Give Me a Reason (Redemption Hills 1)

Gage looked back at him with that excitement blazing from his tiny body. “Did you come over, too? We’re just gonna make some breakfast which is the most important meal of the day, but we don’t have a whole lot, so we’re gonna have to share. That okay with you?”

Eden’s father forced a smile. “I…uh…”

Discomfort lined every inch of him when he looked back at me.

I pulled Gage off the counter and into my arms, trying to figure out the best approach.

What to do or what to say.

Because I had no shame in loving Eden, but the girl had every right to be ashamed of me.

Girl who I felt stumble to a stop behind me.

Her gasp.

A lash of that intensity.

But it was different that time. Her own horror rode through her being as her bare feet skidded to a stop. I looked that way just in time to see her tighten the robe she had wrapped around her body.

Her hair wet and her expression full of her own shock.

I shuffled on my feet.

“Daddy.” Eden whispered it like an apology.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to barge in. I rang the doorbell, and no one answered, and I was…”

His lips thinned into a grim line, his face pinched, and he shook his head like he was going to step back out.

Unease rippled and shook.

He was worried.

Had every right to be.

Fuck.

I should duck and run.

Save Eden the turmoil.

All the questions I’d had from the beginning reared up and hissed in my ear.

A reminder that I was nothing but a devil standing in an angel’s kitchen.

Had no right.

Had no right.

Except she was padding forward, all that grace echoing from her skin. The girl came up to my side, took my hand, and weaved her fingers through mine.

A clear statement.

“It’s okay, Daddy. Come in. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Thirty-Four

Eden

Warm rays of sunlight speared down through the summer sky. I sat on the lower step of the porch out back, clinging to a mug of coffee, while my daddy sat on the upper step, the man toiling in questions and confusion and worry.

I was no fool.

I felt it.

I knew what it looked like.

Disquiet stirred.

Heck, it didn’t just look like it. It was the truth.

My father had walked in to find a virtual stranger standing in my kitchen making breakfast in the early morning hours, barefoot and not wearing a shirt.

His son propped on the counter, who just so happened to be one of my students.

Awesome.

Very awkwardly, Trent, Gage, and I had made breakfast, brewed coffee, sat my daddy down at the little nook in my kitchen while we’d eaten together. Thank God Gage had prattled right through the discomfort.

Masking it.

Or maybe what he’d done was make it better.

Afterward, Trent had pressed the quietest kiss to my lips, said he’d clean up, and gestured to where my father had wandered out back. “You should go talk to him,” he’d encouraged.

Because the man was amazing.

Incredible and wonderful and, in that second, he’d filled my heart up all over again.

So, there I sat on the back porch steps outside the sunroom, staring up at the thin wafts of clouds that breezed through the warm air.

I decided to rip the Band-Aid off like Tessa had suggested.

“I love him, Daddy.” I whispered it toward the sky, though I prayed my father felt it in his heart. In his big, giant heart that was most likely terrified for me.

He blew out a long sigh. “I see that, Eden. Plain as day. See he loves you, too.”

My chest squeezed, and in question, I peeked back up at my father who gazed down at me with a soft but worried smile on his face.

“Not a lot of men who’d stick around through breakfast with some girl’s father who showed up out of the blue, unwelcome and unannounced, and keep looking at you the way he was.”

“Well, you know what Gage says—breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

Affection poured out when I said it, and I wrapped my arm around my father’s leg. “And you’re always welcome, Daddy. Please don’t ever think you’re not.”

“But you didn’t trust me enough to tell me.” There was his disappointment.

I wavered. “I didn’t know what to tell you. Didn’t know where he and I were going. And it’s…”

“Complicated,” he supplied.

“Yeah.”

More than my father could understand.

Silence drifted around us for a few moments before he shifted, sat forward, and rested his forearms on his thighs. “How? You saw him at the school and…”

That time, I sighed, the sound a confession that wheezed from my mouth. “No, Daddy, the fact that Gage is in my class was a coincidence. My second job…”

My father tensed, and I peered back at him again.

“The diner?” He phrased it as a question. Like maybe he’d known all along.

My head shook. “No. I started working at a club on the other side of town. Absolution. Trent is the owner.”