Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 55769 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55769 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
Ava’s father’s face lost a little color, and he opened his mouth, but Luke spoke again before he could say anything.
“Where you been Adrian?”
He asked, but he knew.
Ava said she didn’t want him looking for her dad, but after surviving five Rock Chicks, and especially what his woman went through, Luke wasn’t leaving anything to chance. Ava had taken enough knocks from her family, she wasn’t going to take any more. And if she had to, he was going to do what he could to soften the blow.
So he knew exactly where Adrian had been for fourteen years, and that was a part—a small part but an important part—of why Luke was so…goddamned…pissed.
“Luke—” Adrian began.
“Nice tan. Livin’ it up while your wife tried to figure out how to finish raisin’ three girls after you left?” Luke pushed.
Color started to replace the pale, and Luke wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment or anger.
He had zero fucks to give to that too.
The words sounded tight when the man spoke, “You were always close to Ava.”
“Yeah,” Luke confirmed. “I was always close to Ava.”
“So I thought maybe…you still were.”
Luke didn’t reply to that, but he didn’t like where this was going.
He could guess this was where it was going, but he wouldn’t let his mind go there because he was hanging by a thread already. He didn’t need to make it snap.
Adrian took in a visible deep breath and let it out saying, “Listen, you haven’t made what you feel about the decision I made all those years ago a secret—”
Luke cut in, “Nope, I made that pretty plain a few seconds ago. But I got more words on that if you want ’em.”
Adrian’s expression now turned hard. “No. I wanted to know if you might help me find my daughter. Ava.”
Yup.
That was what he wouldn’t let himself guess.
Luke felt Lee shift.
He knew why. The energy in the room changed, not in a good way, and it was all coming from Luke.
“I think I already have your answer,” Adrian muttered. “So I’ll be going. I can find her myself.”
“You aren’t fuckin’ findin’ her, Adrian,” Luke said between his teeth, the words an unmistakable threat, and Adrian didn’t miss it. Luke knew that when Adrian went completely still and stared at him. “Not interested in Marilyn and Sofia?” he asked.
“I thought I’d start with Ava.”
“Strange choice, seein’ as she was the one you fucked over the most.”
Adrian flinched.
Oh yeah.
He knew it.
“Yeah,” Luke said low.
Another threat.
So much of one, Lee murmured, “Luke.”
“I got it,” Luke replied to Lee without taking his eyes off Adrian.
“You don’t understand what it was like in that house,” Adrian shared tersely.
He understood. He understood it even before he saw Adrian for the first time in a decade and a half, looking younger than his years, fit and untroubled. Being in that house with Christine, Marilyn and Sofia had taken a physical toll on him as well as a mental one. That had been obvious. Leaving them changed his life for the better. That was obvious too.
And Luke knew all of it, the man’s whole story, so he knew Adrian left the bad and found himself a whole load of good.
Still.
“I don’t give a fuck what it was like.”
“Luke—”
“Adrian,” he leaned toward the man, “she needed you.” He got a lock on it and leaned back. “Not just like every girl needs her father. Ava…needed…you. They shredded her after you left. Tore her to pieces.”
Another flinch.
Fuck this guy.
“Is she okay?” Adrian asked after he recovered.
“She’s off limits to you, that’s what she is.”
It took some effort, but the man straightened his shoulders and declared, “She’s my daughter.”
“Yeah, but she’s my woman.”
The man’s mouth dropped open.
Then, like he couldn’t stop it, a smile bloomed on his face and a light lit in his eyes before he mumbled to himself, “I knew it. I knew you two would get together. She just had to get a little older. She loved you like crazy, and you felt the same. But big brother love turns, I see, when the flower fully blooms.”
“I’m not reminiscing with you, Adrian. I’m tellin’ you to go back where you came from and leave this alone.”
The hard came back to his face. “That’s not your decision to make.”
“No. It isn’t. But a coupla months ago, when I asked her if she wanted me to find you for her, she said no. So there you go.”
The man blanched and some of his vim and vigor leaked out. “She said no?”
“She said no,” Luke confirmed.
“Maybe, if she knows—” Adrian tried.
Luke cut him off. “Maybe if she knows you were here, talkin’ to me, she’d change her mind. Maybe if she knows, after half of her lifetime you finally came lookin’ for her, she might have it in her heart to hear what you have to say. And I’ll tell her that, Adrian. She deserves to know. And when I tell her, I’ll also tell her you’ve been in Castle Rock the last fourteen years. Thirty fuckin’ miles away and nothing. Not a dollar to help her pay for college. Not a birthday card so she knows she’s on your mind. Not…dick. And you were thirty…miles…away.”