Page 26 of Untamed Heart

“I won’t, because it’s true, and you know it. You canfeelit.”

“Stop,” I clipped, anger and devastation causing my voice to crack on that single word. “You’re a liar! You can’t say something like that when you had a child withsomeone else!”Damn it. Now he knew exactly how much of a hold he still had on me. I had to get the hell out of there.

“Move. I want out.”

“You have to listen to me.”

“I don’t have to do a goddamn thing!” I practically yelled. “Now back up, and let me out!”

“It’s not what you think. Please?—”

“No! No, no,no! You don’t get to force me to listen to your bullshit explanations! Not when you’ve all clearly moved on!”

Roe’s head reared back in confusion. “What?”

“You all moved on! I left, and you all just moved on like I never meant anything.” I felt all the fight drain out of me by the end of that sentence. To my horror, a single tear broke free andtrailed down my cheek, but I didn’t have the strength to stop it. Or the one after that. Or the one after that. “I left because I hadnothinghere. No one to care enough to pickme. I tried to go somewhere else and find that, and Istillended up all alone with nothing.” A bitter laugh rolled out of me. “Meanwhile you’re here with this perfect, beautiful, funny little girl who looks at my father like he hung the moon. And what makes it hurt even worse is that he looks back at her the exact same way!” Tears were pouring down my cheeks by that point, but I was beyond caring. “What was so wrong with me that he couldn’t give me that, huh? What was so awful about me that he couldn’t love me like that?”

I didn’t realize that I’d been sobbing and shouting until Roe moved, wrapping his arms around me and crushing me against the solid wall of his chest. His voice was low and gentle as he held me tight, soothing sounds and words vibrated through his chest and into me. I lost myself in the warmth and safety of being in his arms for a few seconds, briefly forgetting he was no longer a safe place for me to land. Fortunately, I remembered before I did something stupid—again.

I stepped back, putting pressure on the arms banded around me and rested my hands on his chest, pushing back to drive my point home. The deepening furrow between his strong brow told me the last thing he wanted was to let me go, but he did it anyway, giving me the space I so desperately needed in order to breathe. Unfortunately, he didn’t remain silent, and what he said next only made my mind spin faster.

“She didn’t mean anything.” At the confused pinch to my features, he continued. “Cassi’s mom. She didn’t mean anything, just a random, careless drunken hookup. Only reason I even saw Caroline a second time was because she had to tell me she was knocked up. She wasn’t exactly thrilled when that stick turned pink. I went to the doctor with her to get it confirmed, and assoon as I heard her tiny, fluttering heartbeat, I knew that was it for me. Only time I’d ever been so certain in my love for another human being was you.”

My face fell. “That’s not fair.”

“Maybe not, but that doesn’t make it any less true.” He shook his head, reaching up to drag a hand through his hair. “Caroline never imagined herself as a mom, said she didn’t have that maternal gene, but I was already gone for that little baby. Ultimately, the decision was up to her, and I respected that. I offered to cover all the medical costs, anything that came with being pregnant, and I lucked out that she saw how much I wanted my little girl, so she agreed to keep the baby. She signed over her rights after she gave birth and I paid for her to relocate somewhere else. She wasn’t a big fan of small town livin’ either.”

I blinked, shaking my head trying to make sense of everything he said. “I-I don’t understand. She just... signed her baby over? How could she...?”

Something changed on Roe’s face, he gave me a look that was almost a warning. “You might not understand it, but that doesn’t make Caroline’s decision wrong. She knew she wasn’t up to the job of being a parent and trying to force it wouldn’t have been healthy for either of them. You ask me, what she did was courageous. She made sure her baby went to a safe, loving home before bringing her into the world. It wasn’t easy, but she did it.”

I felt more than a little chastened at his tone, and rightfully so, because everything he said made perfect sense. Not all women wanted to be mothers, and it was their right to choose. But carrying a pregnancy to term simply because the other partner in the baby’s creation wanted the child actually showed a level of compassion not many people had.

Lowering my face to the ground, I whispered, “You’re right. I’m sorry.” Realizing there wasn’t a woman waiting in the wings for Roe lessened the pain of seeing that little girl and mademe feel like an asshole for my accusation, but what I felt after witnessing Ezra showing her so much love and adoration still felt like the rug had been ripped out from under me.

It stillhurt.

“Nothing to apologize for. And you’re sorely mistaken if you think anyone moved the fuck on after you left,” Roe carried on. His words were like barbed wire wrapped in velvet. They might have felt soft and soothing at first, but still managed to draw blood. “I won’t lie and say I’ve been a monk, but every woman I’ve buried myself in since you left has had your face. They were only placeholders for the one I no longer had. Every one of them was stacked up to you, and not a single fucking one lived up to the memory of you.”

That desperate panic returned, tearing at my chest with it razor-sharp claws. “Roe, stop it.”

He didn’t bother listening to my warning and moved to block the door when I attempted to get past him. He wrapped his fingers around my left wrist and jerked my hand upward, pressing my palm against his chest right over where my name rested. “Every one of them knew the score. They weren’t permanent.” He pushed my hand harder into his chest. “And every one of them knew exactly why.”

“Stop.”

But he didn’t stop, and with each word spoken, that protective wall around my heart took hit after hit until I worried it wouldn’t be up to the task much longer. “You’re still such a part of me I named my daughter foryou. Just so I could keep a piece of you with me anyway I could.”

“Roe, please?—”

“Even told her the story about Cassiopeia. But your version. The story of a strong, self-possessed woman. Told her she was named after the favorite constellation of my favorite person, after her.”

He was killing me. Each sentence a million tiny cuts to my skin that would inevitably cause me to bleed out. At least that was how I felt. Like I was slowly bleeding.

“You don’t get to say that to me,” I hissed, reaching for my anger. “Not when I begged you. Ibegged,” I threw at him accusingly. “I begged you to pick me. To chooseme. To be different from my father who’d already broken my heart more times than I could count. But you didn’t, did you? You let me go. You threw me away like I was garbage. Just like him.”

He looked as devastated as I felt, but I couldn’t let that penetrate. I had to figure out a way to harden myself or this trip back was going to kill me. “Honeybee?—”

That was all it took for me to reach my limit. “I can’t do this. I need to go.” I was so anxious to get out of there I didn’t have a single moment to feel relief when he didn’t block the door that time. I was too busy running down the hall like the hounds of hell were nipping at my heels.