Page 10 of The Last Dance You Saved
Somehow, that hurt even more. It shouldn’t. I’d known what this was from the moment he’d stood up in the piano bar and answered my dare. One night. He wasn’t bringing the woman he was dating home to meet his family. This was supposed to be two people sharing a few hours of pleasure and respite. And yet, the humiliating sting of being shuffled out the door like a bad seed burned through me.
“Don’t sweat it, Slick. I’m sure I can find Leo or Deke or some other willing partner to finish what you couldn’t.” Something a lot like fury flashed over his face before the wall came down again. I had no intention of doing anything but running back to my room and washing away the embarrassment, but he didn’t need to know that. He didn’t need to know his kisses would be impossible to replace tonight. Maybe ever. Any others would seem like cheap knockoffs.
I raised a brow at his hand holding the door open.
His jaw clenched, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as if he was going to say something, but instead, he let go and stepped back. His intense gaze remained locked on me while the doors closed.
I sagged back against the wall, deflating immediately.
Stupid. The entire night had been stupid. What had I been thinking? I hadn’t come to Las Vegas to get laid. I hadn’t even really come for the dart tournament. I’d come to get answers for my family. To find the truth about our past that we may not like and may be unable to set right.
I’d forget about tonight. I’d put it behind me and concentrate on finding out if our McFlannigan ancestors had really been the liars and thieves I’d started to fear they had been. The honor my sheriff brother served with, the noble way Ryder and Gia had taken down a cartel…it might all have been for nothing if, at our core, we were nothing more than the offspring of a mob family who’d ravaged the West.
Chapter Four
Rafe
DON’T WE ALL
Performed by Elle Langley
As the elevator doors shut, abattle waged in me stronger than I’d fought in a very long time. Maybe since I’d stood at the gate of the ranch all those years ago and debated leaving. Because the idea of Sadie looking at some other man with those blue eyes sizzling with lust, the idea of some other man setting his hands on that soft silky skin, made every single fiber of my being revolt.
She was supposed to be mine.
For tonight only, I reminded myself.
I wouldn’t have kept her. I would have sent her on her way just as I’d sent every woman before her. Every woman since Lauren. So, it certainly wasn’t my business if she hooked up with some other guy.
And yet, the thought of her giving those mewls and moans and sweet mouth to someone else made me want to pound my fist through the wall. It made me want to step inside the elevator and knock down the door of whatever room she was in. I could find out. I owned the damned place.
I could and would finish what I’d started.
Then, my gaze landed on the door to the penthouse where my daughter sat waiting. A daughter I didn’t know how to connect with and who hated me as much as I’d once thought I’d hated her mother and my brother.
A teenager who’d done something unbelievably rash and a bit frightening.
Finishing what I’d started with Sadie was the last thing I had the ability to do at the moment.
I dragged my hand through my hair and tucked in my shirt before striding back into the penthouse and making my way to Fallon’s room. The door was open, even though I’d shut it, and my stomach fell, hoping she hadn’t seen me escorting Sadie out. I had no intention of explaining who Sadie was and why she’d been in our home. This was why I didn’t bring women here. My teeth ground together in frustration—at myself as much as at my daughter.
I watched as she paced in front of her bed, chewing her cuticles.
“What the hell were you thinking, Fallon?”
She glanced up with wide and angry eyes. My eyes. She had Lauren’s blond waves, but it was my brown irises and thick brows that stared back at me. For probably the millionth time since she’d been born, I thought it should be my brother’s gray ones filling up her petite face. She should have been his. Instead, this fiery girl, simmering with fury, was mine. She’d been born into a contentious love triangle that had nothing to do with her and yet impacted her every day.
She placed her hands on her hips and glared at me. “You’re the only one who can do something! And you won’t! I had to come and try to change your mind.”
“By flying a damn plane on your own?” When she’d told me she’d flown the ranch’s Cessna from California to Vegas by herself, I’d thought I was going to have an actual heart attack. The muscles in my chest had felt like they’d atrophied. I silently cursed Spencer for having taught her to pilot it to begin with. One more thing to hold against my dead brother. “You don’t even have your official license yet, and even if you did, no one should fly on their own, especially not a fourteen-year-old kid! What would you have done if something had gone wrong? What would I have done?”
She scoffed. “If something had gone wrong, then you’d finally be free of me. You could have continued to screw around with whomever you wanted without worrying about some kid interrupting you.”
Both statements hit like a dart to my chest and showcased just how shitty of a job I’d done as her father. Fallon’s very existence was a reminder of all the things I’d done right and wrong in my life, but I wouldn’t give her up just to undo those mistakes. She was the only person I allowed myself to truly love. Everything I’d done since Lauren got pregnant had been to ensure my daughter had the best life.
And to prove you were better than your brother, the devil taunted.
“It would have crushed me to lose you, Fallon,” I said, hoping she could hear the absolute truth ringing through my voice. “And it would have absolutely destroyed your mother. She’s just barely resurfacing after losing Spence. She would have drowned completely if she’d lost you too.”
