Page 27 of Untamed Heart

THIRTEEN

ROE

I knewit had only been a handful of minutes since I ran out of Pops’s hospital room to chase after Dakota, but by the time I got back I felt like I’d run a goddamn marathon at a full sprint. I hadn’t felt so exhausted since Cassi’s cholic phase as an infant. Only this time it wasn’t from lack of sleep. It was the bone-deep kind of exhaustion that only came with total emotional chaos.

Seeing the tears in Dakota’s eyes, the dark shadows beneath them she’d attempted to hide behind makeup... the agony on her face. It would have hurt less to be dragged naked over hot coals. I stopped in the doorway, before either of them saw me, needing a minute to put myself back together.

My little girl was currently snuggled up against Pops, the closest thing to a grandfather she would ever have, reading to him from one of the books she’d stashed in the plush, unicorn-shaped backpack she insisted on always carrying around. That little backpack was like her security blanket. She didn’t go anywhere without it, to the point the thing was ratty and nasty as hell. The only time I ever got to wash it was when I managed to sneak it away from her clutches as she slept. But to keep her from freaking out, I had to make sure I’d replaced all ofher ‘treasures’—all the little trinkets she assigned importance to—and slid it back into her bed without waking her. So far she hadn’t caught me.

To anyone who didn’t know him as well as I did, it looked like Pops was entrenched in the story Cassi was reading out loud, occasionally helping her out when she tripped over the bigger words, but I could see the tension bracketing his mouth and tightening the skin around his eyes. He was putting on a good show, but he was worried, and it didn’t take a genius to guess who he was worried about.

“Daddy!” I blinked, yanked out of my head at the sound of my baby girl’s excited voice saying the one word that always managed to make everything better, no matter how bad it got.

I pasted a smile on my face. “What’s goin’ on in here? You reading to Poppy, little star?”

She lifted her chin proudly. “Yep. There’s a prince in this one that rides a horse, but I changed it to a motorcycle because they’re so much cooler than horses. Right, Daddy? That’s why you and Uncle Pope and all the guys ride them.”

I moved into the room, leaning over the bed and pressing a kiss to the top of her head, mindful to avoid the pieces with glitter spray. Learned the hard way that stuff tasted like shit. “Totally right, sweetheart. Motorcycles are always the best choice.”

“Duh.” She rolled her eyes like I was an idiot for stating the obvious. “When I’m old enough, I’m gonna get my own motorcycle, and I’m gonna get a purple helmet with a unicorn horn and sparkles all over it.”

I felt that same twinge in my chest that happened any time I remembered my girl was getting older, and one day she was going to grow up and leave me. “How about we discuss you getting a motorcycle when you’re a lot older. Like, when you’re sixty?”

Cassi let out a scoff that should have belonged to someone a hell of a lot older than she was. Christ, I was going to have a heart attack before she even reached her teenage years.

“Dad, that’sso old!”

Pops snorted with fake affront. “Hey now, sparkles. If sixty is old, what does that make me?”

She lifted her little face to him, her smile all kinds of mischievous. “You’re like,superold.” Her expression grew stern then. “That’s why you gotta take really good care of yourself, Poppy. ’Cause you gotta get better so you can come to my birthday party.”

“No chance I’d miss your birthday, honey pot.” Pops smiled down at her and tickled her side, smiling for a moment as she laughed hysterically. While she did, he took the opportunity to shoot his eyes to me before bouncing them toward the door and back. I shook my head, understanding what he was asking without words. He wanted to see Dakota.

His smile fell and the shadows that had taken up residence sixteen years ago returned to his eyes. They’d been gone the past several days, and I knew it was because he held out hope that Dakota still being in town meant something. But I ran her off. And fuck if that didn’t kill me.

“Daddy, where’d the pretty lady go?”

Leave it to my daughter to get right to the point without screwing around. “The, uh, pretty lady—Dakota,” I corrected, “had to run an errand she forgot about.”

The sight of Pops’s face falling hurt almost as much as the pain I’d seen Dakota wearing. Almost. Truth was, the two of us had avoided talking about that night as much as possible. The night sixteen years ago when we lost our girl for sure. The only time Pops had ever really opened up about it was after a particularly bad night about five years earlier. He’d gotten shit-faced and spent hours talking about what a shit dad he’d been and how his little girls had deserved better.

I couldn’t disagree. We’d both let the Riley girls down. I’d broken Dakota’s heart, but there had also been a time when Remy looked at me as the older brother she never had. We were as tight as two siblings born in blood could have been. But when I hurt Dakota, I’d hurt Remy by default. If she wasn’t actively avoiding me, she was giving me the kind of hateful looks that would have made paint peel. Then, as soon as she was old enough, she got the hell out too, and never looked back.

“She looked like she was sad,” my girl stated, her expression growing concerned, but that was what happened when you had a daughter with a heart bigger than the whole of Tennessee. “Is that why you went after her? To try and make her smile so she wouldn’t be so sad?”

My chest felt like it was being crushed under a heavy weight. “Yeah, little star.” I attempted a smile but knew it didn’t reach my eyes. “That’s what I was trying to do. Don’t think it worked though.”

Cassi looked back down at the book still resting in her lap and started flipping through the pages. “Don’t worry, Daddy. You can do it,” she said, completely unruffled as she studied the pictures in her book. “You just have to give her a hug. You give thebesthugs. I know for sure. I bet she’d believe me if I told her. I’m real believable.”

Oh, of that I had no doubt. It was why I’d been getting regular calls from Cassi’s teachers since she started school. My daughter was a bit of an evil genius. She had this quality that made the other kids want to follow along with any idea she came up with. And my baby girl did not lack imagination.

At first the independent streak in her freaked me out. Now I respected the hell out of it. My girl was going to either run the country one day, or her own cult.

Only time would tell.

The smile I offered then was much more genuine. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, sweetheart,” I said on a soft chuckle.

“No problem,” she chirped, slapping the book closed and tossing it aside before sliding off the side of the bed, the soles of her mini-motorcycle boots thumping against the floor.