And now, looking at Sofie, watching her stare out of the window to where Mila’s playing with Dad on the beach, I wonder if there’s going to be a romance to go along with that scandal at all.
Sofie’s head pops up in the tree house. She gives me a weak smile and climbs up, then sits next to me. She stares out of the window to where Mila is playing on the beach.
Our daughter is running circles around my family on the sand. Kye already had to go change clothes because he underestimated the splash power of a toddler in the shallows.
At least that put a smile on Sofie’s face. She’s been stone-faced since this morning, her stare scarily intense. I don’t blame her. I can practically taste the fear radiating off her. I can see the uncertainty whenever she moves, because her hands tremble, like she’s freezing and can’t warm up.
I rest my arm over her shoulders and snatch up her hand. Her fingers slip between mine and I squeeze. My thumb strokes the inside of her wrist, and she shivers.
“Why did you give her my name?” I need to know. It’s bugged the hell out of me all day.
Sofie turns her face toward me, finally dragging her eyes from Mila. “I wasn’t going to,” she admits quietly. “Then she was born, and come on, Con, she looks exactly like you. I knew then that she was a Burke before she was a Callahan.”
“I’m not on her birth certificate, am I?” My heart clenches with another thing missed.
“No.” Her voice is barely there. “You can be, though. I looked on the county website. We can make an appointment and add you. You just have to be there to sign it.”
“Will you do that?”
She stops looking at my legs and meets my eyes. “If you need to ask, you don’t know me.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I do,” I say honestly. “Sometimes you’re the girl I remember, then other times . . . other times, you’re someone else entirely. I don’t know if I do know you anymore, Sof.”
“You and me both.” She takes her eyes away from mine. “I’ve spent so long, so freakin’ long, being a mom that I don’t even know if Sofie is in there anymore. That sounds dumb, I know, but it’s true. I don’t know how to be someone away from her anymore, and it’s disconcerting.”
She swallows. “So much of me has gone into Mila that it doesn’t seem like there’s anything left of me sometimes. I love her, but I’m ashamed of how many times I wished there was someone to take her when I needed to breathe. She was too young when Dad was well, and when she was bigger, he was too sick. I never had a night alone until I came here and you had her a few days ago.”
“Never?” I ask. “What about Ste?”
“He’s away more often than he’s here. She doesn’t know him. It’s always just been me and Mila. When the whole time, if I’d just pulled my head from my ass, she could have had this huge family. There would have been help when I needed it, but more importantly, she would have had you.” She looks at me, fighting tears. “I was so stupid.”
I curl her into my chest. I have nothing to say back. I can’t tell her she wasn’t stupid, because she was. I can’t tell her she didn’t make mistakes, because she did. She made some big-ass mistakes.
There’s no changing it. We both know it. The guilt is written all over her face, for fuck’s sake. It’s there whenever she looks at me. It threads through her words when she speaks to me.
I won’t take it from her. I won’t even fucking try to, because she should feel that. If there’s anything she deserves, it’s the guilt. I doubt I could take it if I wanted to. She has such a strong grip on it, she might hold on to it forever.
“What are you doin’ when we go back on tour? In two weeks?”
“I’m staying,” she murmurs into my chest. “I’ll call the Realtor in the morning and let them know I’m not selling the house.”
I close my eyes. My fingers spread across her tiny waist, keeping her firm in my arms while I process this.
She’s staying. In Shelton Bay.
I touch my lips to the top of her head and she shudders against me. Her fingers grab my shirt and then let go. They slip under the material and ghost across the bottom of my back, and I finally know our problem.
And it’s a fucking big one.
There’s too much between us to move forward.
But there’s too much to let go, too.
Way too fucking much.
“You wanna go play with her?” I whisper, feeling her turn her face toward Mila again.
She nods. “I think she likes the beach.”
“I have it on good authority she can come to this beach whenever she wants and there will always be someone to play with.”
A smile cracks that beautiful face as Sofie looks back at me. “Good to know. I have a feeling she’ll be here a lot.”
A lot isn’t enough. Always. I want her here all the fucking time.
One step at a time, Conner.
“Are you ready?”
“No.”
Conner looks at me. “Do what we did last time. Keep your head down, run to the truck, then put on your sunglasses.”
“Ugh.” I screw my face up. “This isn’t Hollywood!”
“Then cover your eyes like a kid playing hide-and-seek.”
“That’s stupid. I’ll just pull my big-girl panties up and run like hell. Can I flip them off?”
“Uh, no.” He sets his hand on my back and reaches for the door.
“You’re going to touch me? Won’t they get ideas?”
He sighs. “You’re insufferable.”
“Well, won’t they?”
“Better they come after us than Mila.”
“Okay, okay, come on, then.”
He opens the door and guides me through. As soon as they realize it’s us, the flashes start, and so do the questions. This time, though, they’re directed at both of us. Conner’s fingers twitch at my waist, but he lets me go so I can get in the truck.
His door slams as he sits and starts the engine. “Thank you, Aidan, for convincing me to get tinted windows,” he grunts. “Nosy bastards.”
As we drive, they surge forward, cameras to eyes, shouting. Security pushes them back and forces them to let us out of the driveway.
I try to keep my face neutral. They’re insane, and I know we’ll face the same thing when we get to my house.
“There’s security at my place, right?” I look across the truck at Conner.