Page 112 of Free to Fall

“How dare you?” Caleb hisses.

“Like you’re one to talk?” I snap, my rage that he knew about her stalker and refused to tell me rising to the surface.

Before my eyes, his indescribable fury deflates to roaring anger. “You’re right. For that, I’ll apologize. But only that. You desecrated my little girl, Liam.”

I scrub my hand across my forehead. “She lied to me.”

“No, I lied to you. I’m the one who forced her to keep everything that she knew about quiet.” Caleb snarls at me like a rabid wolf. It takes Keene leaping in front of him, slamming a hand against his chest to forcibly restrain him.

“You?” My heart bleeds a second time in less than twenty-four hours. The first time was knowing Bailey was injured. Now, it’s knowing I unjustly wronged the woman I love.

“Yes, me. So, take your best shot. I dare you. Repeat every word you said to my daughter to me. Then lie to me. Tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing, execute any and every fucking maneuver to protect your own little girl if it meant the choice of her life or death. Try to tell me you wouldn’t lie to whomever you needed to, even if it meant losing her ... forget it.” Before my eyes, Caleb’s indignation deflates.

Keene steps in and tells me the actual happenings of what went down inside her house and at Greenwich Hospital before I arrived. Hearing it, I feel smaller than a bug that’s been swashed inside the gum beneath someone’s shoe.

I misread the situation completely. Laura didn’t endanger Bailey. She tried to save her, even to the point of putting herself in danger. “What did I do?”

“You fucked up, and it cost us all the most precious thing in the world—my daughter,” Caleb hisses.

“She loves you.” Of course Laura loves him.

“Laura hates me right now and it’s all because of you,” he spits.

To myself, I whisper, “What? No.”

Keene answers, “You might as well have finished the job Olivia Tiberi set out to do.”

My legs give way. I clutch the back of the couch to remain upright.

Keene’s voice is flat when he informs me, “Laura’s gone, Liam.”

Caleb nods at the keys lying between us like the Maginot Line. “She asked Keene to formally resign on her behalf. She won’t be coming back.”

Bile is trying to force its way out of my throat.

Laura’s gone.

She won’t be coming back.

The agony welling up in my chest causes a fissure that splits my heart in two. “Dear God. What did I do?”

For the first time, Caleb admits his own culpability when he mutters, “What did we do?”

“That’s for the two of you to figure out, but neither of you are to show your face around the office until you do,” Keene reprimands us both. He’s equally pissed at his brother-in-law as much as me. That much is obvious.

“I’ll add stay the hell away from my daughter while you figure out you.”

“Are you planning on doing the same?” I sneer in contempt. Fucking hypocrite.

“Laura needs to focus on putting her life back together ... again.” Caleb tacks on roughly.

Knowing the hell me and her father have put her through, I bob my head. Voice cracking, I agree to Caleb’s request, “I will.”

At that, my bosses make their way to the door. Just as the two men I’ve known and respected for years are about to walk through, I stress, “For now. Until I can figure out what caused me to attack the woman I love.” The woman who risked her life to save my daughter.

I don’t even react when the two men slam out my front door.

All I can think about is Laura, and with that, the events of the night catch up to me.

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