“Just be happy, Lacey,” he croaks. “Happy and well.”
Brushing away the tears with the back of one hand, I nod as if he can see me and he clears his throat.
“I’m going to ask the district attorney to give me a day to get my affairs in order. If he grants it to me, I want you and Blackie to come to the house, so we can we have a proper goodbye.”
God, I don’t know if I can handle saying goodbye in person. I don’t tell him that, though. How can I begrudge the man anything after all he’s given me?
“Okay, Dad,” I relent. “Whatever you want.”
“Get some rest,” he says. “I love you, Lace.”
“I love you too.”
So much.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lacey
I stayed in the spare room for a while after hanging up the phone and reminisced over my childhood. Memories of times spent with my father danced around my head in vibrant hues. Some brought a smile and others a pang of heartache. I welcomed them both until it became too much. It felt as though the walls were close in on me and before I suffocated, I scrambled to my feet. I knew I didn’t have it in me to go a round with my maker and there was no medicine to keep her at bay anymore. There was just my will to fight and before I lost that, I decided I needed to put myself to bed. Tomorrow would be another emotional day for all of us and if I wanted to survive it, I needed to shut down.
Reaching my bedroom, I pause. My argument with Blackie plays on loop inside my head, rehashing all the harsh things I said. While I’m not all that sorry for them, I’m not one to leave our issues unresolved. At least not if I can help it.
Just as I’m about to turn on my heel and make my way downstairs I hear him call my name from our bedroom. Spinning around, I take another step and stand in the doorway and my eyes connect with Blackie’s. Wearing nothing but a pair low riding sweats, he sits up in bed and leans back against the headboard. His long hair—wet from a shower—hangs around his face and he stares at me with apologetic eyes.
Clearing my throat, I step inside the room and make my way towards my side of the bed. I take a seat on the edge and play with the hem of my t-shirt. The material is starting to irritate my sore breasts. If I wasn’t sure Blackie would take it as an invitation to indulge, I’d rip it off, but unfortunately what’s wrong between us can’t be fixed by a quick fuck. The concerns are real and valid. They can’t be brushed under a rug or ignored. I need him to be present. I need him to stop putting everyone and everything before us.
“I didn’t hear you come up,” I say, breaking the silence between us. “I was just about to go downstairs to find you.”
A dull ache pulses through my head and I lift my fingers to my temples, gently pressing to alleviate the pressure.
Sleep.
I need to sleep.
“I heard you on the phone in the other room,” he responds. “I didn’t want to disturb you, so I took a shower.”
“I was talking to my dad,” I tell him as I pull the sheet back and climb into bed next to him. My head drops onto the pillow and I stare up at the ceiling quietly. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch him staring at me and I sigh. I don’t know how we got to this moment and to be fair, I’m not sure I want to. I just want to fix it and have things go back to normal—or at least our kind of normal. For crying out loud, I can’t remember the last time we crawled into bed together without a nagging weight on our shoulders. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. It’s like we’re never meant to have any kind of peace.
“Lacey…”
I don’t turn my head to meet his gaze. Instead, I keep my eyes trained on the ceiling and wait for him to continue. Quiet stretches between us as more tension mounts. Nothing gets resolved and we drift further into separate corners of the ring. The ref sounds the bell but neither of us make a move. A few moments ago I wanted to shut down. I wanted to sleep this day away and was desperate for silence. Now, the quiet is torture.
“I think we should make that room the nursery,” I blurt. “It’s a little smaller, but it’s closer to our bedroom.” Still unable to bring myself to look at him, I continue to ramble on, picking at the chipped polish on my nail. “I figured we’d put the crib on the wall across from the window.”
“Lace,” he whispers, seeing through my pitiful attempt at small talk. “I heard you.”
For some reason, those words get my attention and my gaze snaps to his. My eyebrows pinch together as I wait for him to elaborate. He bites the inside of his cheek as he struggles with his words and my eyes wander to the gauze covering his shoulder blade. At the sight, I worry that he may have gotten it wet while he was in the shower but the more I stare, the more the wound serves as a reminder of his dire need to put himself in harm’s way.
“Downstairs, everything you said, it didn’t go in one ear and out the other,” he clarifies, cocking his head to the side as he rubs the scruff lining his jaw. Hope flourishes inside me and I roll onto my side. He looks down at me and sucks in a breath as he reaches out and tucks a wayward curl behind my ear.
“It’s not a question of wanting to be the type of husband and father you expect me to be, it’s learning how. It’s about forgetting everything I know.”
There’s something about those words that makes me wonder if he misunderstood me. Maybe I didn’t convey the point I was trying to make. I don’t expect anything other than his presence in our lives. I know he loves me, and I know for certain he already loves this baby. I just need him to stay alive. I need him to know he’s more than Jack Parrish’s right hand. He’s my everything.
“Blackie—”
“Let me finish,” he pleads softly. “I love you Lacey, but I didn’t plan on you. You…” his voice trails as he sighs heavily. “You were the greatest surprise of my life and maybe if I had known, if I had just the slightest hint that I’d get you in the end, well, I like to think I would’ve done things differently. But the truth is, I had a life before you—albeit not much of a good one.” He mutters the last part before taking a breath and continuing. “What I’m trying to say is, I didn’t live for anyone but me. Not Christine, not no one. I chose a life where I was trained to never think twice before pulling the trigger or stepping into the line of fire and for twenty odd years, it’s all I’ve known. You called me a human shield…” he pauses again, shrugging his shoulders thoughtfully. “Maybe you’re right, maybe that’s what I am, but you need to understand, that’s me. That’s all I’ve ever been. Anything more I hoped to become—a good husband, a great father—those were things I was hoping your father would teach me. Instead, he taught me how to take the gavel and that’s gone. Now, there’s you, our unborn kid, Reina and Danny and no one taught me how to take his place as the head of this family. You’re all my responsibility and that’s a lot for a man who thought he’d die before he ever saw thirty-five.”
That comes as a shock to me and mainly because, until this very moment, I didn’t think anyone could teach someone how to be a parent or a spouse. I always assumed those are things that come with experience. But as I sit here, soaking in his words, I can see his point. There’s comfort in having someone in your life that’s done it all before you. Someone you can call upon for advice or maybe even learn from by simply watching them navigate all the things you’re about to embark on yourself. Blackie wasn’t looking for my father to give him a handbook on how to be a husband and a father, he was looking for a role model—something he only ever found in my father.