Page 76 of Shadows Relived
“I don’t expect forgiveness,” he said, his voice hoarse and raw. “I don’t deserve it. But I’m your father, and I would give everything—everything—to take it back.”
Back on the screen, her father was still speaking.
“Someone framed my daughter. Used her name as leverage to force me to do things I had refused to do. But I allowed it to happen because I was too proud—and too scared—to admit I’d been compromised. This will not be fixed overnight, but I intend to spend the rest of my life making it right. Not in office. Not with politics. But as a man simply trying to be a better father.”
The reporters shouted questions, but he didn’t answer. He simply stepped back, folded the speech into his jacket pocket, and walked off the stage, his assistant right behind him.
Meaghan stared at the screen long after it went blank. Her chest was a battlefield of war-torn feelings: a daughter’s heartbreak, a woman’s fury, a child’s lingering hope.
She still didn’t forgive him. Not yet.
But maybe now… maybe someday.
And that was more than she’d ever thought possible.
She folded her arms tightly across her chest, her throat aching as she stared at the blank screen.
He didn’t deserve applause, but he didn’t deserve prison, either.
Everett did, and the man would go away for a long time.
Callen stepped closer, but said nothing.
“I don’t know how to feel,” she admitted. “I hated him… but I think part of me still needed him to say those words.”
“You wanted the truth, and he gave it. On camera.” He reached out, placing a hand on her arm. “That counts for something.”
She made a slow bob of her head. “Yeah, I guess it does.”
They stood like that for a long moment. The wind through the open door tangled her hair, and the scent of citrus floated in from the orange grove beyond the lot.
Eventually, she looked at him. Really looked.
“Can we talk?” she asked.
Callen’s posture shifted as he smiled at her. “Always.”
She moved to sit on the bed, the plush comforter bunched beneath her fingers as she stared at the floor. “When you came for me… I thought I was dreaming,” she whispered. “That the pain, the fear, it had finally snapped my mind, so that I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. That I’d imagined you coming through that door.”
“I’m sorry it took so long.”
“You still came.”
He crouched in front of her. Not on the edge of the bed, not looming. Just there. His hands restedon his thighs, muscles taut beneath the denim. “I was ready to burn the world down for you,” he told her.
Her lips quirked. “You kind of did.”
He smiled faintly, then sobered as he reached out, placing a hand on her thigh. “You all right?”
She looked down at her hands. “I’m not broken anymore.”
She said it like it was a confession.
“I thought I was,” she went on. “When this all started. When I ran. I thought maybe it was my fault after all. That I’d be nothing more than the daughter of a corrupt politician who couldn’t face the truth.
She lifted her gaze to meet his. “But I was wrong.”
Callen nodded once. “Yup, you were.”
