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“So…” Her brow furrows, trying to puzzle it out. “So who—”
“My dad. My dad cheated on my mom when I was eight. Abigail is the result.”
“Oh my God.” Her hand squeezes mine. Like she wants to comfort me. Like I’m the victim. “How long have you known?”
“I found out that week,” I tell her. “The week those pictures were taken. That was the first time I met her.”
“Ian…” Her expression falls, and she looks almost pained. “Why didn’t you tell someone? Why would you let everyone say those awful things about you all these years?”
A bitter laugh escapes me, and I shrug in defeat. “The same reason I do anything in life that doesn’t feel right. My fucking father.”
“Bradley?”
“My mother doesn’t know,” I explain. “I can’t…I know that I should have told her, but I can’t do that to her, you know? She’s always…loved my dad. I don’t know what it is she fucking sees in him, but it would break her heart if she found out. I can’t be the one to do that to her.”
“So you kept it a secret to protect your mom?”
“He told me she’d lose the team if she left him,” I say quietly. “Apparently, my grandfather wrote stipulations into his will.” My lip curls. “He wanted to be sure the team stays with someone that ‘knows what they’re doing.’ I guess he was just as much of an asshole as my father is.”
“That’s not fair,” she says, outraged.
“It isn’t,” I agree. “My mother loves that team. It would kill her to lose it. She’s been a part of it since she was a kid. I can’t believe her father would do that to her. I’m not even sure she knows about it, honestly. Or maybe she does, but she’s so sure about my dad that she’s never worried about it? I just…I don’t know. It kills me thinking that I could be the reason she loses everything. She would hate me.”
“She wouldn’t hate you,” Lila stresses. “She’s your mother.”
“And Bradley is my father,” I remind her. “It’s never stopped him.”
“So your dad used your mom as leverage, essentially.”
“Among other things. He has ways of protecting himself. He’s paying for Abby’s education. Her mom was a waitress when they met, and she died when Abby was a senior in high school. That’s the year I found out. My dad came to my apartment and basically told me, ‘This is your sister, she’s going to be staying with you until I can figure out what to do with her.’ ” I shake my head. “She was only eighteen, and she was so fucking scared. He just dumped her on me, Lila. This guy she didn’t even know. She’d just lost her mother, and then she got dropped on my doorstep, and both of us had his threats hanging over our heads…I don’t know. I couldn’t risk having him ruin her life any further, so I…did what he said. I kept my mouth shut.”
“Even when it ended up hurting you,” Lila says quietly.
“I could have paid for her school, I know that, and I would have been happy to, but…” I breathe out a sigh. “Abby still wants him to be her dad. I know that if we don’t keep in line, he’ll cut us both out of his life. I can live with that, but…I can’t take away this hope she’s clinging to that he’ll come around and be the guy she needs him to be. I can’t take away the only person she has left.”
Lila’s hand squeezes mine again, and she ducks her head until I’m forced to meet her eyes, and she gives me a determined look. “She would still have you.”
“I know that, but I’m not her father. I’m just some guy whose doorstep she was dropped onto once who ended up leaving her behind like everyone else.”
“You didn’t leave because you wanted to,” Lila says firmly. “Not really. You didn’t want to leave her behind. You just protected her the only way you knew how. Didn’t you. If you hadn’t left, the press would have kept digging into her. They would have figured it out. You just wanted to protect her.”
“How can you know that?”
Her smile is slow, sweet. “Because that’s who you are, Ian. That’s who you’ve always been. You make people feel safe.” Her hand lifts from mine to cup my face, her thumb stroking the skin just above my beard softly. “It’s how you always made me feel too.”
I can’t help but stare at her, at this woman who seems to see me as something better than I’ve ever seen myself—having to take a heavy inhale just to keep the emotions that threaten to overtake me at bay.
“He told me to take the trade,” I whisper.
“What?”
“My father,” I clarify. “He pushed me into the trade.”
“He sent you away?”
“More or less,” I say. “Told me that the team was better off without my drama. That everyone was better off.”
“You should have told him to go fuck himself,” Lila seethes. “The absolute nerve of that fuckhead.”
