing on it with her, and her chin comes up that last defiant inch when she feels me there.

Nobody says anything.

The whole ranch has gone dead quiet around us, that thick summer silence with nothing in it but a windmill turning somewhere off past the barns, and Presley's words go into her father one by one like nails.

Because she's right. She's dead right, and every man standing in this gap knows it.

It finally sinks in for him.

I've spent almost fifteen years learning to read Harlan Lyle, the small tells under the hard face, and this one hits him somewhere he can't armor.

His jaw unclenches.

Something goes loose and stricken around his eyes.

For just a second the fury drops clean off him and what's left underneath is a tired man in his fifties who did a terrible thing for what he told himself were good reasons, hearing his youngest daughter lay out the bill.

He opens his mouth.

Nothing comes.

Because there's no answer to it.

There's no version of I did it to protect the family that holds up when his daughter's standing in front of him listing everything the protection cost.

He taught his kids that secrets keep the people you love safe, and every one of them learned the opposite the hard way, and now here we all are.

"Presley," he finally says, and his voice is wrecked. "You don't understand what I was tryin' to⁠—"

"I understand better than anybody." She's crying now, but her voice stays level. "That's the whole issue. I understand exactly why you did it, because I just spent half a year doing the same thing. That's what you gave me, Pops. That's my inheritance. I learned to lie to the people I love to keep them safe, and I learned it from you."

That does it.

Not the anger.

The truth.

Phantom takes a step back like she shoved him, and for one raw second his face just crumples, and I think, there it is, that's the road back, he heard her⁠—

And then the armor slams down.

Because Harlan Lyle doesn't fall apart in a ranch yard in front of his sergeant at arms, not even now, not even wrecked.

He pulls it all back in behind that hard face and squares his shoulders and I know we've lost him for today, that whatever just cracked open is going to scab over before he lets any of us see it work.

"I can't do this right now." His voice comes out flat and scraped raw. "I can't stand here and look at the both of you and think straight.

I need—" He shakes his head. "I need to not be here."

He turns to go.

Gets a few steps away and stops.

He doesn't turn all the way around.