Until You (The Redemption, #1)(49)

“Did she say yes?” Addy asks, eyes wide, excitement evident.

“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her today.” Another lie. I’m definitely going to hell. “I put the offer out there to her. We’ll see if she takes me up on it.”

“Please make her take it,” Addy says.

“We might get some decent cooking then.”

I throw my balled-up napkin at Paige. “Hey.”

“I know, I know. You do your best.” Paige rolls her eyes. “But I mean . . .”

“I never claimed to be a chef. Not by any means. Your mom . . .” I clear my throat to cover for my stall. “Your mom was the culinary wizard. Not me.”

Silence falls over the table, and I wonder if I’m doing them a disservice by not talking about their mom more. It just seems like every time I do, they grow sullen and it takes more than a while to snap them out of it.

The department therapist tells me this is normal. But am I doing enough for them? Am I doing it all wrong? Am I fucking them up more than their mom’s desertion did?

That’s the shitty thing about parenting. You only know if you did it right about twenty years too late.

Both of their heads are angled down, looking at their plates of food.

Fuck.

“So uh, girls. Look at me, please.” Both reluctantly lift their eyes to me. “I know I’ve said this before, but it’s okay to talk about your mom. It’s okay to be happy over memories we had. It’s normal to want it to be like it used to be. And it’s perfectly normal to be angry and pissed at the both of us too—”

“Why would we be mad at you?” Paige asks. I know they act old, but right now, in this moment, it hits me how young they are, and the upheaval—the trauma—they’ve experienced in such a short amount of time.

It takes me a second to find the words. To swallow the acrid bitterness toward a woman I once loved and now despise for doing this to our family. To be mature and honest even when it pains me to a fault. “It takes two people to make a marriage work, and it takes two people to make one not work. We’re both at fault, so it’s okay to be mad at me too.”

Damn you, Brittney. Damn you for making me have the hard discussions with them and explain why they didn’t mean enough for you to stay.

They both nod quietly.

“I also don’t want you to think that if you want to see her, it’s going to hurt my feelings. Okay?”

“Okay,” they say in unison.

My heart is heavy as I focus on my food, darting glances at them, every few seconds to see that they are doing the same.

I’ve failed them in so many ways on this.

This isn’t a scraped knee I can bandage up and then kiss to make it feel better. This is a defining moment in my girls’ lives that I can’t fix for them no matter how much I smile or love them or try to.

“Dad,” Paige murmurs.

I look up to see both girls staring at me with those eyes of theirs that have owned me since the first time they looked into mine in the delivery room.

“Trust fall,” Addy whispers, to which they both nod.

Emotion lodges in my throat as I look at my girls telling me to trust them. Telling me that no matter how far I fall, they too will catch me.

Jesus. When did they become such incredible human beings?

“Trust fall,” I say back to them with a ghost of a smile and a heart bursting with love.

The silence lasts only a few seconds longer before they return to their chatty selves as I try to decipher every word and every look between them to make sure they are really okay and not just pretending for my sake.

Talk turns to their birthday party as we head toward the car. The kind of cake they want. The few new friends they’ve made that they want to invite. Over whether they should throw it before or after Founder’s Day.

Chatter on the way home covers their first art and dance lessons Tenny has offered to take them to this week. To the new book series they want to read. To if they think they can talk Tenny into staying with us and bringing Hani with her when she does.

I act indifferent but hell if I’m not rooting for the same thing too.

And a few minutes after we get home, we get our answer.

Tenny drives up and parks her Jeep next to my truck. “Does the offer still stand?” she asks as she stares at me out the window, Hani in a carrier on the seat beside her.

By the cheer the girls emit, I think she has her answer.

“We’ll bring Hani’s stuff in,” they say as they carry the carrier and a bag of items into the house.

“I guess they’re excited,” she murmurs around her smile.

“They’re not the only ones,” I say, fighting the urge to kiss her. “It’s going to be harder than hell keeping my hands off you.”

Her laugh floats through the air. “You invited this torture on yourself, and I intend to have so much fun tormenting you with it.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


Tennyson / Tessa


Four Years Earlier



A trip to Panama.

Two days later as we docked the yacht in the harbor, while I worried about where the men’s bodies disappeared to and where the drugs were currently being held, he told me he had to leave for an urgent trip to Panama. Something about cargo on a barge that was being held up, and he was the only one who could fix the situation. Lies I’m sure, but I went along with them and acted upset while silently counting down the minutes until he climbed aboard our private jet and it taxied down the runway.