by Aiden Bates
Some of us grew up to be social workers. Unfortunately, on days like today, the risks of being a social worker had been a lot higher than the rewards.
A wave of tiny children poured out of the mouth of the school, running and shouting like a horde of vikings about to lay waste to the shores of the outside world. As the pick-up line inched forward, I spotted Lissa immediately. She was hanging back, ever polite, her school uniform still perfectly unwrinkled like she’d barely even played in it throughout the day. She waited until the other children had run along or moved aside until she made her way to my car.
I took one look at her and chuckled. Her uniform might’ve been deceptively pristine, but her face told a different story.
“Miss Murray is still letting you draw on your face, huh?” I tracked the bright green four-leaf clover that marked Lissa’s cheek just beneath one eye. It brought out the green in her hazels, turning them a shade that couldn’t be the further from my own brown irises. “I thought we agreed you were going to stop that.”
“We did,” Lissa chirped, then nodded smartly. “But I had an inspiration, Daddy. So Miss Murray said it was probably okay.”
I chuckled again and rolled my eyes. Miss Murray was young, fresh out of an MA in education after she’d finished an art undergrad at Bard College. She was sweet-tempered, full of energy and patience and enthusiasm. My father, of course, had looked Miss Murray up as soon as Lissa had started class at Willow Heights, the public school on this side of Spartanburg, and immediately decided that he hated the woman. Hippy-dippy, bra-burning fattie, were his exact words on the subject of Miss Murray, in fact. I wasn’t sure what he hated more—the idea of Lissa being taught the ABCs by a woman who was still unmarried at the ripe old age of twenty-five, or the thought that his granddaughter receiving anything so plebeian as a public eductation in general.
It didn’t matter, in the end. My father didn’t have any say on where Lissa went to school—or anything about either of our lives anymore, for that matter. At least I knew that Lissa would be better off under Miss Murray’s wing than she would’ve been taking Latin and reading Nietzsche for Adolescents at my father’s favorite school in the area, Spartan Prep.
“We’ll wash it off when we get home,” I relented. A little washable marker had never hurt anyone, I supposed. “You buckled up?”
Lissa made a tiny noise of annoyance then clicked her seat belt into place. “I am now.”
“Good.” I put the car into drive, glancing back one more time at the little flash of green on her cheek and in her eyes. “Then how about you tell me about your day?”
The whole ride home, Lissa’s elfin little voice was like music to my exhausted ears. I’d spent half the day fielding calls from an entire host of angry, “concerned” parents at the elementary school across town, Spartanburg Community, about a little boy Lissa’s age who’d been acting out to the point that he’d been suspended. The other half had been spent listening to the struggles of the boy’s single Omega father, one year sober and doing his best to keep his son in check after finally getting custody back again.
It was turning out to be more than just an uphill battle. Climbing Everest would’ve been easier. Especially since the boy, Michael, had stopped talking to me altogether and started screaming while throwing the new toys his father had bought him at my head instead.
By comparison to the other things I’d heard today, Lissa’s chattering about art class, hopscotch on the playground and her annoyance at her reading lessons was like an aural vacation.
Maybe my ears didn’t need to go in the glove compartment after all.
When we got home, I whipped up a quick snack of peanut butter and apple slices then set Lissa up at the kitchen table to do her homework. I had to watch her carefully, checking in every few minutes to make sure she didn’t switch to doodling on the back of her papers, but for the moment, she seemed happy to work on tracing the letter E instead of drawing elephants instead.
It was a good thing, too. We’d barely been home for half an hour before my cell rang, which made me groan. A second groan followed when I saw who was calling.
Congressman Rasner. I’d changed Dad’s name in my phone shortly after Lissa was born, when he’d started publicly opposing Omega workplace rights bills and it had become apparent that maintaining his image for his Alpha-worshipping fanbase was more important than protecting the rights of Omegas like me, his only son. We’d been estranged ever since, but he still liked to pretend to check in more frequently than I liked.
I held the phone in my hand for a moment before I answered, wondering what he wanted this time. Pleasant conversation, or was he just going to insist that we put Lissa on ADD medication again?
The chances that it was the latter were better than I wanted to admit.
“Hey, Dad.” My voice was a monotone as I finally picked up the call. “How’re you doing?”
“You read this new report out on Willow Heights?” Dad’s own voice was dripping with poison. He ignored my question in the same way he ignored anything else that didn’t immediately serve a purpose for him, disregarding it completely. “Might as well be sending the girl to Spartanburg Community at this rate.”
I glanced at the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink, briefly considering shoving my phone into it and flipping the switch, then fought back a sigh. “We’ve been over this before, Dad. Willow Heights is a good public school. It’s nice. Lots of perfectly well-behaved kids go there. You should see the uniforms.”
“Uniforms, pff. A school uniform won’t get Lissa into Yale. I understand that private schools are expensive on your salary—” He said the word like my paycheck was a lie I made up to stop from getting put in time out— “But if you need money, Daniel, I’m happy to finance her Spartan Prep tuition. We need to get the girl somewhere she can commune with her equals, not—”
“Dad. Is this the only reason you called?” Ever since our big falling out over the Omega workplace bill, my father’s phonecalls had been increasingly one-track-minded. If he wasn’t trying to convince me to switch Lissa over to a pretentious private school, he was suggesting we show up for a photo op for his reelection campaign or attempting to bully me into writing a think piece for the Wall Street Journal on how great it had been to be raised by a hard-working single Alpha ever since my Omega dad had died.
None of which was ever going to happen. All of which he should have realized by now.
“Can’t a grandfather be interested in his granddaughter’s education anymore?” The hurt in Dad’s voice was well-practiced. Just as much of an act as anything else he did when he wanted something. “This Willow Heights place, Daniel—my assistant pulled up the statistics for me over lunch today. The number of these Willow kids that get pushed off onto some third-rate community college, or god forbid, a vocational school—”
I glanced down at Lissa’s homework and wondered if it was even worth pointing out to my father how insane it was to be thinking of college when she was still learning to write the alphabet. Probably not—especially since Lissa had already taken note of my distraction and flipped her homework over to doodle again.
“Look, Dad, I gotta go. Lissa needs homework help. Have a good one, okay?”
“Daniel, dammit, if the girl isn’t being challenged, then how the—”
I hung up the phone and tucked it into my pocket as I moved over Lissa, clearing my throat.
She glanced up at me, wide-eyed and the very portrait of innocence. “How’s grandpa, Daddy?”
“He’s fine,” I lied. He’s a jerk, would have been more accurate. “What are we drawing, hon? You know you’ve got to finish your homework before you work on your art.”
Lissa grinned, gap-toothed and proud as she tapped her oversized blue pencil to the person-shaped drawing she’d been making. “Oh, I’m just drawing the man. He’s so handsome, I had another inspiration.”
“The man?” I furrowed my brow and placed a hand on her shoulder to lean a little closer.
<
br /> Despite her age, Lissa was a good enough artist that I could make out a bomber jacket scribbled over extra-broad shoulders. There was a smudge over the man’s face where she’d erased his nose several times. Two dark green dots for eyes that she’d added with a Crayola from her little yellow box of crayons. He didn’t look like something from Lissa’s imagination—he looked like someone she was drawing from memory. Maybe a television show.
Maybe even real life.
“Who’s the man, sweetheart?” I asked.
“He’s just the man.” Lissa shrugged, glanced out the big picture window toward the driveway then turned back to scratching the shape of a nose again. “The one that’s outside.”
There were a few times in fatherhood when your blood suddenly ran cold. I’d felt it the first time Lissa had gotten a bad fever as a toddler. I’d been so scared that I’d called my dad to meet me at the hospital, even though we’d already had our falling out at the time, just so I wouldn’t have to face the fear of losing her alone. I’d had it again at the mall one Christmas, when Lissa had run off to sit on Santa’s lap while I was running my card. It was like the entire contents of my stomach had turned to mercury, churning and chilled. Like someone had just cracked a raw egg over my head, the yolk and white running down the back of my neck in a sickly slime.
Like someone had just walked over my grave.
“Go finish your drawing in your room.” There was a little tremble in my voice, one that I had to fight back. I didn’t want to scare her. Even if I was feeling entirely unsettled myself. “Okay, hon?”
Lissa, oblivious to my nerves, grabbed my hand and kissed the back of it enthusiastically before she ran off down the hall. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou, Dad!”
I pulled the curtains before she was even out of the room. Between the quick flutters of navy fabric, I didn’t see a man, but I did spot a car in the drive. All black, with black windows, too.
The churning sensation in my gut intensified.
There was something about a black car with tinted windows that just promised whatever was about to happen wouldn’t be good.
My father had made plenty of enemies during his time in office. He’d clawed out a lot of eyes and stepped on a lot of toes to get there. Ever since he’d been elected, the number of shit lists his name was at the top of had only grown. Similarly, ever since I’d gotten into social work, I’d made plenty of enemies of my own. The Alpha father of Michael, the boy I’d visited today, for example. He hadn’t been happy when Michael’s Omega dad had gotten custody. The day it had all played out in court, I’d been on the receiving end of an entire slew of death threats. And that was just one case. In my file cabinet back at the office, I had dozens more of the same.
My fingers twitched for my phone in my pocket. For a second, I thought about calling Dad back and asking him to send some of his security detail over. Immediately, I canned the idea. When I gave Dad an inch, he always found a way to take the whole damn yardstick. Admitting that I was nervous in my own home would only give him another excuse to send Lissa to Spartan Prep. Maybe even twist my arm into moving towns entirely.
It was the last thing I wanted. Lissa deserved a chance to have the normal childhood that my own father had never given me. I didn’t want to pull up her life here, either. I knew how hard it was as a kid to have to keep starting over again.
Instead, I dialed in 911 on my phone and let my thumb hover over the call button as I opened the door. At the first sign of trouble, I could disappear back into the house. The security system I’d had installed would take care of the rest.
But until then, I needed to take care of this myself.
I pulled the door open slowly. The first thing I saw was a pair of black cowboy boots on the front step. They led up to jeans, nice ones, albeit a little worn looking. A black belt with a t-shirt sloppily tucked into it, framed by the scuffed leather of a bomber jacket, and then—
“Daniel?” The voice attached to the man was a familiar one, but it wasn’t one I’d ever expected to hear again. It called out to me like something from a dream, stirring the churning in my stomach into a maelstrom of emotion in my chest that wouldn’t abate.
Fuck.
I tried to close the door, but one of the black cowboy boots stuck out against the jam and stopped it. Through the crack, a pair of hazel eyes stared back at me, intense and apologetic. More green than they were brown.
“Hey. Hold up for a sec.” Rusty King’s voice was exactly how I’d remembered it. Gruff and confident, the memory of a softened growl. “Look, I’m real, real sorry to show up like this but I didn’t have your number. Didn’t think you’d answer if I called, anyway.”
“You shouldn’t be here.” My own voice left my throat in a wisp of a whisper. Faint and phantom as a ghost. “You know you shouldn’t be here, Rusty.”
“I know,” Rusty agreed. “I wouldn’t be if I didn’t have to be, though.” I saw his gaze flick over my shoulder, like he was searching for something he hoped to see inside the house. I had one good idea as to what that might be. “But I came all this way for a reason, Daniel. A good one.”
He cleared his throat, then trained his eyes back on my own again. His gaze was as pleading as it was hypnotic.
“We need to talk.”
5
Rusty
The moment I saw her, I knew exactly who she was.
I’d stood outside of Daniel Rasner’s house for longer than I wanted to admit. Hadn’t had any other choice in the matter. Knocking on his door meant coming back into his life, even just for a little while. Even if it was only because I had no other choice. And god, I wanted to be back in his life. Become part of our little girl’s life, too.
But Daniel didn’t want me to. He’d made that amply clear. That maybe someday he’d offered me the last time we spoke had only been meant to soften the blow. It had never been a promise. Not something he ever intended on making good on. Six years of nothing from him had proved that much.
But yet, there I was anyway. Standing on his perfectly manicured front lawn at the address Harper had turned up for me. Trying to get up the courage to raise my fist to his door and barrel my way back into his world without any regard to his wants or needs.
And then I’d spotted her. Golden hair, just like Daniel’s. Someone, probably Daniel, had arranged it into two neat pigtail braids that curled in wisps at the ends. She had darkish eyes with thick lashes, though it was too hard to tell at first whether she’d inherited his eye color or mine. I didn’t find that out until I dared to move a little closer, holding a hand up toward her through the window in a friendly wave.
She’d smiled back. Her left front tooth was missing, as well as one of her incisors. As she raised her hand to wave back at me, her eyes lit up.
It was then that I saw their color. The true nature of shape.
A daughter. Daniel had given me a daughter. Or, rather, I’d given him one, and he’d stolen her away from me. She might have had his hair, but damned if she didn’t have my eyes.
“She’s beautiful.” The words escaped my mouth as Daniel pulled the door open. He did it so slowly, I might’ve believed it weighed even more than I did. Even more than the weight of our tragic shared past.
“Don’t,” was his response. “You don’t deserve that.”
I frowned. The hell that I didn’t deserve to call my own daughter beautiful! She was the most perfect thing I’d ever laid eyes on. Once upon a time, I would’ve said the same thing about the man I’d made her with, too.
Although…hell. Daniel wasn’t looking too bad himself, now that the door was open enough that I could actually see him properly. A little more tired than I remembered. I could almost track the places in his honey-blond hair that had started to go pale with silver. The bags beneath his eyes told me that was probably from stress, not age.
But still. If my daughter was the most perfect little girl I’d ever seen, Daniel was still at least half the reason why. His golden brow might have been set
in a scowl at the sight of me, but he was handsome as the day I met him. Gorgeous, and obviously pissed as all hell to see me again. Both of his hands were clenched into fists as I stepped inside his home.
It didn’t matter. He could be as pissed at me as he wanted to be.
He was still the most gorgeous man I’d ever known.
“I get that you don’t want me in your life, okay?” I was doing my best to be diplomatic. More than anything, this meeting had to be a strategic one. If I wanted answers, I needed to keep him calm. Get him on my side. “I promise, I’m not here to stay.” Admitting it sent the same pang piercing my chest that I’d felt all those years ago when Daniel had called it quits for good. “Just…caught sight of her in the window. Couldn’t help but say somethin’.”
“Why are you here, Rusty?” Daniel spoke in a whisper that might as well have been a cobra’s hiss. “If you know I don’t want you in my life—and I was very clear about that six years ago—then why are you here now?”
“I told you. It’s important.” I glanced over his shoulder again, hoping to see a little flash of golden blonde poking out from one of the doors down the hall. No such luck—yet, anyway. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want it to be like this.”
“Oh, it must be important.” Daniel crossed his arms over his chest and took a step toward me. It would’ve been almost sexy, if I didn’t know he was just trying to back me toward the door. “Either that, or you’ve been hit in the head a few too many times.”
I almost laughed. If anyone had told me even a few months ago that I’d be standing in front of Daniel Rasner again right now, I would’ve assumed the same. A few months ago, it would’ve taken one hell of a concussion to get me here in his foyer.
But then Josh had died. No—he’d been murdered. Kaleb and Harper had both been shot. And if I didn’t play my cards right now, a lot of other people were going to end up hurt, too.