For him.
For them.
For us.
I nodded slowly and found Cam in the chaos. “I vote with the others. Whatever it takes, we fight.”
19
MATEO
“He’s a giant.”
Liliana stood in front of me, hands on her hips. Her bottom lip stuck out as if the most critical thing she had to worry about right now was whether or not Rubi had fallen to earth from theGame of Thronesset.
Hell, maybe it was all she was worried about. Her whole life we’d told her everything would be okay if we could just get her away from her cunt of a grandfather.
Maybe she’d believed us.
Either way, Rubi was a motherfucking giant and she wasn’t budging on it.
“All right.” I rubbed the tension from my jaw. “But don’t you think Rubi’s a shit name for a giant?”
That, she conceded, and she came to sit on my lap.
The freedom of threading my arms around her made them tremble. I gritted my teeth, trying to hold it together, but without Juana blanketing the room with her freakish calm, I was a fucking mess.
She was in the shower.
It felt like she’d left to visit the moon.
Also, I was reeling from the fact my girls, without a working phone between them, hadwalkedhere from the coach station four miles away in the dead of night.
“Papá?”
“Yeah?”
“When can I see Embry again?”
I exhaled a shaky breath into her soft hair. She was obsessed with Embry because I’d spent the last three years telling her I loved him. Dumb fuck that I was, it had never occurred to me to plan for what might happen if she ever came face to face with him. “I don’t know. It might take him a while to believe you’re real cos you’re a giant too.”
She wasn’t. My kid had spent most of her life cooped up in the wing of a stuffy old mansion. No friends or siblings. No reference for anything fucking normal. She ate like a bird and she was small for her age. Not much bigger than Ivy.
“If I’m a giant, then Rubi is my new best friend.”
I could live with that, but a knock at the door sounded before I could tell her so.
It opened a split second later and Cam filled the doorway.
On instinct, I shot up and pulled Liliana behind me.
Cam’s expression dropped. “Brother. Come on. You think I’d lay a hand on her? I don’t know who the fuck you are right now, butyouknowmebetter than that.”
I didn’t move, not for a long moment. Then Liliana slipped from my hold and peeked around my legs. “Are you going to hurt my dad?”
It was the first English she’d spoken in my presence since she’d arrived—Lord knew what she’d said to Rubi while they’d been up here alone.
Cam blinked. His expression softened further and he twitched a brow at me.