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He lifted his head. “So would I.”
I exhaled and moved around my desk, dropping into my chair. “She didn’t sign it. Ally. She wouldn’t. Even when she said she had, it wasn’t legal. She didn’t want a contract between us. If I’d been thinking straight—hell, if I’d been less of a coward—I never would have either.”
When my father didn’t speak, I leaned forward and braced my forearms on the desk. “I don’t know why you don’t like her, but I hope to God it’s not for the reason I think. Because all these years, I’ve told myself there’s some good in you, some decency. If you’ve let your feelings about her bank account color your attitude toward her all these years…” I trailed off befo
re I said something I probably wouldn’t regret.
Defending Ally came before everything else except protecting my daughter.
“You would see it that way,” he said tiredly, and I jerked up my head, shocked to hear the fatigue in his tone.
My father was a bull of a man. Strong, healthy, larger than life in every way. Years had passed since I’d really looked at him and seen him as anything but a force of nature.
Until now. Now the lines on his face seemed like a roadmap, where most of the best days of his life were behind him.
I swallowed hard. “Then explain it to me. Please.”
“She has the power to break you.”
“You just insinuated I don’t love her, and now you’re saying she could break me?”
“I wanted to see if you truly knew your own mind yet, or if you were just playing games with a future you weren’t ready for.” His shoulders relaxed. “Maybe it’s finally time.”
Words left me. Just completely vanished from my head.
“I was you once.” He leaned back in his chair. “I loved your mother more than was wise, and what did it get me?”
“Christ, did everyone see what I couldn’t when it came to me and Ally?” I exhaled. “What I didn’t have the balls to acknowledge?”
“You were smart enough to tread gently. Because you knew. You understood that once you committed to her, there was no going back.”
I wasn’t sure he was saying that as a positive thing, but I nodded. “You’re right. There isn’t. I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her.”
Coming clean didn’t scare me anymore. The truth just filled me with a sense of rightness. Like I’d been traveling down a road with my headlights off, and now I’d finally turned them on.
My future was right in front of me, and all I had to do was reach out and take it. And nurture it, and care for it, and protect it with everything I was.
My father nodded and steepled his hands over the folder in his lap. “Does she feel the same?”
“I don’t know. I hope so. I think so, maybe.” I blew out a breath. “But if she doesn’t, I’m a patient man. I’ll just keep at her until she has no choice.”
He surprised me by laughing. “Stubborn to a fault, you and your brother.”
Questions sprung to my mind about what he’d said about my mother having a child with another man, questions I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear the answers to. Not now. Today Ally and Laurie and our future family was where my head was at. As well as my heart.
“Yeah. Not too bright when it comes to pleasing a woman either,” I added. My father coughed and I smiled. “Not like that. We’re both good there. Well, I know I am. He’s probably just all talk.”
“He is about most things.”
My smile grew. “I meant more about saying the words, giving out the romance. I kinda suck at that.”
“Oprah,” he said gravely.
I laughed. “What?”
“She told women not to settle. Now they all want a free car and a fairy tale.”
Back to the fairy tale. Obviously the universe was trying to send me a message. I was listening.
