Page 66 of The Last One You Loved
When I left her room, I stopped outside the guest room door, tempted to look in on McKenna as well. Would she be passed out? Golden hair spread out around her like Mila’s? Would her face be soft and peaceful? I put my hand on the knob, debating. If she was awake, I could pretend I just wanted her to know I was home. I could ask how Mila had been and if they’d gotten along. When really, what I wanted to do was go in and finish what we’d started in my office. I wanted to strip her down until she was naked and squirming beneath me. I wanted to touch and lick and kiss every inch of her.
My body was no longer tired. It was as awake as my brain.
I forced myself away from the door and down the hall to my room. The cold shower did nothing to relax me, and my hand did nothing to assuage the ache I felt for her, an ache that had barely been hidden in the years she’d been gone and now had bloomed fully back to life. I’d always been an idiot when it came to her. Now, I was risking my little girl’s heart as well as mine. I was risking some asshole being able to stake a claim on my daughter.
My heart clenched, and the hard-on I’d been sporting since standing outside McK’s room disappeared. McKenna was right. I had to find Trap and see if he knew who had fathered Mila. If I could prove it was one of the West Gears, I doubted any judge in their right mind would grant them custody, not only because they were criminals but because they were transient, traveling between their headquarters here and another club farther south.
This brought a frown to my face. The Gears usually spent the winter down closer to Baton Rouge, and I wasn’t sure what was holding them up this year. The second shipment we’d taken tonight was still nothing—appliances that had disappeared from a warehouse in Missouri—and yet, it felt like I was missing something that should have been screaming in my face. Something bigger than this was in the works, and it made the back of my neck itch, as if I had a reaper breathing down it.
When I finally climbed into bed, it was only to toss and turn through the wee hours until gray began to slice its way through the partially closed shutters. I gave up, putting on the uniform it felt like I’d just stepped out of and heading into the living area.
Rianne, Mila, and McKenna were at the counter, talking in hushed voices over plates filled with breakfast burritos. McKenna saw me first, eyes narrowing in as she assessed my face. I was sure I looked as bad as I felt, and the beard made me look even scragglier. I should get around to shaving it.
“Daddy!” Mila jumped down and ran to me, and I picked her up. She squeezed me as if I’d been gone a month. I held her tight, inhaling her scent, and kissed the side of her head before putting her down again. “I missed readingThe Day the Unicorns Saved the Worldwith you. McKenna tried her very best to do the voices, but she isn’t as good as you. I told her she just had to keep practicing, which is what you tell me to do when I’m not so good at something.”
“Breathe, Bug-a-Boo.”
She stopped and inhaled sharply, and I found McKenna’s gaze with mine. She was smiling, a soft smile, but this time, it was her real one, making her uniquely colored eyes glimmer and glow and the corners crinkle. It caught my breath, holding it captive until I thought I’d keel over.
“I left you a burrito in the microwave,” Rianne said, and I reluctantly turned away from McKenna to look at our old teacher. I moved around the island to give her a side hug.
“Thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without you,” I told her.
“Starve,” she retorted.
“We’d just eat at Tillie’s every night. Right, Daddy? Or maybe at the Dairy Queen. Or maybe at Uncle Phil’s, except I’m not really supposed to be at Uncle Phil’s at night because it’s forgrown-ups,” Mila whispered the last word at McKenna. “And Daddy says he and Uncle Phil don’t always get along because Uncle Phil can be asnake.”
McKenna laughed.
“Mila.” I frowned.
“Oops. I wasn’t supposed to say that. I overheard Daddy telling Auntie Gemma, and he says I’m not supposed to repeat other people’s conversations even if I do have ears like a barn owl.” Mila pattered away as she bounced from one foot to the other. “McKenna, did you know that owls can turn their heads almost completely around?”
McKenna nodded, but Rianne put a hand over Mila’s mouth before she said anything else. “On that random fact, chick-a-dee, why don’t you go get your coat and backpack on so I can take you to school, and your daddy and McKenna can have their own conversation.”
I rolled my eyes, heading for the coffee pot and the food in the microwave.
Once Mila had pulled on her coat and backpack, she came running back to give me a goodbye hug and kiss. “Love you, Daddy!”
“Love you more, Bug-a-Boo. Be good. Learn a lot.”
“I always do!”
Then she and Rianne were out the door, and silence settled down around us.
I sat at the island, leaving two stools between McKenna and me in order to stop myself from pulling her from it and kissing her good morning the way I wanted to. I couldn’t let myself get used to this. To her. She’d likely be gone before the month was up.
“It must be hard,” she said, and I tried not to choke as my fifth-grade-boy brain went to places it shouldn’t.
I looked over my burrito at her and grunted out, “What?”
“Your schedule—sometimes seeing her at night, sometimes not.”
I breathed out a big sigh, put the burrito down, and took a sip of coffee before responding. “Honestly, you’ve kind of seen my schedule at its worst. It’s mostly an eight to five gig. There isn’t a lot of activity in Winter County that can’t wait until morning.”
She didn’t say anything, and I risked a conversation I didn’t really want to have. “You used to say you didn’t want kids, but were you and the fiancé planning on having them?”
“Kerry. His name was Kerry, and he wanted them, but I didn’t. We’d agreed to consider adoption but not until we’d both been in our jobs for at least five years.”
