responsible for what might happen if I did.
Just as I got close, Ash looked over her shoulder at me and jumped at the sight. Whether that was because I was not who she was expecting or my fury was clear on my face, I didn’t know. Didn’t really fucking care.
“Is she mine?” I demanded.
“What?”
My heart was beating triple time in my chest. The shock to my system at seeing Ash’s beautiful face again was almost enough to break through the cloud of anger, but not quite.
“Emmy,” I explained. “Is. She. Mine?”
Ash went pale. “How did you—”
“She was out in the hall. Woke up and needed a drink. Funny thing is, she says she’s about to turn four. It’s been just about nine months more than that since you left. So, I’ll ask one last time. Is she my fucking daughter?” I roared.
Ash shrunk back, and answered in a small voice, “I don’t know.”
She…what? “You don’t know?”
Her eyes fell to the ground. “I would have told you if I knew for sure.”
She would have…
Holy. Fuck.
No. Not possible.
A ringing in my ears filled the silence in the yard. Emmy might not be mine. Ash didn’t know for sure who the father was. Ash…Ash slept with someone else. But the timeline…
She fucked someone else right after she left me.
I spent months—fuck, over a year —doing nothing but missing her, trying to find her. I didn’t touch another fucking woman until Ash had been gone for over eighteen months. But she…fuck.
How long did she even wait before letting some other guy in where only I had been?
A week? Two? Couldn’t have been that long if he might be Emmy’s father.
Fuck.
Ash still wasn’t looking at me and that was a really fucking good thing. I couldn’t see her face. Couldn’t see those eyes.
Without another fucking word, I left. I couldn’t be anywhere near her. I couldn’t handle the blow she just dealt.
I needed to get the fuck out of there. I needed the Lagavulin. No, fuck that—I needed something cheaper, something I could really toss back like there was no tomorrow. The scotch would have to wait.
I needed to make this night disappear.
Well, that went…about as well as I’d expected.
After a while, I made my way over to the deck and sat on the edge of a step that rose a foot above the grass. I heard a bike start up around the front of the house. Given the way the rider peeled out of there, I was guessing it was Gabe.
Strike that.
Sketch.
He was Sketch now.
He was probably going to stay at the clubhouse—anywhere to get away from Emmy and me.
No, probably just me.
The fire in his eyes hadn’t just been about anger. He’d been ready to claim Emmy. If I said she was his, he would have accepted it—accepted her—in a heartbeat. It wouldn’t have changed the fact that he was pissed at me for keeping her away all these years, but he would have embraced the role of father. He was hurt.
Maybe you should just say she’s his, a voice in my head whispered.
Absolutely not. I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t lie and say Emmy was his when I wasn’t sure. That wasn’t fair to him. And anyway, even if I could convince myself that wasn’t a terrible thing to do, that ship had sailed.
I wished life had been different; wish the moment I found out I was pregnant, I could have been sure he was the father. I could have—would have—come back to Hoffman. He might have been upset, but back then, he would have welcomed me home with open arms. The pregnancy would have been a shock, but he always used to talk about the family we would have one day. Growing up, his parents hadn’t been great and I only had Dad. The club was an amazing family to us, but we always planned to make one of our own. Emmy might have come sooner than we’d planned, but Gabe would have been over the moon.
Emmy would have grown up with more than just me. She would have grown up with a father who adored her. She would have had the kind of love my dad gave me, and there is nothing
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