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“Cadence, I don’t know what the hell is going on but you need to talk to me. Is there an issue with Gracie? Is someone looking for her, for you? I can help if you just…”
“You can’t help,” I yelled, throwing my hands up. “There’s nothing you or anyone else can do to stop him if he wants to take her from me and if he finds out about her he will try. That article is not a big deal for you but it’s everything to me. My entire life.She’smy entire life and he will do whatever he can to ruin whatever happiness I have. She is my happiness, Jaah. I have to go.”
“Gracie’s father is alive?”
I frowned at him. “What?”
“You said he wasn’t in her life. That he never held her but that he wouldn’t want her anyway. I thought that meant he was…”
“Dead?” I swallowed hard. “No, he’s not dead, he just doesn’t know about her. I left so he wouldn’t find out because I knew that had I stayed…”
His eyes were dark and stormy, angry and full of promises that I didn’t like. “If you had stayed then what, Cadence?”
I vehemently shook my head and stepped away from him. “It’s not important. I have to go.”
“You’re running and running won’t fix whatever is going on. Just fucking talk to me. Who is Gracie’s father?”
“I can’t tell you who he is.”
“Then tell me about Honor?”
The accusation was there. His eyes narrowed at me suspiciously. I shifted nervously, not ready to have that conversation, or even if I ever wanted to, with him. He and I were temporary. Let today be today.
“I have to go.”
“So you’re going to just run? Run from me the same way you ran from her father, whoever the fuck he is. I might not have all the answers but you’ve given me enough to know that you’re running, Cadence. What has that gotten you beside the fear you’re experiencing right now?”
I turned and rushed back to him. “You don’t know shit about me same as I don’t know shit about you. That was our deal remember? That’s the deal we made. Keep things simple, be in the moment. I held up my end. You need to do the same. Moment’s over, Sol.”
His leer was enough to have me backing down just a bit. None of this was his fault, it was mine.
I’d made the decision to accept him into my life. I was the one who had been careless. Watching Jaasir in this moment with his hard lines and coiled strength only made me feel that much worse.
“Sol? That’s what the fuck we’re doing? Okay bet. I see what it is.” His tone was gruff and angry.
I felt raw and numb because for one minute of my life, just one minute with him, I was happy. That was all ending.
His jaw clenched incredibly tight and I was positive I heard his back teeth crack from the pressure the gesture created. I blinked at him not sure what to say to make this right. If it could be right.
“I’m sorry.”
If it was possible, his jaw locked tighter before he twisted the stake this situation had thrust into my heart. “Yeah me too but what the fuck was I expecting. Not like this could be more than what it was.”
He pushed past me, moving into the bathroom. I waited until the door slammed before grabbing my shoes and keys, then making my way to the front door. No matter how good this felt it was a mistake, one I was going to have to pay a hefty price for.
eleven
Sol.
When I came out the bathroom, Cadence wasn’t waiting for me. Kaliq was. He was standing in my doorway. Something he’d done plenty of times since being here but this time I could feel the tension crawling through him.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
I snatched on a shirt and shouldered past my brother. He followed but I expected him to. In the kitchen while I tossed things around to prepare a bowl of cereal, he watched me from leaned against the counter next to the refrigerator.
The house was old. Updated with new appliances, but still old, and that meant a tiny kitchen because it had been built in the early seventies when massive kitchens weren’t a thing.
