Page 153 of Reckless Vow

Syd, Lo, Gina and Gio’s Mila are helping Mom at the island.

The rest of the group is outside.

Dad frowns, his eyes darting from me to our linked hands. And then he looks at Mom, who stands frozen, her lips set in a straight line.

“Mom, Dad, can we talk to you?”

Lo groans. “We’re never going to eat.”

“Shut up,” Baldo snaps.

“Let them be, for fuck’s sake,” Sydney berates her at the same time. “Let’s go outside and give them some privacy.”

Gina scoops up her little girl and everyone scurries away.

Nausea swims through me, and I’m probably drawing blood as I dig my nails into Baldo’s hand.

Without thinking, my other hand moves, bringing my thumb to my teeth, but I drop it and take a deep breath.

“Dad, Mom, I know this is something you had a hard time accepting ten years ago, but we’re adults now, and I hope you can trust that it’s not just some teenage rebellion.”

I pause. My gaze flits around, but I square my shoulders and look my dad in the eyes.

“We’re in love.”

Baldo brings our connected hands to his lips and kisses my knuckles.

Dad’s expression remains solemn. But at least it’s not anger.

“Micah, I’m in love with your daughter. And I intend to spend the rest of my life with her.”

“Him?” Dad utters, looking at me with a disbelief and disappointment that shocks me.

Until now, I couldn’t quite imagine that he really sent Baldo away back then, but his expression is full of hurt and something fierce I don’t recognize.

Baldo snorts. “What do you have against me,Dad?”

I flinch, and Mom steps closer. It almost looks like she is going to join Dad, who is holding the armrests of his wheelchair with a white-knuckled force, but then she stops.

She halts between her husband and her son, not choosing sides this time.

“I will never forget the state she came home in that night. She didn’t want to tell us, but she was hurt and bleeding, and didn’t speak for days or leave her room.”

“And you didn’t let me near her.” Baldo tries and fails to rein in his voice.

He drops my hand and rakes both his hands through his hair, shaking his head.

“After what you did to her? I wouldn’t risk you getting close again. You had the nerve to show your face here again two days later,” Dad shouts.

Oh my God. He thought…

“So you conveniently assumed I hurt her? What the fuck?”

“And what else was I to think? You kept sneaking into her room with your raging teenage hormones.”

Baldo shakes his head again and looks at his mom. “And you believed that too. You believed that I would ever hurt Brook. Any woman, for that matter? You fucking took his side.”

“Don’t you talk to you mother like that.” Dad’s voice slices through the air. “I will never forget the night my little girl came home, scared and hurt, and she asked if you were home. She was relieved that you weren’t, and she retreated to her room. What did you do to her?”

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