“Look at me, babygirl.”
She just sat there and bounced her crossed leg, something Jaxon recognized as a nervous tick she still had.
“I said, look at me, babygirl, I’m not going to ask you again.”
She gave him a scathing look, uncrossed her legs, then turned and looked in his eyes.
“Fine, I’m looking.”
She wasn’t going to give him an inch. “I want to start by telling you why I didn’t fight my conviction.” That got her attention. She’d asked about that the one time he’d allowed her to visit him in prison. “It wasn’t because I didn’t care about being with you or that I didn’t want to be near you with everything inside me.”
Her eyes tightened. “Then why would you not fight for your freedom? If you wanted to be with me so bad, that makes no sense at all.”
“I didn’t fight my conviction because the General threatened to kill you.”
She jerked back, her eyes widening. But he kept going before she could interrupt.
“He made it clear that if I didn’t stay quiet in the trial and not fight the verdict, you would be the one who paid. That’s why I couldn’t let you visit, babygirl. Once I was inside, I couldn’t even receive your letters because the General had people on his payroll, both inmates and guards, who would report straight back to him. I couldn’t take the chance that my reading those letters would give him a reason to come after you.”
Her face paled, but at least that meant she was finally listening.
“In prison, especially in the beginning, there was no one on the outside I trusted enough to protect you. When Reid and all the others came home and started working to get me out, I never thought it would take eight years. But every time we got close to the truth, the General made it clear what would happen to you. He said if I did anything to try to exonerate myself, you would suffer. I couldn’t take that chance.”
Her pupils grew as the words sank in, and her breath grew shallow. She looked crushed, like someone had reached inside her chest and squeezed until there was nothing left. Her arms fell to her sides, and her lips parted, but no sound came out. When she finally spoke, her voice was small and raw.
“If that is true, why didn’t you tell me? If you’d told me, at least I would’ve known what was going on. I would’ve had hope.”
Jaxon felt the weight of eight years press down on him all at once. He had carried this secret alone for so long that letting it out now felt like setting down a boulder he’d forgotten how to live without. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and kept his eyes locked on hers so she could see every ounce of truth in them.
“First of all, the risk was too great, Sprite. One slip, one letter that got intercepted, and he would have made good on his threat.” There were so many ways the General could have done it that would have looked like an accident. He took a deep breath. “My one grasp onsanity was knowing that, while I lay awake every night in that cell, at least you were safe. That was the only thing that got me through. If I could just keep you breathing, keep you untouched by this mess, then the rest of it did not matter. Knowing how much it hurt you was harder than being in prison. You thought I stopped loving you. But I never stopped. Not for one second.”
She stared at him like she was seeing him for the first time. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them back. He could see the war inside her, the desire to hate him fighting against the desire to believe every word.
He didn’t reach for her. Not yet. She needed to feel this, to let it settle in her bones the same way it had settled in his for eight long years.
“Every visit I missed,” he continued, voice rough with the memory. “Every letter I sent back unopened tore me up worse than any prison guard ever could. But it was imperative that the General didn’t have a single thread to pull. Sabre worked in the shadows, gathering proof, flipping witnesses, chipping away at the case until the walls finally cracked. The day the guards walked me out of that place, I made myself one promise. I would never let him control another minute of our lives. And you would never be in danger again. Not by him, and not by you. Not ever."
Tazzy shook her head, slow and disbelieving. “Why couldn’t you have found a way to tell me? A code… something. Anything. Someone from Sabre came to see you every week.”
“I thought about it,” he admitted. “Every damn day, I thought about it. But the risk was never worth your life. I’d rather you hate me for the rest of our days than attend your funeral because I was selfish. That’s the truth of it. That’s what I have been trying to tell you since the moment I came home.”
He paused. “There’s one more thing, but it’s probably just going to make you even angrier.”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“I had no way of knowing how long I’d be in prison. If things went wrong, if the General won, I could easily have had to serve my fullfifty year sentence. As your Daddy, I had to think about more than just your safety. I had to think about your happiness. I couldn’t ask you to wait on me in the hope that I’d get out earlier. How selfish would I be to deny you the freedom to find a good Daddy who would take care of you? I told myself I would be happy for you, even though even the thought of it cut like a knife.”
The room grew quiet except for the soft tick of the clock on the mantel and the sound of her breathing. He watched her chest rise and fall, watched the way her fingers twisted together in her lap. She looked smaller than she had on that roof, smaller than she had in the coffee shop earlier when she had been all fire and defiance. The fight was draining out of her, replaced by something raw and aching that made his own chest tighten.
He wanted nothing more than to close the distance between them, to pull her onto his lap and hold her until the tears came and the storm passed. But he stayed where he was. She had to choose to come to him. She had to choose to believe him. He could not force that part. All he could do was sit here and wait while the truth did its work.
Her gaze lifted to his, and for the first time since they had walked through the door, he saw a flicker of the old Tazzy, the one who’d trusted him with every piece of herself. The one who had called him Daddy without hesitation. The one who’d let him be her safe place.
Then she was gone.
Old Tazzy faded away right before his eyes, replaced by New Tazzy. The one who had walls built so high that Jaxon might never find a way to break through. That damn glint of fear and steel was back in her eyes. Her body hardened, stiff and straight as a wall. If that’s how she wanted to play it, that was her choice. But one thing he knew for sure, come hell or high water, he was getting his Little girl back. The wall between them was coming down. Today.
CHAPTER ELEVEN