by Aiden Bates
“More clues?” Rusty perked up immediately at that.
“Not…not quite. You’ll see.” I poked him in the chest as he came up to me. Lord. His body was so hard, I was lucky I hadn’t broken my finger on it. “But not until Lissa’s in bed.”
“Your call, Captain.” Rusty glanced down at my finger, clapped his hands together and smirked a little more. “Let’s do some homework, then.”
Rusty and Lissa set up at the kitchen table while I finished up the dishes from breakfast that morning and tidied up the house a little bit. Keeping a home clean as a single working dad was a losing battle on the best days. But with dinner out of the way—thank God for chicken nuggets—and Rusty in place to keep Lissa on task, I managed to make the house look a little bit less like a war zone for the first time in weeks. I could hear them chattering away from the laundry room as I tossed some towels in the washer.
“So—naw, hold up, wait a second. You’re telling me—”
Lissa’s giggle was muffled behind her hand.
“You’re tellin’ me that after X comes—”
“Y!” Lissa shouted the letter with bubbling peal of laughter. “Everyone knows that!”
“Not W?” Rusty growled with disbelief. “Are you sure?”
“You are so silly Rusty! Of course it’s Y! There’s a song and everything—let me teach you. A B C D E F G…”
By the time I’d finished cleaning up the house—the first actual clean I’d had time to do in what felt like months—Rusty and Lissa had finished up with her homework and drawn more pictures together than there was room for on the fridge. I managed to get all the towels into the dryer and folded as well before I caught Lissa yawning.
Good. He’d actually managed to wear her out enough that she might not fight the idea of bedtime.
“I’m going to give her a bath then tuck her in,” I told Rusty. “Do you want to, ah…hang out in the living room until we’re done, maybe?”
“Sure.” Rusty gave Lissa a lingering glance as she nodded sleepily and took my hand. “I won’t move a muscle.”
During bath time, Lissa didn’t want to talk about anything other than her very handsome new friend. I heard all about the way he’d taught her to use the white crayon to blend colors together, about how messy Marvin his handwriting was and how he could make a paper football out of nothing more than a piece of scrap paper and a bit of tape.
He’d charmed her completely. I didn’t know why I was surprised. She was, after all, his daughter too. And the part of her that was me…well, once upon a time, I supposed, Rusty had charmed me too.
“Is Rusty a special friend?” Lissa asked, fighting her way through a yawn as I tucked the blankets around her tight.
“He’s not my boyfriend, if that’s what you’re asking. We already went over that, remember?”
A pang of guilt shot through me as she frowned and nodded.
“I just like him a lot, Daddy. He’s handsome, but he’s nice, too. And silly!” She grinned sleepily. Now that I’d seen the two of them together, I recognized it as Rusty’s own grin. “He’s so silly. I just thought maybe he was. Just. A special…special friend.”
Another yawn. She was nodding off fast, which was a relief. I settled her favorite stuffed toy—a pirate with a scruffy beard of yarn and a soft felt hat—into her arms and kissed her forehead.
“Rusty is very special, yes. He’s special because he’s kind, and because he wants to keep us safe. But for right now, he’s just a regular friend. Okay?”
“Okay.” Lissa’s eyes were already closed. “That’s okay. For right now. I guess.”
“Sleep tight, honey.” I closed her door, leaving it open just a crack. Even as I did it, though, I felt an ache in my heart.
Rusty was so much more than a friend. Lissa had already picked up on that, even though I’d had to shut her down on drawing any more conclusions on the subject. For the first time since my father had shown me those pictures of Rusty and the other man, though, I was beginning to wonder if this was all unfair to Lissa after all.
Rusty was her father. All of his actions today told me that he’d be a good one, too, if he was just allowed to be. Was it wrong of me, keeping them apart? Was it wrong not to let her know where she’d come from? The truth about Rusty and who he really was to her?
There was only one way to answer that, though. And it wasn’t a conversation I was exactly looking forward to having.
“Hey,” I said softly as I came back into the living room. I held the envelope my father had given me all those years ago in my hands.
Rusty was on the couch, thumbing through some pictures he and Lissa had taken together after she’d finished her homework.
“Hey.” He held up his phone, showing me the selfies. “You mind if I keep these? If it weirds you out, I can delete ‘em, but after all these years, not having any pictures of her at all…”
“What?” I blinked. “I sent you pictures, Rusty. When Lissa was about…two, I think. You never responded. I figured you’d probably stopped caring at that point.”
“What?” Rusty stared up at me, wide-eyed as he lowered his phone back down into his lap. “No. No…you couldn’t have. If you did, I never got ‘em. You…I think you’ve realized how I feel about Lissa by now, darlin’. Even just one picture of her…” He looked down at his phone, thumb hovering over a selfie they’d taken together. “It would’ve meant the world to me.”
My lip twitched upward. I had to fight back a sneer.
That was my father’s doing, then. It must have been. I could feel it the same way animals could tell that there was a storm on the horizon.
It only made the envelope I was holding feel even heavier in my hands.
“You don’t mind if I keep these, then?” He flashed his phone at me again. “She looks happy in them, and—”
“No. No, that’s fine. You two are cute together.” I sat down on the couch at the other end, leaving a cushion between us. On it, I placed the envelope. “But Rusty…we need to talk.”
Rusty glanced down at the envelope. “Okay. Sure. Let’s talk, then.”
I drew in a breath. My heart was pounding against my chest as I searched for the right words to begin.
“I know it was six years ago. And I know maybe I should be over it by now, but…” I sighed. “I’m not. But now… for the first time since it happened, I’m starting to feel some doubts. Like maybe all of this didn’t happen in quite the way I thought it had played out.”
“Oh…kay…” Rusty looked confused as ever. Same as he always did when I brought the subject up. “You wanna talk about it, then? Whatever it is?”
“I need to know what happened when you came to Spartanburg after you found out I was pregnant.” Gingerly, I pushed the envelope his way. “What really happened.”
Tentatively, Rusty opened the envelope and took out the pictures, one by one.
He looked more and more mystified as his gaze fell on each photo. If he was playing dumb at this point…he was a better actor than I’d ever given him credit for being.
Which meant…
Fuck.
“This isn’t me.” Rusty shook his head, his voice a whisper. “These pictures…Daniel, this never happened. I see the tattoos, so I get where you’re coming from, but—hell. Is this why you told me you didn’t want to see me again?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. My stomach felt full of battery acid. “Yeah, that’s why. But…these can’t be fake, can they? The man in the picture—if it’s you, Rusty, you can tell me. I just want to know…what the hell you were thinking. Why you would do that to me—in my own hometown, no less.”
“I didn’t do this to you.” Rusty placed the photos on the cushion between us, side by side. All the color had drained from his face. His cheeks were a stark, clear white. Like freshly fallen snow. “This isn’t me.”
“What did happen, then?” I wanted to believe him. Wanted to more than anything. But the man in the image…he had Rusty’s build. Rusty�
�s tattoos. Every single detail checked out—except for Rusty’s reaction. And could he really be that good at maintaining a six-year-old lie? “Tell me your version of the story, then.”
“Sure as hell wasn’t this. Your dad told me to fuck off. Leave you alone. I…didn’t exactly listen. But I had no way of contacting you. No address, either. Every time I called your number, I started getting Kentucky Fried Chicken on the other line.” Rusty hung his head. “I wanted to come to you, but I didn’t even know where you were. And your dad was putting the pressure on me, too—”
“The canceled fights. The police showing up at your hotel.” I nodded grimly. “I heard about those. I was trying to get in touch with you, too. But whenever I called your phone, it just rang and rang. Wherever you were meant to be…I’d always just missed you, somehow.”
“Oh, I think we both know how.” Rusty’s brow lowered into a scowl. “Probably blocked my number on your phone. Or changed it, somehow. I dunno. I was dying to hear from you. If you’d called, I would’ve answered on the first ring.”
“So you didn’t come to Spartanburg?” My chest was compressing in on itself, crushing my heart beneath my ribs.
“Wanted to. Was planning on it. But then, you called…said you didn’t want to see me anymore, either.”
“My dad gave me the pictures. I thought…” I gestured toward them. “Well. You can see what I thought.”
“So you told me to get my life in order and you said goodbye.” Rusty blinked, then whistled lowly. “Fuck, Daniel. If you thought I’d been steppin’ out on you with some other man, you let me down easy. I would’ve been pissed as all get out.”
“I was.” My face burned. There were tears on the horizon—tears that I wasn’t ready to let fall. “I really was. I just figured…I don’t know. I still loved you, but I knew I couldn’t be with you. Not after what you did.”
“Or what I didn’t do.” Rusty reached for the pictures again, then hesitated and piled them up. He set them aside and moved closer to me instead. “I’ll swear on whatever you want me to, Daniel. These pictures…they’re good fakes, sure. But that’s all they are. Fakes.”
“You mean it?”
“With every breath in me. I swear.” He paused and furrowed his brow. “You mind if I send these along to Ernesto, though? He’s my…ah. I guess like a surrogate dad. A handsome Cuban uncle or something. He runs my dad’s old business, and he’s got access to some facial recognition software that he could run these through. We might be able to figure out who the other guy in the images is, at least.” He shrugged. “Not much, but it’s a start.”
“A start?” My jaw was slack. My heart thundered on faster than ever. “Rusty…I threw away six years of what could have been a perfect family life for us. Just because of my father’s words and some doctored photos. How are you not…”
“Not what?” Rusty’s voice was smooth and serene as a warm breeze on a summer night.
“Angry! Mad!” I thumped my fist against the back of the couch. My face was flushed, my blood set to boil. I was fuming over what my father had done—and if he’d ruined my relationship, stolen my daughter’s father from her, what else was he capable of? “He took something from us, Rusty! And I’m his son. What else has he taken from other people, just to suit his slightest fancies? Senator Callum’s life—the lives of all the Omegas who’ve been affected by this birth control scandal—even—”
My voice caught in my throat. Something sharp and painful had lodged itself in there. Something that had been lurking beneath the surface ever since I’d heard ten-year-old Neil’s voice in the police station the other day.
My mom killed my dad.
“I can’t even know if my Omega father’s death was really an accident anymore.” I shook my head. “I can’t know that anything is real anymore.”
“Hey. No. Don’t think like that.” Rusty scooted to the cushion between us. His hands hesitated for a moment—just one—then they curled around my jawline as he took my face into his palms. “This is real. Right here, right now. It’s real. You’ve got a home. You’ve got a job, one that helps people. You’ve got…Christ, Daniel. You’ve got the most beautiful daughter in the entire world.”
“And I’ve got…I’ve got you.” My voice was small and pitiful. “I don’t even deserve you, after the years I wasted. And here you are anyway.”
“We can’t change the past, Daniel. You know that as well as anyone.” He was tense, and for a second, I thought that old hot-headed temper of his was finally going to rear up and strike out. Maybe he’d put his fist through something. Maybe I even wanted him to. But instead, he only closed his eyes. As he let out a breath, I watched the tension from his shoulders smooth out into calm. “We’re not dumb kids anymore. Playing the blame game, it gets us nowhere. I’m angry about what we’ve lost, sure.”
“You should be.”
“But I’m not angry at you.” It was a blessing that I didn’t feel like I was worthy of. “I can’t hate you, Daniel. Your dad, sure. The situation, of course. But I could never hate you.”
The tears on my water line trembled, threatening to fall at any moment. My sinuses burned.
“You should hate me, Rusty.”
“Naw. Can’t hate you.” Rusty forced a tight grin then laughed, the rumble of distant thunder. “Hell. Might’ve made the same mistake myself if our situations had been reversed. But it doesn’t matter now.”
“We can’t change the past.” I closed my eyes as the tears fell.
With his thumbs smoothing across my cheek, Rusty wiped them away.
“We can rethink the future, though.”
Our faces were close. Our lips, even closer.
“Can you forgive me, Rusty?”
His lips were a soft, gentle smile as they brushed against mine.
“Nothing to forgive, sweetheart,” he purred against my mouth.
With a kiss, he swept six whole years of hurt away, and me along with it.
15
Rusty
Even though I’d done my best to brush his tears away, Daniel’s lips tasted like salt. Like hurt. Hell—after the run-around we’d been through, after everything he’d been through, I couldn’t blame him for hurting.
I’d hurt too. Every moment of my life that I hadn’t been by his side had felt empty, cold, not like a life at all.
But the past was the past. The future was what we made it. And dammit, if I had anything to say about it…
I had Daniel’s jaw in my hands and his lips crushed beneath mine.
He was never going to hurt. Not under my watch.
Not ever again.
With a tug at his waist, I pulled him onto me. His body shifted willingly, no hesitation, no fear. The way he wrapped his arms around my neck made me feel more like an Alpha than any fist fight or cage match ever could have. He held onto me like there was a storm swirling around us and I was the only solid thing to cling to, fingers digging into the back of my neck, body pressed hard against mine.
I purred, then growled at that feeling. He wanted me. Needed me. It made my cock hard, my body burn for him. Made every muscle ache with pent up energy that I’d spent too many years trying to push down or punch my way through. There wasn’t anything on God’s green earth that had made me feel the way Daniel made me feel.
It was him. Only, only, only him.
His hips rocked against mine, rubbing my stiff cock through my jeans. His own cock was just as hard for me. He whimpered against my lips, greedy as he nipped at me then pressed his tongue into my mouth. The bulge I felt pinning my dick down was thick, unyielding steel.
Fuck. Tears were one thing. Tears, I could kiss away. But to have him on my lap like this, grinding and simpering, that was something else entirely.
“You fucking want me.” It wasn’t a question, but there was a little surprise in my voice at the realization. I stroked my hands down his back, then slipped them beneath his shirt so I could relish the warmth of his skin. His muscles rippled beneath m
y touch as he arched, leaning into my touch.
“I do,” he panted, nodding vigorously. “Rusty…you know I do.”
Our kisses grew hotter. Faster, snarling, more passionate. I tore his shirt off of him, wound my fingers in the thick waves of his hair and pulled his head back sharply, just so I could fucking stare at him.
“Gorgeous.” The next growl that left my throat was even louder than the last. “Fucking—”
His eyes grew wide for a moment, then he clapped his hand over my mouth.
“Shh.” He let out a soft giggle, wiped a final tear away with his knuckles, then stroked my cheek with his fingertips. “We have to be quiet, though. Lissa…”
“Mm. Right. Of course. Right.” I sighed, then closed my eyes, letting the kinetic tension ebb and flow between us for a moment. His weight on top of me had all the comfort of a warm blanket on a cold night. His cock against mine, the exact opposite—I knew I couldn’t be truly comfortable until I had his body wrapped around me and his cock clenched tight in my fist. I wanted to make him howl for me, make him scream my name into the night—but with Lissa sleeping just down the hall, I’d have to settle for whispers and stifled gasps instead.
It didn’t matter, in the end. We undressed each other in silence, but that energy never waned.
I had him. Quietly, and maybe not forever—but for the night, he was mine.
We worked his jeans off mechanically, both of us moving with care not to make any noise loud enough to risk breaking the moment. The soft clink of his belt against my buckle. The sharp hiss of his breath as I shoved his jeans down to his knees. He kicked them off then worked at my own belt, my own zipper. It let out a gentle rasp before he plunged his hand down into my boxers, his cool fingers wrapping my cock up so perfectly I had to force my lips against his all over again just to stop from moaning his name.
“Fuck,” he whispered. He rested his forehead against mine, eyes closed as he stroked my cock up and down, achingly slow but perfectly firm. “You’re bigger than I remember.”