Hopeless (Hopeless #1)(90)

“Don’t you f**king touch her!”

Holder is yelling and there’s pressure under my arms. His voice is close, so I know he’s holding me. I drop my hands to my sides and feel grass between my fingers.

“Baby, open your eyes. Please.” Holder’s hand is caressing the side of my face. I slowly open my eyes and look up. He’s looking down over me, my father hovering right behind him. “It’s okay, you just passed out. I need you to stand up. We need to leave.”

He pulls me to my feet and keeps his arm around my waist, practically doing the standing for me.

My father is right in front of me now, staring. “It is you,” he says. He glances at Holder, then back to me. “Hope? Do you remember me?” His eyes are full of tears.

Mine aren’t.

“Let’s go,” Holder says again. I resist his pull and step out of his grasp. I look back at my father…at a man who is somehow portraying emotions like he once must have loved me. He’s full of shit.

“Do you?” he says again, taking another step closer. Holder inches me back with each step closer my father gets. “Hope, do you remember me?”

“How could I forget you?”

The irony is, I did forget him. Completely. I forgot all about him and the things he did to me and the life I had here. But I don’t want him to know that. I want him to know that I remember him, and every single thing he ever did to me.

“It’s you,” he says, fidgeting his hand down at his side. “You’re alive. You’re okay.” He pulls out his radio, I’m assuming in an attempt to call in the report. Before his finger can even press the button, Holder reaches out and knocks the radio out of his hand. It falls to the ground and my father bends down and grabs it, then takes a defensive step back, his hand resting on his holster again.

“I wouldn’t let anyone know she’s here if I were you,” Holder says. “I doubt you would want the fact that you’re a f**king pervert to be front page news.”

All the color immediately washes from my father’s face and he looks back at me with fear in his eyes. “What?”He’s looking at me in disbelief. “Hope, whoever took you…they lied to you. They told you things about me that weren’t true.” He’s closer now and his eyes are desperate and pleading. “Who took you, Hope? Who was it?”

I take a confident step toward him. “I remember everything you did to me. And if you just give me what I’m here for, I swear I’ll walk away and you’ll never hear from me again.”

He continues to shake his head, disbelieving the fact that his daughter is standing right in front of him. I’m sure he’s also trying to process the fact that his whole life is now in jeopardy. His career, his reputation, his freedom. If it were possible, his face grows even paler when he realizes that he can’t deny it any longer. He knows I know.

“What is it you want?”

I look toward the house, then back to him again. “Answers,” I say. “And I want anything you have that belonged to my mother.”

Holder has a death grip on my waist again. I reach down and grip his hand with mine, just needing the reassurance that I’m not alone right now. My confidence is quickly fading with each moment being spent in my father’s presence. Everything about him, from his voice to his facial expressions to his movements, makes my stomach ache.

My father glances at Holder briefly, then turns to look at me again. “We can talk inside,” he says quietly, his eyes darting around to the houses surrounding us. The fact that he appears nervous now only proves that he’s weighed his options and he doesn’t have very many to choose from. He nudges his head toward the front door and begins making his way up the steps.

“Leave your gun,” Holder says.

My father pauses, but doesn’t turn around. He slowly reaches to his side and removes his gun. He places it gently on the steps of the porch, then begins to ascend the stairs.

“Both of them,” Holder says.

My father pauses again before reaching the door. He bends down to his ankle and lifts his pant leg, then removes that gun as well. Once both guns are out of his reach, he walks inside, leaving the door open for us. Before I step inside, Holder spins me around to face him.

“I’m staying right here with the door open. I don’t trust him. Don’t go any further than the living room.”

I nod and he kisses me quick and hard, then releases me. I step into the living room and my father is sitting on his couch, his hands clasped in front of him. He’s staring down at the floor. I walk to the seat nearest me and sit on the edge of it, refusing to relax into it. Being in this house and in his presence is causing my mind to clutter and my chest to tighten. I take several slow breaths, attempting to calm my fear.

I use the moment of silence between us to find something in his features that resemble mine. The color of his hair, maybe? He’s much taller than me and his eyes, when he’s able to look at me, are dark green, unlike mine. Other than the caramel color of his hair, I look nothing like him. I smile at the fact that I look nothing like him.

My father lifts his eyes to mine and he sighs, shifting uncomfortably. “Before you say anything,” he says. “You need to know that I loved you and I’ve regretted what I did every second of my life.”

I don’t verbally respond to that statement, but I have to physically refrain myself from reacting to his bullshit. He could spend the rest of his life apologizing and it would never be enough to erase even one of the nights my doorknob turned.