Page 49 of Bad Decisions & Back Roads

She blinked at me.

Then smiled.“A big heart?”

“The biggest.Unfortunately, it’s attached to a stubborn butthead.”

She gasped, then dissolved into giggles.

I leaned in and whispered, “Don’t you dare tell him I called him that.He’ll make his mad face at me for teaching you the word.”

Her eyes widened with delight.Then she whispered back, scandalized and thrilled, “Butthead.”

* * *

TIMOTHY

I stormed toward the treehouse,half pissed and half terrified over whatever Sofia thought was so important she had to drag Gia off to her private sanctuary to discuss it.

Voices drifted down through the floorboards.

I ducked into the lower level, crouching low enough my back protested, and went still.

Then I heard Sofia’s small voice, soft and scared.“Now that my mommy left, Daddy will find a new mommy.Then he might not love me anymore.Like my mommy.”

What the hell?

Had she been carrying that worry around a long time?

Then Gia answered.“That man has a lot of love for you.Not regular love.Big, stubborn, impossible-to-shake love.The kind that sticks forever.”

I closed my eyes.

Gia’s voice was warm and certain with no hesitation, no empty reassurance.She explained the breadth of my love with the confidence of a woman who knew me.She vocalized every damn thing I’d never been able to put into words.

When she told Sofia my love would never lose “one single piece,” something inside me cracked wide open.

When she called me a stubborn butthead, I almost laughed.

By the time Sofia’s giggles drifted down through the floorboards, I was already backing away, putting distance between myself and something I couldn’t afford to feel.I made the short walk to my house before my body quit cooperating.

At the kitchen counter, I caught myself hard on the edge, head bowed and chest tight enough it felt like a vise had cinched around my ribs.I dragged in a breath that wouldn’t go deep enough.Another.Still not enough.

Emotion hit me like a fist to the sternum.My eyes burned.My throat locked.I pressed the heels of my hands against the counter and stood there.My jaw clenched so hard it ached as I fought for control in the empty silence where no one could see me come apart.

Gia hadn’t just comforted my little girl.She’d said what Sofia needed to hear.She gave her the confidence to know she’d always be loved.

I owed her for that.Far more than she would ever understand.

With cold, violent certainty I swore the man who had taught Gia pain, put fear in her eyes and bruises on her body had no idea what kind of reckoning was coming for him.For what she’d just given my daughter, I would burn his whole fucking world down.

I whipped out my phone.

Timothy:You in?

Mark sent back a thumbs-up emoji.

Timothy:What about Jackie?

Mark:Already on the job.