Page 94 of Montana Falls
The door to the hospital suite was closed for less than a minute before it was roughly barged open, a snarling face greeting me as I flinched once more, for an entirely different reason.
“You’ve done some ridiculous things in your life, Diamond, but this takes the fucking cake.” Beau stepped into the room,glaring at me with the anger he usually reserved for the dead he created.
He looked the same as always on the outside. His dark hair slicked back. His face shaved clean. A black suit that clung to his frame and was no doubt expensive, and a pair of shiny shoes. But there was something different about him. Something in the way he stood, just inside the door, like he didn’t quite know what to do next. His eyes that I’d stole, usually so sharp and piercing, softened for the briefest moment when they found me sitting by Logan’s side.
My throat tightened; my chest heavy with the weight of everything I wanted to say. But the words wouldn’t come. They stuck in my throat, lodged there like jagged pieces of glass. I swallowed, my eyes burning, wondering what the fuck I was supposed to say to him.
He’d spent days thinking I was dead, and I’d let him. All I’d done was ask Miguel to make sure he didn’t do something stupid like kill himself out of guilt.
“Tío…” The word slipped out before I could stop it, barely a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
Beau’s jaw clenched. His eyes flicked toward Logan, who was still asleep, then back to me. The silence stretched between us, heavy and thick with all the things we weren’t saying.
For a second, I thought he might turn around and leave. I wouldn’t have blamed him. I had hurt him in a way that could never be undone, by making him grieve for me.
I’d let him burn half my city to dust to avenge me.
But he didn’t leave.
Instead, he crossed the room in three long strides and stopped in front of me. His presence—familiar, powerful, just like my daddy’s—was like a tidal wave crashing down, and I felt the weight of it wash over me. I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’tface the pain in his eyes, the anger, the hurt. I wanted to say something, anything, but the words were stuck.
Beau knelt down in front of me, and when he did, my heart broke a little more. He looked up at me, his face close, and I saw it then—the raw, unfiltered emotion in his eyes. Anger. Sadness. Relief. And something else. Something I couldn’t quite name, but it cut deep for one entirely insane reason.
He was crying. Tears were sliding down his cheeks at a violent speed, and there was no stopping them.
He never cried. Not really.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, the words barely audible, my voice cracking as I finally looked at him. “I’m so sorry I lied and pretended and I… I thought it would help sell the story. I thought your grief would be so real that I… I could convinceherthat I was gone, and she would not think it was all a lie.” With a sniffle, I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I even asked Rika to shoot me, not Kody. Because I wanted Kody’s real reaction and for him to be present, to help sell things.”
Beau’s jaw tightened, and for a second, I thought he might shout, or worse, turn that coldness I’d seen him wield against enemies onto me. But he didn’t. He just closed his eyes, letting out a long breath, like he’d been holding it in for days. When he opened them again, the storm I’d expected wasn’t there.
“I thought I lost you,” he said, his voice low, thick with emotion. “I thought I lost you for good and it fucking killed me. Do you understand that? I was dead, too.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Iwasgoing to die, too. That’s how much I love you –needyou.”
“I’m sorry.” I said again, because I didn’t know what else to say.
He stared at me with the fiercest sort of love that I had always seen in my daddy’s eyes, and it was enough to make me snort because it was such a silly thought to have right now.
“You look like my daddy.” I whispered. “All mad and sad and loving. You seem like you want to murder for me being bad but that you would also kill the world for me. I just… I just like to see it.”
He snorted too. “I know I’m not Ford. I won’t ever be Ford.” He breathed. “But I… I amyourdad. Your uncle. Your family. I’ll be here for you always, in whatever role you want me. And I know we haven’t really talked about everything. We’ve been so busy and there were just other things going on and I… I just wanted you to understand that I don’t regret you – I don’t hate anything about you, even if the way you were made was… wasn’t nice.”
“I know.” I breathed.
He carried on. “I loved you the second I met you, and every moment since. And I know I gave you to Ford, but that was nothing to do with you. Okay? That was all me – all shit I had to deal with myself. But I never once blamed you for anything. And I don’t think you can even comprehend how much I am grateful that I didn’t lose you, too. I can’t live without you Sapphire. Not now, not ever.”
“Do you seeherwhen you look at me?” My eyes dropped to the floor, tears falling freely as I asked the one question I’d wondered since I’d found out the truth. “Do I remind you of her?”
“Never.” He replied. “I see Lucia, and I see Ford, and I see you. All of it is stuff I love and have always loved.” He forced a watery grin onto his face. “Sometimes I even see me too. Only when you’re being violent – that’s when you look like me the most.”
“Promise?”
He nodded. “You have never been like her, and you never will be. Regardless of what DNA you carry, you aremydaughter. I love you and that is never going to be in question. The restdoesn’t matter to me the same way you just told Misha that it doesn’t matter who he is related to.”
I believed him. Even if it was hard. Or sad. Or whatever else my brain felt when I thought of my biological mother. The truth was, I trusted Beau. When he said he didn’t hold it against me – when he said he sawmeand not the thing that made me – I trusted it to be true.
I squeezed my eyes shut, the tears spilling over, running down my cheeks, hot and painful. Beau’s fingers closed around mine, his grip firm but not painful. His eyes—those cold, rain storm eyes that reminded me of what I’d lost—softened just a fraction as he looked at me, the lines of his face etched with something close to exhaustion.
Sometimes I forgot he was still young. That he was only fourteen years older than me.
