Page 76 of Monk

I watched him ride closer, helpless to do anything else. The growl of the engine got louder, fuller, vibrating through the porch boards and into the soles of my feet. Gravel popped beneath his tires. Dust curled up in his wake. He came to a slow stop near the porch, steady and controlled, then cut the engine with one practiced movement.

The silence that followed crashed over the yard almost violently. For one stretched-out second, the whole world felt suspended. Then John swung his leg over the bike and stood, tall and solid and devastatingly real, pulling off his helmet with a rough, impatient motion. His eyes found mine instantly. Locked there. And just like that, I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t think around the sheer force of seeing him standing in front of me again—the man who had once been everything, the man who had shattered me, the man who somehow still had the power to knock my whole world off its axis with a single look.

Again.

He took a step toward the porch, then another, his expression unreadable in that infuriating way of his—too controlled, too guarded, as if whatever storm was raging inside him had been chained down by brute force. “Lina,” he said, my name rough in his mouth, dragged out low and raw enough to scrape across every nerve ending I had.

I swallowed hard, forcing my fingers to uncurl one by one at my sides. My hands were shaking. From anger, I told myself. From leftover adrenaline. Definitely not from the way my body still recognized him before my pride had a chance to interfere.

“John,” I said, though it came out barely above a whisper. My throat felt too tight around his name. “What are you doing here?”

He stopped at the bottom of the porch steps, close enough now that I could make out the tension carved into every line ofhis body. His hands flexed once at his sides. His jaw was rigid. But his gaze never left mine—not for so much as a second.

“We need to talk,” he said.

My chest tightened until it almost hurt. “About what?”

His jaw clenched hard enough that I saw the muscle jump beneath the skin just below his ear. He looked like a man holding himself together by sheer willpower alone.

“About everything,” he said. “About us. About Tatum. About what happens next.”

I stared at him, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it up in my throat. I had known this conversation was coming. Known it from the second I walked out of that clubhouse. It had been stalking me ever since—inevitable, unavoidable, sitting just over the horizon like a storm I couldn’t outrun. But knowing it was coming and being ready for it were two very different things.

I wasn’t ready. I didn’t know if I would ever be ready. My mouth parted anyway. “John?—”

“Please,” he said, cutting me off before I could say anything else. The word came out stripped bare. “Just... let me say what I came here to say.”

I hesitated long enough to feel the silence press in around us. Then I gave a slow, reluctant nod.

“Okay,” I said quietly.

He climbed the porch steps slowly, as if each one cost him something, and then suddenly he was right there in front of me. Too close. Close enough to touch. Close enough that I could see the exhaustion etched beneath his eyes, the strain in the set of his mouth, the tension riding his shoulders like he hadn’t truly relaxed in days. There was desperation in the way he looked at me—raw and unhidden and impossible to ignore. “I fucked up,” he said, and his voice was rough enough to catch. “I fucked up so badly, Lina. I know that. I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness.I know I don’t deserve another chance. But I’m asking for one anyway.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but he kept going, like if he stopped now, he might lose his nerve entirely.

“I need to meet her,” he said. “I need to meet Tatum. I need to know my daughter. And I need you to give me the chance to prove—to both of you—that I can be the man you deserve. The father she deserves.”

His voice cracked on the last word, and something inside my chest cracked with it. My eyes burned suddenly, fiercely, with tears I refused to let fall just yet.

“John...”

“I love you,” he said, and this time his voice broke wide open on the truth of it. “I never stopped loving you. Not for one goddamn day in the last seven years. Not when I was angry. Not when I was grieving. Not when I thought I’d lost you forever. I know I hurt you. I know I said things I can’t ever take back. I know I made a mess of everything. But I’m here now, Lina. And I’m not going anywhere. Not unless you tell me to.”

I stared at him, my chest so tight I could barely draw breath, and realized with a kind of stunned clarity that I was tired. Tired of running. Tired of bracing for pain before it came. Tired of building walls so high and so thick that even I couldn’t see over them anymore. For seven years I had run from the grief, from the betrayal, from the impossible ache of everything we’d lost. And maybe, if I was honest, I had also been running from the possibility that I could still have the life I’d once dreamed about—the one with him, with our daughter, with something whole on the other side of all this wreckage. But standing there in front of him, I knew one thing with absolute certainty.

I was done running.

“Okay,” I whispered.

John blinked hard, like he wasn’t sure he’d heard me right. “Okay?”

I nodded, and this time the tears came, slipping hot and unchecked down my cheeks.

“Okay,” I said again, stronger now, steadier. “You can meet her. But listen to me, John—if you hurt her, if you walk away from her, if you make that little girl feel like she is anything less than precious, I will destroy you. Do you understand me?”

He nodded immediately, his own eyes bright with tears he looked too proud—or too wrecked—to let fall.

“I understand,” he said. “I swear to you, Lina, I won’t let her down. I won’t let you down. Not again.”