I’d seen that coming and blocked it by grabbing hold of his arm and shoving him with enough force to knock him flat on his ass. Ignoring Tenille’s shocked gasp, I stepped over his body and pushed him so he was on his back. Pinning his hands to the ground, I said, “A lot of shit has gone down in this family, and I’m here to sort it out for you. I may have walked away from Tenille and Charlotte once, but I’ll be fucked if I’ll stand back and watch them suffer again. I suggest you get on board with that or else you and I are gonna have trouble. And trouble with me is the last fucking thing you want.” Men like Craig—small men who paraded as big fucking men—were best dealt with fast. He needed to know where we both stood. And although he was married to Tenille, that meant very little to me. As far as I was concerned, it was my job to make sure she was okay.
“Mum, what’s going on?”
The air in my lungs disappeared at the sound of my daughter’s voice. It felt like a hammer had hit my chest, causing my heart to beat in erratic, painful throbs that roared in my ears and screamed through my body.
I stood hunched over Craig, frozen to the spot, unable to look up. Fourteen fucking years without that voice in my life, without her in my life, had caused me more torment than anything else had ever come close to causing me.
I desperately wanted to look at her, but my greatest fear stood between us, almost suffocating the life out of me. I hadn’t expected that, and it threw me. I didn’t fucking acknowledge fear in my life, but this one had haunted me for so long that it had rooted itself deep inside.
What if Charlotte refused to accept me?
Fuck.
“Go back inside, Charlotte,” Tenille urged.
“Not until you tell me who that is and why he’s threatening Dad.”
Dad.
That word slashed right through me as the world began to spin. Jesus, I was losing my shit. And still struggling for fucking air.
It was Craig who snapped me out of it when he pushed me away and yelled, “Charlie, for fuck’s sake, go back inside! This has nothing to do with you.”
Charlie.
She was my fucking Charlie, not his.
My head snapped up, and I finally caught a glimpse of the child I’d missed every single day since I’d left. If I thought I’d been frozen a moment ago, I was completely and utterly rooted to the spot now. Every inch of my skin shivered with a sensation I hadn’t felt in sixteen years. It was as if I was seeing her for the very first time again. This was the same feeling I’d felt when I’d laid eyes on her at birth.
Wonder.
Awe.
Disbelief.
Love.
As I stood staring at her long dark curls that were an exact replica of my mother’s, and lips that were the same as Tenille’s, she placed her hands on her hips and snapped, “God, you can be such an asshole!” With a huff, she spun and stomped back into the house.
I tracked her movements until I couldn’t see her anymore. Craig took the opportunity to attack while my attention was elsewhere.
His fist smashed into my face hard, leaving the kind of pain that usually sent me into a rage. This time, however, I locked that shit down tight. The last thing I wanted to chance was Charlotte seeing that from inside the house. Instead, my hard glare met his as I moved directly in front of him. “The only thing holding me back from knocking you the fuck out is my daughter. You do that—”
“She’s not your daughter, asshole. You gave up that right the minute you left town and never looked back.”
I took a deep breath as I clenched my fists by my side. “She is my daughter. Yeah, I left town, but I never stopped watching over her. You think you and Tenille have been getting by on your own all these years? Think back to the time you lost your job because you smashed your boss’s face in at the pub that Friday night. You ever wonder how you had a job offer on the Monday morning? And the time you blew through five grand at the casino? You never stopped to ask how that money magically appeared back in your account the next day?” At the shock lining his face, I nodded. “Yeah, you get the idea. We won’t rehash every single time you fucked up and I fixed it before Tenille ever had to know.”
Craig didn’t have a comeback, but Tenille delivered one that did the work of a thousand armies deployed to destroy. “A man who isn’t there to kiss their child’s fears away, and bandage their wounds, and help with homework, and tuck them in at night while telling them monsters don’t exist, and teach them that they are enough is not a father, Aiden. He’s simply the guy that donated some fucking sperm. Don’t get the two mixed up.” I met her hard gaze right before she added, “Helping me and Craig get by certainly doesn’t make you a father. Whatever help you think we need right now, we don’t, so just go back to wherever you came from and leave us alone.”
I watched in silence as she stalked back inside, her earlier drunken wobble almost gone completely. The sound of the door slamming closed behind her filled the night air with a reminder that I was going to have to work hard to gain her trust back. I had expected that, but reality was always a harsh bitch compared to expectations.
Chapter 3
Hyde
Tenille and I met when we were sixteen. She was the chick who stood up for the underdog whenever given a chance, and I fell for that trait long before I fell for her beauty. I loved her fire and the fierce way she lived her life—always giving anyone who criticised her the middle finger.
She was fiery back then, and stubborn as hell. Convincing her to marry me at nineteen took over a year to do. She held strong views on marriage after watching her father control her mother. Tenille wanted to stay single; she didn’t see the need to declare our relationship with a piece of paper. What she didn’t count on was my determination to make her mine. I’d been fucking relieved, though, that talking her into having a baby was a lot easier. I’d always wanted lots of kids, and it turned out Tenille was down with that. Both of us came from shitty families; replacing them with our own was a dream we’d shared.