Page 56 of Monk

“And now you want to claim her?” I demanded, pulling back just enough to meet his eyes. “Now you want to be her father? After everything you’ve done?”

His hands slid from my arms to cup my face, rough palms framing my cheeks, his thumbs brushing my skin like he had any right to soothe what he helped break. “Yes,” he said, his voice fierce. “Yes. She’s mine. And I’m not walking away from her. I’m not walking away from you.”

I stared at him, heart pounding so hard it hurt, my mind racing in a hundred directions at once. Because despite the anger, despite the hurt, despite the cruelty of the last few weeks and all the wreckage piled between us, I could see the truth in his eyes.

He meant it.

Every word. Every impossible word. And that terrified me more than anything else, because anger I knew how to survive.Anger was clean. Anger was sharp. But hope—hope was what had ruined me the first time. Terror twisted hot inside me, and like it always did, it turned into rage.

Seven years of it.

Seven years of grief and loneliness and fear and clawing my way through life with bloody hands. I shoved him back hard, my palms slamming against his chest with enough force to make him stumble. “No,” I said, my voice low and shaking, and dangerous.

His eyes widened.

“No?” he repeated, incredulous.

“You heard me,” I said, stepping right back into his space until we were nose-to-nose, my finger jabbing into his chest hard enough to make the muscle jump beneath my hand. “You lost your right to claim me and Tatum the day you made me think you were dead.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but I didn’t let him. I had spent too many years choking on these words to stop now.

“You lost your right when you put your hands on that club whore,” I snapped, my voice rising with every word. “When you let her rub herself all over you like I was nothing. Like what we had was nothing.”

“Lina.”

“And you sure as hell lost your right when you treated me like a whore in front of your entire club!” I shouted, my voice cracking under the force of it. “When you looked at me like I was trash. Like I was just another bitch who spread her legs for the first man who came along.” His jaw clenched so hard I saw the muscle jump. His hands curled into fists at his sides. But I wasn’t done. Not even close. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?” I demanded, my voice shaking now, fury scraping raw against grief. “Do you have any fucking clue what it was like toraise our daughter ALONE for seven years while you were here fucking your way through the clubhouse?”

“I didn’t know?—”

“I don’t care what you knew!” I screamed, shoving him again. “I had to do everything by myself! I had to work my ass off to put myself through law school while pregnant. I had to give birth to our daughter alone in a hospital with no one there to hold my hand. No one was there to tell me I could do it. No one there to look at her and say she was ours.” My throat burned. My chest ached like it was splitting open. “I had to wake up every night for months with a screaming baby and no help, no support, no partner! I had to make every decision alone—every single one. What to feed her. What doctor to call. What school to send her to. How to comfort her when she was sick. How to explain why she didn’t have a father.”

Tears burned at the back of my eyes, hot and relentless, but I fought them with everything I had. I refused to let him think softness meant surrender. “And you know what I told her, John?” My voice broke anyway. “I told her you were a good man. I told her that you had died before she was born. I told her you would have loved her.” His face crumbled. The devastation there would have broken me once. Not now. “And the whole time,” I continued, my voice dropping to a whisper so cold it scared even me, “the whole time, you were here. Playing biker. Fucking club whores. Living your life like nothing happened.”

“That’s not fair.”

“FAIR?” I shouted, my voice ricocheting off the walls. “You want to talk about FAIR? You don’t deserve to know her, John. You forfeited that right the day of the massacre. You forfeited it when you told me to run and never look back. And you sure as hell forfeited it when I came to this clubhouse looking for help and watched you let that bitch put her hands all over you.”

“I was trying to protect myself!” he roared, finally breaking through, his own voice jagged with hurt. “I was trying to protect my heart because I thought you betrayed me!”

“And I was trying to protect our daughter!” I screamed back. “I was trying to keep her safe from a world that took you away from me! From a world that would have gotten her killed!”

“You left!” he shouted, stepping forward until we were chest-to-chest again. “You vanished! No note, no call, nothing! I looked for you, Lina! I searched for months! And you were just… gone!”

“Because I thought you wereDEAD!” I sobbed, shoving at his chest again. “I saw the bodies, John! I saw them wheeling people out in body bags! What the hell was I supposed to think?”

“You could have tried to find me!” he shouted. “You could have?—”

“HOW?” I screamed. “How was I supposed to find a ghost? How was I supposed to know you were alive when everyone told me you were dead? When I stood outside that clubhouse and watched them carry out body after body after body?”

His hands grabbed my arms, his grip hard enough to bruise. “You should have tried!” he roared.

“I DID!” I screamed back. “I came back here! I came to this clubhouse looking for help, and what did I find? YOU. With your hands all over some club whore. Looking at me like I was the one who betrayed YOU!” We were both breathing hard now, chests heaving, faces inches apart, the whole room too small for the grief and fury packed inside it.

“I’m not letting you keep her from me,” he said, his voice dropping low and dangerous.

“You don’t have a choice,” I said coldly, even though my whole body was shaking.

“The hell I don’t.”