Page 377 of Branded
I wasn’t going to turn into a weak, simpering woman. Not now. Not ever.
Cas’s fingers brushed my lower back, a slight movement barely discernible because he was holding Ethan and wouldn’t risk waking him. I turned, let my gaze show him what I’d realized, felt the warmth he had inside wash over me.
It would be okay.
No matter how it turned out.
“You came.”
Two words that had my focus swiveling back to my father. I nodded.
“Lake tell you I’m dying?”
I nodded even though I was rooted in place by the dry words tinged with a shadow of cruelty. God. His voice hadn’t changed, even though his body had. He was thin—so fucking thin—and he looked so frail it was almost shocking that he managed to lift a hand and point it at the couch. “You can put the kid there if you think he’ll be more comfortable.”
Cas brushed my back again, then moved by me, laying Ethan out and spreading the blanket my son had brought from home over him. A moment later, he was back at my side and I’d managed to shore myself up, to get myself to move closer to the bed.
Another point to the couch. “He looks like you.”
Ethan was on his side, eyes closed, body curled up, and my dad was right. Ethan did look like me—his face, anyway. His body was all Nate. Which meant that Ethan also looked like Cas. Something that was obviously coincidence and not genetics, but not something that my father knew because he hadn’t heard—or rather, listened to—anything more about my pregnancy aside from the fact that I was pregnant.
Then everything had exploded.
And I hadn’t seen him until now.
“And you,” my father said to Cas, clearly noticing the random quirk of genetics. “He yours?”
“Yes,” Cas said firmly, and I felt his warmth settle over me. Ethan was Cas’s. So was I. The man lying in the bed in front of me had no bearing on that.
He’d given up all rights to that long ago.
“I thought you’d die.”
That had me rocking back on my heels, my breath seizing in my lungs, making it impossible for me to speak.
My father didn’t have that problem.
“Like her.”
My throat went even tighter.
“You’ve always looked like her.”
“And I took her away from you,” I said. “I know.” I pressed my lips together, released them. “There’s nothing I can change about that. And I know you were stuck with taking care of the kid who was the cause of your pain, and I looked like her and that must have been hard. But I was a child, and I didn’t deserve that.”
Silence—long enough that the words formed in my mind and I was able to unload the rest of the old hurts, the rest of the old pain.
“I was innocent,” I said, slamming a fist to my chest. “I did nothing, and you were a shit father.” I swung a hand toward Ethan. “I’d never do that to him, never treat him like you treated me.”
More silence.
Cas took my hand, held it tight.
“And he’s amazing and kind and bright and full of life and I was those things too—am those things—and you missed out on them, on knowing me and all the good I am because you were too caught up in the past.”
Still more quiet, for long enough I almost told Cas to grab Ethan, almost declared we were going to go.
“I thought I could do it.”
