Sir Loin of Beef (Grade-A Beefcakes 1)

My father had known the truth of my involvement. Aunt Clara, too, but once I’d moved to California to live with her, we didn’t talk at all about what had happened. We just… moved on. I hadn’t ever said it aloud to anyone, just lived with it for all these years.

“I was at my friend’s house for a sleepover.” I cleared my throat, put a hand over my stomach. “It was raining and cold and I didn’t want to walk home. So I called my dad and asked him to pick me up.” It was hard to talk past the huge lump in my throat. “That’s when he hit you. He never came and I ended up walking home anyway. I… didn’t know he was drunk.”

“Oh, you sweet girl.” Mrs. Duke pulled me into her arms and hugged me. Fiercely. At first, I was startled, completely at a loss for the surprise embrace, then realized it felt good. Comfortable.

She was a good hugger, soft and her arms snug. She even smelled good.

But the feelings I was getting from the hold weren’t for me.

I pushed back, stepped away. Put room between us again. “Please, no. You shouldn’t be making me feel better. I’m the one who’s sorry.” The dam of tears broke free of my throat, filled my eyes. “I’m sorry. So, so sorry for you and Mr. Duke.” I looked up at him, but couldn’t see much because my glasses had slid down my nose and he was blurry.

An arm wrapped around me from behind, pulled me into a tight hold. Landon. I knew the feel of him, the scent of him.

“Angel,” he said.

Only the one word but the sound of it, the anguish in the tone had me setting my head back against his chest.

“You were not at fault,” Mrs. Duke said.

“We don’t blame you,” Mr. Duke added. “We never have. Not for one second did we think you were responsible for anything that happened.”

“But I—”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Landon said fiercely.

I pushed my glasses up my nose, looked to Gus, Tucker and Julia. “Nope,” Julia replied. Tucker and Gus just shook their heads.

I stared at them all, not saying a word. Landon spun me about, tipped my chin up so I met his dark eyes. “It wasn’t your fault. I can’t fucking believe you’ve felt that all this time.”

“I called him. If I’d walked home, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“If he hadn’t been drinking all night, it wouldn’t have happened either,” he countered.

“The weather was awful that day,” Mrs. Duke added. “The fact that your father expected you to walk in that is a sign of his failure as a parent, not yours.”

“But he said…”

Landon’s thumb slid over my cheek and he brushed a tear away, as if he really didn’t think it was my fault. That he… cared.

“When I saw him in the courtroom, he… he told me if I hadn’t been so lazy, so needy, the Dukes wouldn’t have been injured. That while he would go to jail and pay, I got off scot free.”

12

JED

Kaitlyn was crying. Hard, jagged sobs against Duke’s chest. Thankfully. The shit she’d kept in all this time must have been festering. Like Duke’s angry outburst; he hadn’t realized how fucking pissed he’d been at her dad. How it still lingered. But this… fuck, this was something else.

I met his gaze head on, saw the dark gleam, the way his jaw was clenched tight enough to crack molars. Yeah, I felt the same fucking way. So pissed that if Don Leary wasn’t already dead, I’d fucking kill him all over again. This was our woman and someone had hurt her. Not just someone but her father. No, he wasn’t a fucking father. He’d been a sperm donor who had kept Kaitlyn alive. Nothing else. I was familiar with parents like that because I’d had them myself.

My father had been a deadbeat ending up doing twenty in prison. My mother had gotten hooked on meth and went downhill fast. A different man in her life every week, strangers coming in and out selling drugs. Losing our house and moving into a trailer on the far side of the tracks. By the time I was seventeen, I’d lived with the Dukes, although in the bunk house. Still, it had been safe, clean and I’d had three square meals a day. My mother hadn’t even noticed I was gone.

There hadn’t been any rainbows and unicorns, but I’d had family: the Dukes. They’d shown me what sane, loving parents were like. What a real family should be.

But Kaitlyn? She’d only had her dad.

How dare he put his crimes on the shoulders of a ten-year-old child? The fact that Kaitlyn still believed his words to be true, fifteen years later, was literally gut-wrenching. Her tears were practically killing me. Mr. and Mrs. Duke didn’t look much happier, but as parents, I could tell they wanted to wrap Kaitlyn into hugs of their own. Stuff her with cookies and love. It wasn’t as if she’d gotten many of either of those things in her life.

Tucker and Gus were talking in low voices with Julia, none of them ready for Disney World either. Mrs. Duke looked to me. She didn’t have to say a word as the minutes ticked by. I knew what she was thinking. She’d take care of Kaitlyn, but was giving me and Duke the chance to do so ourselves. She’d obviously heard from Tucker and Gus about what Duke had done, but she was no dummy and could easily see how it was for us.