Page 37 of Untamed Heart

My smile fell and I cleared my throat awkwardly as the air in the room thickened. “So, um... you ready to go?” I looked around the room. “Don’t you need a wheelchair or something?”

Ezra’s scowl returned in full force. “Over my cold, dead body am I leavin’ here in a wheelchair. I’m more than capable of walking.”

Something in me snapped as he tried pushing to his feet, and all traces of my good humor fled. “It almost was over your dead body,” I shot back, using a tone I imagined Lennon might use on her middle schoolers. The timbre of it said without a doubt I was not to be fucked with. “Or did you forget that the way you’ve been living nearly killed you?” It was my turn to slam my hands on my hips.

I hadn’t expected the panic that came with my scolding, but ever since I got back, I hadn’t been able to shake the realization that I’d almost lost my father. I used to tell myself I wouldn’t care if anything happened to him, but this whole situation had made a liar out of my past self. A part of me didn’t want to care, terrified that doing so would only give him the ammunition to hurt me all over again. I couldn’t help it.

I did a shitty job of hiding that panic, because Ezra moved faster than any man who was weeks out from open heart surgery had the right to do. “Okay, baby girl,” he said quickly, moving to me and taking my face in his hands, and to my utter horror, I felt the burn behind my eyes return with a vengeance. I got the light blue of my eyes from my father, and as I stared up at him, clasping his wrists in my hands, I was reminded how close I came to never seeing those eyes on him ever again. “It’s okay,”he said so gently that tug in my chest yanked harder. “I’ll use the wheelchair. I promise. No more arguing.”

I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth and clamped down against the onslaught of tears that wanted to break free. When I finally got a hold of myself, I sniffled and took a small step back, breaking his hold. “Good. Glad we got that settled.”

I turned around, prepared to go in search of a wheelchair, when the nurse from my very first visit appeared out of thin air, wheeling one into his room.

“Perfect timing.” Roe gave the woman a kind smile, but I didn’t miss the way her cheeks flushed bright pink at the sight of it. It took serious effort to suppress my eyeroll. It wasn’t unusual for Roe to get all kinds of female attention everywhere we went when we were younger, and it appeared that time hadn’t dulled his shine one damn bit. He took the handles from her and wheeled it closer to Ezra. “Cass and I just finished getting the spare room set up for you.”

“Yeah, Poppy!” Cassi bounced on the balls of her motorcycle boots. “And I drew you a bunch of pictures and hung them on the wall so you can see them and be happy.”

I blinked, giving my head a shake as confusion set in. “Wait. Your house?” I asked Roe. “Why can’t he just go home?”

The two men shared a look that I didn’t understand, but, from the way their faces had tightened, had serious meaning. “What’s that look about? What’s going on?”

Ezra wetted his lips before explaining, “Well, sweetheart, I sold the house a long time ago.”

I wasn’t sure why the thought of him selling my and Remy’s childhood home hurt so badly. It wasn’t as though we had many good memories behind those four walls, but, nevertheless, a pressure suddenly pressed down on my chest at that news.

“You did? When?”

My father, a force of nature, a huge man who’d always seemed so sure of himself, cleared his throat tensely and tugged at the collar of his shirt. “A little over thirteen years ago. After... after I divorced your mother.”

A record scratched in my head as every muscle in my body went solid, freezing me to the spot. “A-after... you... I-I don’t understand.”

It wasn’t as though I hadn’t thought about my mother since my return to Ashland. It would have been a lie if I said I wasn’t more than a little curious why I hadn’t seen her a single time I’d visited Ezra in the hospital. Mostly I was thankful we hadn’t crossed paths but had been preparing myself for that inevitability. Now to find out he’d divorced the evil woman shortly after Remy had gotten the hell out of there, it felt like a blow to the stomach.

“Baby girl?” At my father’s tender tone, I blinked back into the present, trying to sniff down the hurt that it hadn’t been until after we were gone that he finally got rid of her poisonous ass. “Oh, honey.” His face fell at the pain he so clearly saw in my eyes. “We have so much we need to talk about.”

I knew that logically, but I suddenly wasn’t sure I was game for that conversation.

Shaking off my hurt feelings, I focused on what was happening right then, telling myself that everything else was for another day. Maybe it made me a coward to bury my head in the sand, but it was all I had the strength to do at the moment. “Okay, fine. Just tell me where I’m taking you.”

“My house,” Roe answered automatically, even as my father talked over him.

“To the clubhouse.”

My chin jerked back into my neck. “Have you lost your mind?” I squeaked loudly, my eyes bugging wide. “You just hadheart surgery! You can’t stay at the clubhouse.” I didn’t botherto hide the curl of disgust in my upper lip. “That’s the last place someone who’s still healing the way you are should be staying. Hell, five seconds in that building and you’re likely to go into septic shock.”

Roe let out a snort of laughter. “A lot’s changed in the past sixteen years, Honeybee.”

I shot Roe a killing look. “That may be the case, but it’s still a glorified bachelor pad, not some place a person goes to heal.”

He held his hands up in surrender. “Hey, you won’t get any argument from me. That’s why he’s stayin’ with us.”

“Can you two stop talkin’ like I’m not sitting right here?” my father grumped. “Son, I already told you, I’m not imposin’ on you and Sparkle. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself, and the clubhouse isn’t that bad.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and shot daggers from my eyes. “You arenotstaying in that clubhouse,” I argued back.

“She’s right, Pops. We might have cleaned sh—” He paused, casting his eyes to his little girl who was watching everything like it was the most interesting TV show come to life and she couldn’t get enough. “Uh, stuff. We might have cleaned stuff up, but not to the level you’d need it to be to get better.”

He crossed his arms and pouted like he was a toddler and not a grown-ass man. “Well, I’m still not stayin’ with you.”