Page 2 of Judge’s Redemption

His face empties. Not the controlled stillness he uses when he's thinking, but shock. His gaze moves over Evie's dark hair, the stubborn crease between her brows, and the solemn way she studies him without looking away.

Then he looks at me. Back at her.

His hand slips from the edge of his cut as though he's forgotten what he was doing.

“How old is she?”

Evie tilts her head. “I'm four. I had a pink cake.”

Judge stares at her. The color drains beneath his stubble, and for one impossible second, the man who never lets anybody see him shaken looks completely lost.

“Four,” he repeats.

His eyes close briefly. When they open again, they're fixed on me.

“Shay.”

The way he says my name tightens my chest. It isn't a question yet. It's disbelief and a plea for me to tell him he's worked it out wrong. But I don't.

His breath leaves him hard. “Jesus Christ.”

Evie edges closer to my leg. Judge notices and immediately forces his voice lower, but the shock remains written across his face.

“Is she mine?”

People are already looking. Mrs. Tillman has stopped halfway out of the pharmacy with a paper bag tucked against her chest. Two men outside the hardware store have gone silent. Ransom might distrust Kingdom Come, but that has never stopped the town from treating club business like free entertainment.

“Not here,” I say.

Judge takes one step toward me. “Shay, is that little girl my daughter?”

The words sound torn out of him.

My anger rises to meet the pain in his face because he doesn't get to make me answer this in the middle of Main Street. Not after all this time, with Evie listening and half the town preparing to carry the story home.

“Not here, Judge.”

His jaw tightens, but he looks at Evie again, and the devastation in his expression nearly knocks the breath from me.

He already knows. He just needs to hear me say it.

“When?” he asks.

The reasonable answer is never. The realistic one is that there's no avoiding this now.

“Tonight. Seven thirty.”

“Where are you living?”

“The Dawson place on River Street.”

“I know it.”

Of course he does. Judge knows every road in Ransom and most of what happens on them.

“Evie will be asleep,” I say. “You stay on the porch.”

His gaze returns to her. Something raw moves behind his eyes before he shuts it down. Then he looks at me again, and there's nothing fatherly in the way his attention drags over my mouth.