Page 61 of Rebooked For Us
He let me go and stepped back. Ducane ran his hand through his beard, slower this time. Then he nodded once.
A short breath left him, almost a laugh, but there was nothing funny in it. He turned away from me, walked a few steps, and stopped with his hands braced on his hips, staring out at the water.
“I missed everything.” He said it slowly, now adding it up. “Her first word.”
A breath.
“Her first steps.”
Another.
“Her first birthday. Six of them.” His head dropped. “I wasn’t there for one.”
Each one cut me too, even though I’d been there for every single one of those days. I’d just never had to watch somebody else find out they’d lost them.
“I was trying to protect her,” I said. My voice held steady even though my hands shook.
He turned his head, not all the way, but enough.
“From me?”
I hesitated. But not for the reason he thought.
“Not you.” I made myself say it clearly. “Your father.”
He went quiet, the muscle in his cheek ticking once before he caught it.
“You want to act like you didn’t know what that man was capable of. But you did. You’re his child, Ducane, raised in that house. And you’ll never fully admit what he is, because some part of you still loves him. I watched you give him chance after chance he never earned.” My voice held. “You underestimated him your whole life. I couldn’t afford to do that. Not with her.”
He looked at me like I’d struck him, because I had, with the truth. But I had to.
“You think he’d have let me keep her? A girl from nothing, carrying the heir? With his money and his lawyers and his reach?” I shook my head. “I made a choice. Maybe the wrong one. But I made it knowing exactly who her grandfather was, even if you couldn’t.”
“That’s crazy,” he said, softer this time, more to himself than to me.
He let out a slow breath, shaking his head.
“Prove it to me,” he said. His voice wasn’t raised. It didn’t need to be. “I need to see her. Right now.”
I stepped past him, grabbed my phone, pulled up Cadence’s contact, and called her iPad.
“Mommy, how was the beach? Do you miss me?”
“Oh, Sugar, you know I do. I miss you so much.”
“I know. When do you come back home? This was a long flight. Did you go around the world or something?”
Ducane was sitting in the beach chair when I came back outside. I sat beside him.
“Yeah, baby, it was. But I also had to do something important.” I looked at Ducane beside me. “Cadence, look.”
She bounced off her bed, curls bouncing with her, and leaned into the screen.
“Daddy?”
Premier Wings hadus on a flight within two hours of Ducane making one call. That was the thing about moving at his level. The world rearranged itself. I had expected him to want to leave immediately when he found out, and I was right.
I packed in twenty minutes. He packed in ten. We moved through the resort checkout so efficiently that it felt like the calm before the storm. I heard him on the phone a few times, most likely with his assistant. There hadn’t been much conversation after we hung up from an over the moon Cadence.
