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But Benson’s voice came through first.
“You know, don’t you?” Benson said to Indy.
Indy blinked twice, her gaze still fixed on Rhett’s eyes, unflinching in its honesty, devoid of both accusation and judgement. “Yes.”
Rhett’s heart sank.
Benson chuckled. “How?”
Indy smiled. “It’s a long story. Maybe we’ll tell you someday.”
“We? Oh, hell, I cannot wait to give Kaiser thetold-you-sotreatment.” Benson was grinning now, and Rhett felt his own blood start to heat up when he saw how Indy’s pretty face lit up in a smile as she moved a step closer to her big Delta protector, flashed a warm look in Benson’s direction likehewas more of a father than Rhett, like everyone in the room was in on some private joke except Rhett, like maybe Rhettwasthe fucking joke.
“Youknow?” Rhett snarled, the words finally making their way out. “What exactly do you know? Do you know that Benson lied to me, lied to your mother, lied to you?”
Indy turned that heartbreakingly unaffected gaze back to Rhett. “I know Benson saved my life twice. Just like I know you tried to kill me twice.” She shrugged. “Oh, don’t worry, so did my mother. Twice. But I don’t hold grudges. No family is perfect, I guess.” She smiled now, still calm and composed like she’d already processed it all, had somehow managed to unearth and overcome every hidden emotion, pull every psychic trigger, discharge all those internal weapons and render them harmless, render herself indestructible.
At first Rhett couldn’t understand the dark humor. He wondered if his daughter was a cold-hearted psychopath, incapable of normal human emotion—not so different from Mama and Papa after all.
But that wasn’t it.
Rhett knew that wasn’t it.
He already sensed Indy had somehow gotten the best of him and Scarlet, not the worst.
He studied her face, watched her eyes.
And then in a flash he understood.
She’s faced her own shadow and won the battle, Rhett realized with a sudden rush of fatherly pride, furious and frantic, roaring and raucous, thundering and terrific. Hell, she’s faced her own shadow and integrated it, accepted it, embraced her darkness before it destroyed her light.
That’s the secret behind her unflinchingly honest gaze, that innocent but knowing look devoid of judgement, cleansed of hatred, purged of anger.
Yes, this woman had been through an experience that forced her shadow into the light, forced her to face that shadow, to do battle with her own darkness.
And somehow she won that battle.
Somehow she came through it intact instead of insane, complete instead of crushed, magnificent instead of mad.
Rhett didn’t know how, but then he saw the deadly protective glint in Ice’s eyes and he saw how, felt how, understood how his daughter made it through her dark night of the psyche, her struggle with the serpent, her dance with the demon.
Love.
And suddenly Rhett was overwhelmed by it. It flooded his heart with warmth, spun his consciousness into circles, speckled his vision with stars.
He stood there paralyzed with psychic pleasure, feeling things moving into place in his own psyche, like he was integrating the last missing pieces of his own splintered shadow.
Rhett saw it in his mind as it was happening, understood that the shadow was neither dark nor light, that a man’s shadow contained only what was hidden, only what he refused to bring to the light, buried in the darkness of night.
Rhett’s entire life had been deception and betrayal.
Which meant Rhett’s shadow contained not hatred but love, not cruelty but compassion, not anger but adoration.
And it was all coming out now.
She brought it out in me, Rhett understood in speechless delight as he felt himself becoming whole in a way he didn’t imagine possible, complete in a way that almost destroyed him.
He stood there like a palm swaying in a desert storm, not sure if anyone could tell from the outside what was happening on the inside.
