Page 62 of House of Scarlett
She shakes her head.
“Stop trying to power through the pain. If you’re hurting—”
“It’s not that,” she says, interrupting me with a sniffle. “I’m fine. It’s not from the surgery.”
Everything in me stills. “What did I do?” It’s the only other thing I can think of that would make her so fucking unhappy.Me.
Again, she shakes her head, but tears keep streaming down her face.
I reach out, trying to catch them on my thumbs, and I’d put them back in her eyes if I could, but they won’t stop falling. I rise to slide onto the bed next to her and wrap my arm around her shoulders.
“Who do I need to kill? You give me a name, and it’ll be done.”
Scarlett chokes out a laugh.
“I’m serious. Whatever you need me to do. I’ll do it.”
She looks up at me from beneath wet, clumping eyelashes and half snuffles, half laughs. “That might be the best offer I’ve gotten to get me to stop crying, but you don’t need to kill anyone. I’m just being a baby about the fact that my father couldn’t come to the hospital because he wasfishing with Chadwick the fucking douchebag.”
Her tone turns hysterical at the end of the sentence, and now I really want to kill the bastard. Fuck, I’d take out both of them.
Instead, I curl my other arm around her front and carefully hug her. Comfort isn’t something I know how to give or receive, but I’m going on instinct here. “Your father doesn’t deserve to have a daughter as amazing as you, if he’s going to fish with that fucking cocksucker when you’re in the hospital.”
She lets out another snuffle-laugh and leans into me. “I don’t get it. I don’t get how your own daughter could be so unimportant in your life. It doesn’t make sense.”
I think of how my mother left me and walked into Charlie’s Liquor and never looked back. “There are a fuck ton of parents who don’t deserve the title. Trust me, my mom was a piece of work. I ended up in foster care because she didn’t give a shit about me either.”
I’ve never shared that bit of information with anyone but Bump, Jorie, and Q, but it’s so fucking easy to share it with Scarlett. The shame that always comes with it is still there, though.
Her head jerks up immediately, and her teary eyes are big and wide. “Oh my God, Gabriel. That breaks my heart. She didn’t deserve you either.”
She burrows into me like she belongs at my side, and I fucking love the feel of her there. Together, we lie on her bed, no doubt thinking about our respective shitty parents and feeling sorry for ourselves. But for the first time since my mother picked looting a liquor store over me, I feel less shame about her choice. Her demons were stronger than both of us.
I still want to strangle Scarlett’s father, though. Even if I’d been a crappy son, there’s no way in hell Scarlett is a bad daughter. She’s ... a goddamned miracle. She could have grown up to be an entitled trust-fund kid with a drug problem, blowing through her family’s money before she was even twenty-five. But she’s the complete opposite.
She works her ass off, cares deeply about her staff, and is fiercely loyal to her friends.
Her dad is a giant fucking asshole.
That’s when I see the photo on her phone screen—two men holding up fish on a dock, both wearing sunglasses and tans that say they play more than they work.
I’ve already met her ex, but I memorize the image of her father. If I see either of them on the street, they’re going to feel my wrath for making my girl cry.
My girl.
My gaze cuts from the picture back to the woman curled up next to me.
Yeah. That’s what she is. Whether I deserve her or not, I’m not going to be another man in her life who shits all over her.It may take me years to make up for how things started, but I won’t stop until I do—or however long she lets me stay in her life.
Scarlett is a gift, and even though I don’t have a lot of experience with those, I’m going to treat her the way she should have been treated all along.
With respect and like a fucking queen.
Thirty-Seven
Scarlett
I wipethe tears from my eyes and take a few deep breaths as I soak up Gabriel’s strength. Despite our wildly different backgrounds, we share this harsh common ground of not being enough for our respective parents.
