Page 36 of Written with Regret (The Regret Duet 1)
Sitting up taller, she squared her shoulders. “Yes. She did. Because she deserved better than I could have ever given her. You have no idea what it was like for me after that shooting. I was just a kid. I knew what had happened. I’d been there. I’d seen it. But I couldn’t make sense of it. I had all of these new emotions that were warring inside me, but they wouldn’t come out. My grandfather put me in counseling and therapy, but it was easier to pretend that I was okay than to explain the carnage happening inside me. By the time you met me, I’d been ravaged by the shrapnel of those emotions until there was nothing left of me.” A muffled sob ripped through her before I felt it slashing through me as well.
“Hadley, I…” I didn’t finish the thought. I had the urgent need to apologize to her again. For what he’d done. For what I’d done. But I couldn’t get the words out. I couldn’t apologize. Not when it came to Rosalee.
Her blazing, green eyes came back to mine. “You have to believe me. I loved that little girl, Caven. I swear to you I did. I told myself I was going to be a good mom. I vowed it. But the night I went into labor… All the pain and fear. I was in that mall again, waiting to die. I delivered her alone in my apartment because I was too paralyzed by fear to even walk outside. In that moment, blood covering the bed, that tiny little girl crying, those feelings and emotions that I’d never fully dealt with, they broke me. The only clear thought I had was that if I kept her, they would break her too. I hated giving her to that prostitute, and I followed her all the way to your building just to be sure Keira—uh, Rosalee was safe. But I couldn’t face you. I couldn’t explain all of this to you back then. However, the one thing I will never forget was the feeling deep inside my soul that I’d done the right thing for that little girl. I know you’re mad because of what I did but—”
I had to stop her. My gut was sour after listening to her talking about delivering our child alone and scared. But clearly she did not know as much about me as she thought she did.
“I’m not mad because of what you did. I’m mad because you came back.”
“What?” she gasped.
“Jesus, Hadley. I’ve been scared my entire life because a part of my father still lives inside me.” I stabbed a finger at my wrist. “His blood still runs through my veins, and short of bleeding myself dry, there is not one damn thing I can do to change that. There is still a very big, very real part of me that feels like I’m responsible for every life that was affected or lost that day.” I leaned in close, the intensity increasing even as I lowered my voice. “He came to that mall to kill me.”
It wasn’t a secret. My father’s motives had been flashed across the screen of every national news source that day. Luckily, I was a juvenile, so they weren’t allowed to use my name or picture.
But people in Watersedge still knew.
Worst of all, I still knew.
“But you didn’t kill anyone, Caven.”
I shook my head. “No. I didn’t. But there will never be a day that I don’t struggle with feeling like maybe I did. Before Rosalee, I was addicted to work and women, anything to keep my mind off who I was and what I’d caused. But that little girl saved my life. No question about it. Because, despite the fact that she looks just fucking like you, when I look at her, I see pieces of myself. Good pieces. Untainted pieces. Whole pieces. It’s impossible to hate myself when I can see those pieces inside someone as perfect as her. So no, Hadley. I’m not mad anymore because of what you did. I get it. I’m sorry. I’m eternally grateful to you for leaving her with me. But if you’ve come here with the idea of getting her back, I can assure you, that is not a war you can win.”
“I’m not trying to take her back,” she hissed. “That is one of the first things I said to you because I knew that was what you’d assume. Yes, I had a DNA test done so that I can be added to her birth certificate. But that tiny line on a piece of paper is all I’m trying to take from you. She adores you. I’ve heard her speak less than ten sentences and almost all of them were about you.” She bobbed her head from side to side and used a baby voice that was eerily and uncomfortably similar to Rosalee’s. “‘My daddy got me a unicorn cake. My daddy won’t let me have a ferret. My daddy pees standing up but he said I shouldn’t.’”
