Page 104 of Ruin Me, Daddy

“Good.” He barely managed to get the word out past the tightness in his throat.

“Anyway. We fought, I went to bed. Cried myself to sleep. And woke up a few hours later to Ace fucking some groupie. In our bed. Practically right on top of me.”

He’d thought nothing she could tell him about Ace would shock him, not after everything else he’d done.

But he’d been wrong.

“I’m so fucking sorry, baby. I should have seen what he was, I should have protected you, I should have?—”

“You should stop blaming yourself for not being a goddamn psychic.” Sitting up now, eyes blazing with quiet fury, she glared at him. “You didn’t know, because I didn’t tell you. I kept all the bad shit to myself, on purpose. That’s on me. And as we’ve discussed, Ace’s actions are on him. Literally none of this is your fault, Elias.”

“That’s a big fucking pill to swallow.”

“I know.” Her expression softened. “And I love you so much for wanting to protect me, even those past versions of me. But all I want is to just move on and put as much of this behind us as possible.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She shrugged, but the action was directly contradicted by the storm of emotion in her eyes. “I didn’t want to break up the band. More, I didn’t want to take your family from you. I knew once you found out, there was no way you’d be able to stay friends with Ace. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—let you lose him, just because he hurt me.”

“So you made the decision about who I should be friends with for me?” Now it was anger bubbling inside him. Anger at himself, at Ace, at her. “You decided you knew better than me, and that I didn’t deserve to have all the facts about the man I called a brother.”

“I’m sorry.” Genuine remorse echoed in her words. “I’m so sorry, Ice. I know it was wrong, I just… I was so sure I was doing the right thing.”

“I know, baby.” Sighing, he pulled her in for a long, slow kiss. It did what he’d wanted it to, easing some of his own riotous emotions and draining some of the tension from her stiff muscles as well.

When the kiss ended, he fixed her with a stern glare. “I know you think you were doing the right thing. But you and I, we don’t have secrets. Never should have in the first place. And I am going to make sure you learn that lesson very, very well tonight.”

Unease flickered over her face. “What are you going to do?”

It gave him perverse pleasure to smirk at her question. “It’s a secret.”

“Oh you son of a?—”

Luckily for her, she was cut off by the buzzing of his phone on the couch cushion beside him. He froze when he glanced down and saw Valerie Alvarez’s name on the readout.

“Take it,” Silver urged softly. “It could be something important.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it could be.”

When he didn’t move, Silver leaned over and plucked the phone from the couch and hit the button to answer it. “Hi, Val. I’m doing good, actually.” She paused, her gaze locked on his as she listened. “Physical therapy is great. It’s helping a lot. I’ll be back to driving you crazy, spinning my drumsticks around at dinner in no time. Ice? Yeah, he’s right here. Just a sec.”

Talk to her, she mouthed, holding the phone to his ear. He had to swallow once, twice, three times before he could get his voice to work. “Hi, Mom.”

The familiar greeting slipped out and he winced, but before he could correct himself, Valerie’s voice came through the phone. “Hi. I was just… calling to check on Silver. And you.”

Closing his eyes against the waves of emotion crashing over him, he swallowed yet again as he took the phone from Silver. “We’re good. Ah, how are you and Dad?”

“We’re getting by. We’ve… we’ve been going to therapy. Richard and I.”

And there was his second shock of the morning. “Good. That’s good.”

Silence fell, awkward and filled with all the pain they shared even three thousand miles apart. He was just about to ask why she’d really called when she spoke again.

“Dad and I were thinking… What if we came out the weekend after Thanksgiving? We could spend a few days with you and Silver, get to know some of those new friends you’re always telling Richard about.”

He hadn’t even known there was still a knife in his heart until she yanked it out with that one simple request. “I’d like that. We’d love that, actually.”

“Okay. Um, I’ll have Richard start looking at flights and we’ll let you know as soon as we have plans.”

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