Page 42 of Untamed Heart

Pulling my hand free, I rose from the couch and began pacing the living room, restless energy spurring my legs on with no communication from my brain. “I can’t... I can’tbelieveher!” I finally shouted, my fingers curling into fists at my sides. “I knew she was an evil bitch, but this... this is next level.” I whipped around to face my father and he looked like he’d aged a year in a single day.

I rushed back to him, my concern for his health snuffing out my anger. “Dad, we can stop. If this is too much, we can stop now and pick this up another time.”

He shook his head, giving me a sad smile. “No, baby. This has been a long time comin’. Roe’s been on my ass for the past sixteen years, tellin’ me I needed to give you the truth, that I had to try and fix my relationship with you. I hate that it took agoddamn heart attack andyourcourage to come back for me to finally pull my head out of my ass and do that.”

I couldn’t think about the fact that Roe had never stopped advocating for my father to fix our relationship. Not while I had so much else to absorb first. So I pushed that down and focused on calming myself so I didn’t cause Ezra any additional stress. I sucked in a deep breath and slowly counted to three. “Okay. We keep going.”

He nodded determinedly. “We keep going.”

I sniffled, brushing my cheeks dry with my shirt sleeves. “Okay, so Remy and I eventually left. And that’s when you divorced her?”

“Yeah. Once Remy was out of the house and she couldn’t hold you girls over me any longer, I ended the marriage. What your mother didn’t know was that I’d been saving every penny I could. When Pope and Roe turned the club away from all the illegal shit, they focused more on the garage and the other legal businesses we had goin’. You might not believe this, but those two together”—he shook his head, his expression reverent—“geniuses. On their own, but especially when they put their heads together.”

I didn’t realize my jaw had been hanging open until my father reached out to push it closed. “They... they took the club legit?”

I remembered hearing them talk about things like that back when Roe and I were together, but I’d let my animosity for the club drown out everything else and refused to listen.

“Not just that, we’ve been rakin’ in more money than we ever did before. The garage took off. We use the prospects to run the day-to-day oils changes and tire rotations, shit like that, but the rest of the guys moved toward custom builds. Their designs—Roe’s in particular—are so good, we’re booked out two years already. It was a dark few years, trying to make that move, but they held stronger than any of us old timers ever could.Eventually, they got us out of the dark and it’s been nothin’ but light ever since.”

Those goddamn bombs just kept on dropping.

“Got myself a shark of an attorney and cleaned her the fuck out. Took everything. The house, the cars, all the money in the bank accounts, since the bitch had no work history whatsoever. Then I sold the house. It was either sell it or burn it to the fuckin’ ground and salt the earth in its wake.”

I didn’t feel a single ounce of pity for the woman who’d made the first nineteen years of my life a goddamn nightmare. She deserved every shitty, horrible thing she got, and I hope that, wherever she was, she was rotting away in her misery.

I cleared my throat, knowing there wasn’t a chance I was going to be able to sleep tonight, not with all this swimming around inside my head. “So, if she was out of the picture for good, how come you never reached out? How come you never tried to find us?”

“Oh, baby. I’ve known where you were the entire time.”

That tremble in my chin returned. “Y-you have?”

He nodded, throwing me for yet another loop. “I’ve known about every place you and Remy have been before you settled down. You in the mountains, her by the ocean, because that’s what calls to my girls’ souls. I know you’ve been working as a cooking influencer for years because I’ve been following you from the very beginning. There isn’t a single thing you’ve posted that I haven’t seen, baby girl, and I’m so fuckin’ proud of you.”

“I—” I had to stop to swallow down the lump that had suddenly formed in my throat. “Thank you. That means... that means everything.” And it did. But there was still something I had to know. “Why didn’t you ever come find either of us? You stayed in the know the best you could, but you never reached out. Why?”

“Because by then I’d already fucked up so badly, I convinced myself you girls were better off without me. Trying to come back into your lives would only cast a shadow over the happiness you’d found.”

I lost it then, breaking into gut wrenching sobs that felt like they were being pulled from the deepest, darkest recesses of my soul.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Dad stood, scooping me up and wrapping me in a bear hug like he used to do whenever I had a nightmare. And just like back then, the instant his arms closed around me, I felt a sense of safety and peace. “You’re killin’ me, baby girl. Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

I clung to him, burying my face in his chest and soaking his shirt with my tears. Each inhale pulled his familiar, comforting scent into my lungs and wrapped around me like a blanket.

“I wasn’t happy,” I admitted through more tears. “I haven’t been happy in so long, I don’t think I know what it feels like.”

He took my face in his hands, lowering his head so we were eye to eye. “Then I think it’s high time you went lookin’ for it, honey. Don’t you?”

I nodded. I didn’t feel like I had an ounce of energy left in my body, yet, at the same time, the weight that had been sitting on my chest disappeared completely. “I think you’re right. And I think this is a good start.”

“I do too, sweetheart. I do too. And I won’t stop trying to show you how much I mean that. I’ll never stop, not again.”

I pulled back, scrubbing a hand over my face. “I want to try and rebuild a relationship with you, Dad. It won’t be easy; I’m still so damn mad at you. But I also understand now in a way I never did before. So I want to try.”

He gave me a watery grin. “That’s all I can ask.” He pressed a kiss against my forehead. “And it’s the best gift I’ve ever gotten.”

TWENTY-ONE

ROE