AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah, she really is. She’s more than I deserve—that’s for sure. If it wasn’t for her, I’d have already hauled your ass home. I guess she’s giving me patience in my golden years.” He paused, then sighed softly. “That doesn’t change that I really don’t like you being here with them. I don’t know what exactly they’re up to, but they don’t have the backgrounds of men you’d meet normally.”
I pressed my lips together, unwilling to lie to him.
“And you don’t want to tell me, huh? I should have seen that coming. Tell me you know who they really are, though. I need to know that you’re in this with your eyes open, at least.”
“I know who they are.”
“All of it?”
I nodded, shuffling my foot along the kitchen tile. “I know about Vance’s less than stellar dating history. Hayden, well, mostly he’s just overprotective and horrible with women. Char cons people and lies more than Dane.”
“And Tor?” Jarrod asked that last one in a knowing tone.
“Yeah, I know he kills people.” Admitting it out loud made my stomach lurch, but I tried not to let that show.
“And you’re okay with that?”
“How can I look down on him when Colton does the same thing? Whenyou’vedone the same thing?”
Jarrod made a soft sound as though to admit to my point. “They’ve gotten serious the last five years, all of them seeming to cut ties with most of their old lives. I don’t know what exactly they’re after, but I’m sure it’s nothing good. Nobody changes their entire life like that unless it’s for something big. I’m afraid you’re getting into something that’s more than you can handle.”
He didn’t give me time to respond—though what was there to say more than I already had? If he didn’t want to trust me, to think I could handle it, then I couldn’t say anything else to convince him of it.
“I know I need to not be so worried about you. You’re a smart girl, and you’re tough, but when I look at you, I see Nem.”
“Why? We don’t look much alike, and I know I don’t live up to her.”
“Because I failed her. I thought she’d be okay, that she’d be better off without me, so I stayed away. In the end, it almost killed her. When I saw you bleeding that night, it felt like looking at her again that night when I saved her. You have no idea how it feels to watch the life slip away from your child in your arms, to know you’re responsible for it. I brought Nem back, but just barely, and when you were hurt, it felt like going through it all over again.”
Jarrod’s voice was so soft that it hardly rose above a whisper. I held my breath to keep him talking, afraid the least bit of noise or movement from me would dam up the unexpected flow of information.
“So when I act like this, when I do too much, it isn’t because I don’t trust you. It’s because even if we don’t share any blood, I see you as my daughter, too, and I don’t want to see my children suffer ever again.” He laughed and shook his head. “That’s pretty sad, huh? So much for my reputation.”
His words burned, ones that were so much more than I could have imagined. It was like he knew how little I trusted myself, how much I worried about where I fit into their life, their family, how isolated and different I felt. Jarrod’s words told me I’d gotten that wrong, that he’d accepted me as his own, that he looked after me because he wanted to—not because he was required to.
It took me back to when I’d been recovering—when we’d both been recovering from wounds my father had inflicted on us—and he’d played rom-coms for me, to try to calm me. He’d stayed with me, all night for when the nightmares had come, to make sure I knew I wasn’t alone.
He was stubborn and overbearing and dangerous, but he put everything aside to protect me. The fact he wasn’t my biological father didn’t matter—he’d chosen to take up that role, and I knew I owed a lot of who and what I was now to that and to him.
So I did the thing I knew he’d hate, but too damned bad. I turned and threw my arms around him in a tight hug.
He froze at first. This man who had done unspeakable things, who hadn’t blinked when standing against four full-grown men, behaved like a fainting goat from a little hug.
After a long moment, he wrapped his arms around me as well, the action awkward, making me suspect he wasn’t used to it. Then again, Nem wasn’t the hugging type, so he probably didn’t have a clue how to interact with me.
I guess we’re both figuring that out.
His awkwardness, the things he did that annoyed the hell out of me, they all made more sense now. They were his pretty terrible and clumsy attempts to take care of me.
“Thank you,” I told him, keeping my voice low, hoping he understood that I meant about everything.
He squeezed me tight for a moment, the touch feeling like a lot of fear. Then again, he had to face his own past to let me live my life, something that hadn’t really occurred to me before.
When he let go and stepped back, his gaze turned toward the floor as though unsure how to deal with the horror of a hug. He rubbed the back of his neck.
And just like that, he gave me the confidence boost I’d needed, a reminder of what I’d overcome and who I had behind me. If I could survive so much, I could deal with anything that came my way.
Chapter Twelve
