Page 14 of Stowaway Whirlwind
I’m not sure how Goldie will react when she finds out what I’ve done, but I’ll just have to cross that bridge when we get to it since there’s no going back now.
Chapter 6
Goldie
My head pounds as I drift in and out of sleep in the back seat of Davis’s gorgeous truck, my right hand resting on Lily’s belly, making sure she’s breathing in her new rear-facing car seat that Davis bought and buckled in next to me. The thing is built like a tank and must have cost a pretty penny. I hope he can return it after he drops us off since Dad doesn’t have a car and we won’t have any use for it.
I hardly got a wink of sleep in the hospital since nurses and staff were constantly in and out of my room. I pray that Lily will nap for at least two to three hours so I can as well as soon as we get to Dad’s. A little thought at the back of my mind whispers about how much better the nap would be if Davis were to stay and sleep next to me…
I slip a hand into my backpack to pull out one of the few photos I have of Dad and me when I was a kid, turning toward the window so I can see it better in the dreary weather. I must have been around five or six years old, hair frizzy and blowing wildly on what must have been a windy day as I sat on top of his shoulders with a playground behind us. Maybe I was younger, actually, since Dad wasn’t nearly as skinny as the last time Isaw him after years of drug abuse finally caught up to him and wrecked his health before he got arrested.
I smile through my headache, anticipating seeing him after all this time. Although he didn’t pick up the phone when I tried calling him a few times after leaving the hospital, from our previous phone calls, I could tell by the sound of his voice that he’s just as excited as me to be back in contact and that he’s doing better. Happy. Much healthier. I can’t wait to see it all in person. He may be years older, of course, but I bet he’s put on the pounds since going to prison, getting clean, and getting three square meals a day.
I carefully slide the photo back into my backpack and slump lower, cat-napping through the last twenty miles of the two-hour drive to Dallas,almostwishing it were two hundred miles just so Davis and I wouldn’t have to part ways so soon.
Davis
My stomach had plummeted when I stood outside the hospital and handed Lily to Goldie to buckle her into her car seat when it was time to go, knowing the short road trip to Dallas would probably be the last time I see the two of them. Passing through those sliding glass doors painfully severed the fantasy of Goldie being my woman and Lily being my daughter from our reality, in which Goldie and I are strangers despite sharing such an extraordinary, life-changing experience.
I flick my eyes between the road and my rear view mirror damn near every thirty seconds throughout the drive. The view of Goldie slumped low in her seat, her lips parted as she sleeps,keeps drawing my attention. The navy blue of her hoodie looks good on her, and my dick twitches when I picture the black nursing bra I bought that I know she’s wearing beneath it, cupping her full, luscious tits.
I only wish I could see Lily as well, but she’s facing the back. That’s probably a good thing, or else I wouldn’t be able to keep my eyes forward and focused on the road at all. That little girl of mine with her red hair, so much like her mother’s, is something special.
Damnit. I did it again.She is not my daughter, I remind myself, even though I played pretend long enough at the hospital for it to feel like she is…and put my name down on her birth certificate, which I’m pretty sure means the law considers her mine, too, at least until a DNA test proves otherwise.
Shit, I’ve really gone and done it now. Goldie is going to freak out the minute she gets the birth certificate in the mail, and I’ll have to come clean about the absolutely insane—and possiblyillegal—things I’ve done since meeting her two days ago.
The GPS directions lead me to a rundown apartment complex on the outskirts of downtown Dallas. The gray paint, whether it started that color or not, is peeling in large sheets from the siding of each building. At least half the units on the ground floors have rotted wooden privacy fences around their patios that are either leaning over, dangerously close to collapsing, or simply missing in sections altogether. Plastic grocery bags and other debris gather along the bottom of the chain link fence surrounding the entire property, with weeds slowly reclaiming the parking lot, growing tall and scraggly between the wide cracks and potholes in the pavement.
This can’t be the right place. At least, I don’t want it to be, even though I know that it is since we double-checked the address before pulling up the map on my phone before we left the hospital. I have half a mind to make a U-turn and head backthe way we came, but I force myself to slow the truck and pull into a parking space at the front next to a beat-up sedan with mismatched red and gray parts pieced together.
My stomach churns when I notice a couple of guys I don’t like the look of sitting on the stoop of the concrete staircase leading to the second floor of the building to the right. They eye my truck when I put the gear in park but don’t immediately get out. One of them is sagging against the black railing, its paint also peeling, revealing rust-eaten metal, the man’s pink balding head hanging limp on his shoulder.
My hand hovers over the gear shift, flexing with the need to put it in reverse and take my family home. I swear I’m seconds away from doing just that when Goldie yawns from the back seat, smacks her lips, and sleepily asks, “We’re here already?”
“Yeah.”Unfortunately.“You sure this is the right place, honey?”
She frowns in the rear view mirror as she surveys the complex, double-checking the name on the faded white banner tacked to the front of the largest building in the middle. “Yeah.” When she meets my eyes in the mirror, her brows are creased, and she chews the inside of her cheek, as apprehensive as me.
I clench my jaw and follow Goldie around the back to the passenger side after helping her out of the truck, shooting a warning glare at one of the guys who whistles like a creep when she unbuckles Lily. My blood boils when another cat calls her, the two of them cackling before coughing up whatever poison they’ve got fogging their lungs. I’d love nothing more than to stomp over there and kick their teeth out.
Except, I won’t leave Goldie’s side, not in this place, not for a single second.
With her backpack slung over my shoulder, I leave the rest of her bags to bring in later after she gets settled. I put an arm around her, blocking the guys’ view of Goldie and Lily as I searchfor her dad’s apartment number. Reluctantly, I lead her down the broken sidewalk toward the building on the left, thankful he’s on the ground floor so we don’t have to push through any other assholes who may be lingering on the stairs.
I battle the impulse to scoop Goldie up and race back to the truck when we get to her dad’s grungy white door. There’s a putrid bucket of soggy cigarette butts on the ground, along with a broken lawn chair straight out of the nineties to the side of it.
My head and heart pound when Goldie knocks on the door softly at first, then harder when no one comes to answer it for a long minute. I nearly explode when a man with patchy gray stubble and sunken cheeks dressed in a graying undershirt and sagging jeans finally opens the door, and we’re blasted with the cloying stench of cigarette smoke.
And then, for a split second, I fool myself into thinking that wedohave the wrong address because this can’t be it. There ain’t no way this man, who looks like he’s knocking on death’s door, is the man Goldie has been so excited about being reunited with after a decade apart. We’ll apologize for the mix-up and head back to the truck, then call up her dad to get the right address.
But then I see the color of his eyes when they scrunch with delight, and my hope crumbles to dust. They’re a bluish-gray, a near copy of Goldie’s.Fucking hell, where is the man who got clean and has been on the straight and narrow? Because this sure as shit can’t be him.
Goldie’s face falls, and she shrinks at my side. “Dad?”
“Marigold! Holy shit, you’ve gotten big,” he booms, startling Lily, who does that newborn reflex thing where she throws her arms out in fright and starts crying. “Come give your daddy a hug.” He steps out of the apartment in his bare feet and pulls Goldie into a hug that swallows her whole, though he’s not much taller than her with his shoulders stooped.
She stands stiff in his arms, angling away to protect Lily, andgoddammit, I want to peel his skinny arms off her and pull her back into mine. He finally lets her go when he starts coughing, doing so directly in her face and on Lily before he turns away to finish hacking his lungs up.What the goddamn fuck is wrong with this guy?
