Page 115 of The Last Dance You Saved
No. I refused to believe that. I’d shower her with even more goddamn love than her parents had. I’d wrap her in it so it was the only thing she ever felt.
“Where’s Sadie?” I demanded, knowing it sounded aggressive and not even sure I cared. I needed to know where the hell she was, needed proof she, like Fallon, had only minor injuries that would heal if the emotional ones didn’t hang on too tight.
Eva darted a look at Brandon, who dragged a hand over the scruff on his chiseled cheeks.
“She went to the bar,” Eva said with a sigh.
“She’s working?” I barked. “Why the hell is she working?”
Eva’s eyes settled on me with the same assessing gaze her husband had given me outside but taking it deeper, going beyond all my walls to the truth beneath. It was as if, like her daughter, she had a bit of siren or fae in her, allowing her to read my thoughts and emotions and intentions before I even knew them. Finally, she said, “I imagine you’ve come to know my daughter pretty well in the last week, Rafe. You tell me why she’s working.”
She would have been unable to sit still. Her mind would have been full of emotions, the scene from the bar on repeat in her head. She would have needed to dive in. To help. And she’d have blamed herself for what happened. I’d asked her to protect my daughter, and she’d think she had failed. Just as I’d thought I’d failed. We were both right and wrong at the same time.
I turned to Steele. “Give me the car keys.”
He didn’t even hesitate. He just dug them out of his pocket and tossed them. I caught them one-handed and rose from the table. I tugged on Fallon’s braid. “You okay here for a bit, Ducky?”
She gave me that cheeky smile I adored—the one I had been afraid might not show up again for a while after what she’d been through today. “I’m good with the Hatleys and Mom and Jim. But she thinks you’re letting her go, Dad. I don’t know what you said to her before we left California, but she’s been eating herself up with it. Don’t be a dick. Make sure she knows you love her.”
“Fallon,” Lauren warned, but it was with laughter in her voice.
When I looked around the room, I saw the same in the other adults’ faces. But the laughter in the Hatleys’ gazes also included a warning that screamed,Don’t mess with our daughter.
I was halfway down the porch steps when Eva caught up with me. She handed me a velvet, drawstring bag. “These are the jewels my grandmother had that seem to belong to you.”
I took them, swallowing. “Thank you.”
“There’s also a ring in there that belonged to Carolyn. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t part of your set. The stones are too different, but it was made in the same era. It’s been through a lot, that ring. It was given to people who lived the best and the worst days after receiving it, and it was taken from our family for a while. It found its way home though. I’d like you to have it. I’d like you to give it to Sadie when you make her yours.”
My throat clogged. “She’s already mine, Mrs. Hatley. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry it might mean I take her away for months at a time because I can’t stand the thought of spending even one more minute without her at my side.”
To my surprise, she smiled, large and bright. “All I’ve ever wanted for my children was for them to have the love I’ve been lucky enough to find with Brandon. If they have that, everything else that happens in life is just icing on the cake or rotten eggs, both easily thrown out. If you have a love that sticks, it’ll get you through anything. You give that to Sadie, you stick, and I’ll be one happy mama. Just like the ring, Sadie will always be able to find her way home when we need her or when she needs us. I’m counting on you to make sure she doesn’t need us very often.”
She shocked me again by hugging me and then stepped back.
“Maddox said the crime scene was cleared, and Sadie went to clean it up. Her bartender, Ted, called Brandon a while ago and told us half the town showed up to help. Everyone’s trying to make her feel like nothing bad ever happened there, right down to the normal band showing up to play. That’s Willow Creek for you.”
She was trying to make me feel better in knowing Sadie wasn’t alone. That she hadn’t had to deal with the blood and memories on her own, but it didn’t work. It only made me feel worse I hadn’t been there to pitch in like she’d pitched in last week for me…for my family.
Eva squeezed my arm. “She wasn’t planning on spending the night here at the ranch. That’s not unusual as, more nights than not, she sleeps at my family’s old house in town so she doesn’t have to drive out here after closing the bar.” She waited a bit and then winked and said, “I don’t expect we’ll see either of you tonight.”
It took me a second for the realization of what she’d said to sink in, and then I couldn’t help the huff of laughter that escaped me—the first laugh in going on fourteen hours.
“Don’t disappoint me by showing back up.” Eva’s smile widened, and I realized how much Sadie looked like her, right down to the mischievous fire in her eyes.
After she whirled around and returned to the house with the same vibrant energy as her daughter, I stared down at the velvet bag in my hand. Inside were the jewels that had left our home eighty years ago and started a feud that had taken decades to resolve. They’d nearly cost my daughter and the woman I loved their lives and almost cost me mine. But like the ring Eva talked about, the jewels had found their way home, and they’d brought Sadie to me. I’d said it before, thought it before, but maybe that had truly been their purpose all along. Maybe the fates had been pulling strings back when Alasdair laid down his royal flush and snagged the ranch from Tommy Hurly to begin with.
I found there was power and hope in that notion.
Sadie was mine. I was hers.
Now, I just had to prove it to her.
The map on my phone led me back through the windy hills studded with ranches, past the exit to a lake, and past the Willow Creek sign declaring it was the home of football heroes, rock stars, and ranchers. I hadn’t noticed the town when we’d driven through it on our way to the Hatleys. My eyes had been focused on my phone and the directions leading us to my daughter and Sadie. But the lantern-shaped lampposts casting a warm glow over the cobblestones and the brick shops held a quaint vibe that reminded me a whole helluva lot like the town I’d grown up in.
The GPS directed me past the stores to the edge of town where McFlannigan’s sat on a corner. Every parking space on both sides of the street was taken, and I could hear music streaming from it even with the car windows up. I turned down a side street only to find the parking lot in the back was as full as the front. I bit my cheek as the desperate need to see her, hold her, kiss her, grew to a boiling point.
I finally found a spot down past a dilapidated apartment building and jogged toward the front of the bar in heavy, magnolia-scented air. The McFlannigan’s sign glowed warm against the brick-and-stone front, and for a brief second, I hesitated. Would I have the right words to convince Sadie to forgive me? To convince her I’d made a plan for our future because I’d always known we belonged together? To reassure her I’d never again let her go? I’d rip my heart out and hand it over to her before I left her again. Before I left this town without her with me.
