Written with Regret (The Regret Duet #1)(52)

“Oh, wow.”

He glowered down at Rosalee, who had suddenly become fascinated with her shoes. “So, yeah. It’s safe to say: I do not like bath bombs anymore.”

I gave her arm a slight tug. “Sorry, kid. I’m with your dad on this one.”

She gasped and craned her head back, the word traitor—if she’d known it—written all over her face.

I had to muffle my laugh, but Caven didn’t even try.

“You hear that, Rosie girl. Hadley agrees with me.”

She swung a scowl to her father. “When I have my farm and make bath bombs with my llamas, you are not invited.”

He clutched his chest. “Oh, how you wound me.”

A laugh sprang from my throat, the warmth and happiness radiating through my entire body. I loved watching Caven with her. There was nothing sweeter—or, coincidentally, sexier—than a daddy with his girl. Not that I was still obsessing about Caven or anything.

Like every day.

Every night.

And all the times in between.

No. I was over that.

Except for on Wednesdays and Saturdays when I could feel his presence like fingertips gliding up my spine.

“Can we make lots of flowers?” Rosalee asked, snapping me out of my Caven Hunt stupor.

“Absolutely. We can make a whole bouquet.”

She tugged on my hand, dragging me past Caven, straight to our usual spot at the end of the dining room table. I got to work unloading all the supplies and doing my best to ignore the eighteen-year-old ache I felt in my chest for her father.

An hour later, Rosalee and I had made not one bouquet of flowers, but two. Caven was not wrong. The caffeine and sugar Ian had given her were running through her baby veins at full force. She was all over the place. Up and down getting a snack or a drink. Playing with the reversible sequins on her shirt. Talking at a million miles per minute. Had it not been for the fact that my time with her was already so limited, I would have given up on the flowers for the night.

But I feared that if I packed up, Caven wasn’t going to let me just hang around for another hour and play with her in the backyard where she so desperately needed to burn off some energy.

So we kept cutting coffee filter paper flowers. Well, mainly I kept cutting them, while she climbed in and out of her chair after picking up and dropping markers repeatedly.

“Hadley, look at me,” she mumbled around the markers hanging out of her mouth like walrus teeth.

“Whoa! I thought kids were supposed to lose their teeth, not grow bigger ones.” I plucked them one by one from her mouth. “Well, what do you know? I was right.”

She laughed wildly. “I need a pink. This flower needs to be pink,” she declared, standing up in her chair and putting her elbows on the table to reach across for the basket of markers.

“Sit down. I’ll get—”

Her socked feet shot out from under her.

My heart slammed into my ribs as I saw it happen in slow motion, her lower body slipping off the chair, her torso sliding across the table as she struggled to cling to the flat surface. My mind screamed as panic ignited inside me. Dropping the scissors, I dove toward her, catching her before she hit the floor.

Though not before her mouth hit the edge of the table.

I slid off the chair with her in my arms, landing hard on my knees, chanting, “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

And she was. I knew it, even as her big, green eyes filled with tears and a cry tore from her throat.

But that’s when I realized I was not okay.

Because blood—oh my God, so much blood poured from her mouth.

The world in front of me tunneled, including the child crying in my arms.

But no matter where I was, the past or the present, one thing remained the same.

“Caven!” I screamed.





Eighteen years earlier…



“Dad, no!” he yelled just before the pain sliced through my side.

My ears rang from the sound of the gunshot echoing in the tiny kitchen, and the scream I’d been holding since I’d watched my father collapse finally ripped free from my chest, shredding my throat on its way out.

The boy protecting me fell backward, taking me down with him and causing my head to crack against the door. We both landed on the tile, his heavy body hitting me like another bullet, stealing the breath from my lungs.

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t run.

I couldn’t even scream again.

I was trapped beneath him, his body limp, our warm blood mingling and pooling at my side.

Everything hurt, yet as his father prowled closer, the fear was the most painful of all.

“No,” I groaned before resorting to begging, but the word please wouldn’t come out.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I turned my head into the boy’s neck, ready for the horror to finally end, even if that meant dying.

At least then my mom would have been there.

And my dad.

Anyone who could make the fear slaying me from the inside out stop.

There was a grunt before the boy jerked, my heart lurching with him.

My eyes flew open just in time to see him land a kick in his dad’s stomach then scramble drunkenly to his feet. I was able to breathe again, but I was also left completely exposed.

Hot tears rolled down my cheeks as the gunman went tumbling down. My hero took early control, landing his fists across his face. But the bloodstain on his back from the bullet that had gone through us both was growing by the second.