The grilling.
Before he could say anything, I asked, “How’s your arm? Gideon said Brewer bit you.”
“It’s fine. It was just a love bite.”
I smiled before saying, “Okay, go ahead then.”
“With what?” King asked innocently.
I rolled my eyes. “Do it or I’m going to go back to the gorgeous man waiting in bed for me and let him do unspeakable things that I’m going to make sure you hear.”
King chuckled. But he caught me off guard when he said, "He's a good man. I like the way he looks at you."
"How does he look at me?" I asked.
"Like you deserve to be looked at. Like the world starts and stops with you."
They were the most poetic words I'd ever heard my brother say. The fact that he was saying them about Gideon had me smiling. Not only because he'd made the effort to say something nice about the man I was planning to spend the rest of my life with, but because I loved hearing that Gideon looked at me like that.
"Thank you," I said to him. "For everything." I thought about Con and my other brothers and realized how much I missed them. "I want to go to Seattle, but I'm afraid I'll be a distraction," I admitted.
When King didn't respond, I tensed up. I knew his silence meant something.
"What?" I asked.
"Luca, Con, and Vaughn know you're safe. I haven't told them anything beyond that. Come home whenever you're ready, but I think there's something you need to know first." King paused for a moment before softly adding, "It's about Gideon."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gideon
I heard Lex before I saw him. I'd never noticed before how the floorboards outside my bedroom creaked so much, but there were a lot of things I'd never noticed until Lex had come into my life. As his footsteps got closer, I called out, "I couldn't sleep. I thought I'd start packing some stuff for us. I checked and there's a flight to Seattle in a couple of hours. I wasn't sure if King was going to come with us, so I didn't book anything yet—"
"Gideon," Lex interrupted.
I stopped what I was doing and turned to look his way. He was standing stiffly in the doorway. My heart squeezed painfully in my chest at the grim expression on his face. I immediately tossed the shirt I'd been examining aside and hurried to him. "What is it? Did something happen to Gio?"
Lex shook his head. "No, everyone's fine."
I sighed in relief. It was funny how quickly Lex's family had come to mean so much to me as well, despite the fact that I'd only met one other member of it. If the other brothers were anything like King, it was going to make for some interesting family get-togethers.
"Why didn't you tell me, Gideon?" Lex asked, his eyes sad. Before I could ask what he was talking about, he added, "About Emma."
The mere mention of my oldest daughter had that same familiar pain spiraling throughout my body. It was quickly followed by the self-preservation instinct that had made it possible for me to put one foot in front of the other day after day. I turned my back on Lex and returned my attention to the shirt I'd been examining to make sure it was clean before packing it. "I was planning on it," I said simply.
I didn't recognize my own voice. The emptiness in it, anyway. Had I always sounded like that when someone had asked me about Bethie and Emma? I'd always said something similar about me being fine or thanking people for their concern, but I'd never really heard how I’d said the words. I wondered if it would always be this way. If, when something got too hard to deal with, I'd always have that instinct to tamp down my emotions.
I bunched the shirt up between my hands as I moved to sit down on the bed. Lex, my sweet, beautiful Lex, was at my side almost instantly. His fingers curled through mine. "I assume King told you?"
"He was just worried about me, Gideon. He only researched you because of what happened with Grady and because I'd put your name on the account for the purchase of the cabins."
I fell silent, but I couldn't find it in me to be angry with King. Now that I understood his relationship with his younger brother, I was actually grateful for his meddling. It meant someone would always be looking out for Lex if for some reason I couldn't.
"I really was going to tell you," I murmured.
"I believe you," Lex assured me.
I looked down at our joined hands. "With everything that we learned about Gio yesterday, I just didn't want to… I didn't want to burden you."
"Gideon, you will never be a burden to me. What hurts you, hurts me. Yesterday must have been really difficult for you."
I nodded, even though I knew he couldn't see it. "It was," I agreed. Listening to how Lex's nephew had been kidnapped and the circumstances of his return had made me physically ill. It had also terrified me to my very core. "It's not the same with Emma," I said. "At least she's with her grandparents."
"How long have they been missing?" Lex asked.
"Almost two years," I admitted. I sighed and tossed the shirt aside so I could hold on to Lex's hand with both of mine. "After Serena and Bethie died, Emma blamed me for it. While Serena and I were separated, Emma had lived with Serena. Her mother used every opportunity to turn Emma against me. Serena knew how much I loved my kids and how the last thing I wanted was for them to be affected by the divorce. I don't know, maybe in some weird way she thought driving Emma and me apart would force me back home."
"But it didn't," Lex offered.
"No, I just couldn't do it anymore. But I refused to stoop to Serena's level." I realized I was jumping too far ahead, so I said, "We married too young. In all honesty, I wasn't ready to settle down. I spent my whole life wanting to be a photographer. I wanted to travel the world and take pictures of anything and everything. I was fascinated by all the things you could see through a lens. But it was so much more than that. I didn't want people to just see my pictures. I wanted them to feel them. I wanted them to be able to look at them and be transported to that very moment when I'd gotten the shot. Every sound, every smell, whether the wind was blowing or there was rain in the air, all of it… it was all I ever wanted."
"But then Serena got pregnant, right?"
"Yeah. I'd wanted her to travel the world with me, but she didn't share that dream. We just wanted different things. But when I found out I was going to be a father, I knew things had to change. I got a job as a photographer for a local newspaper in Fresno. That was where she grew up and where her parents lived. I had this hope that after the baby came, maybe there would be some way we could go explore the world together. Me and Serena and the baby. I couldn't imagine anything cooler than my daughter seeing the world as she grew up. But Serena wanted the whole white picket fence thing."
"So you gave up your dream so she could live hers," Lex said.
"I was happy enough. Every once in a while, I'd take a week off from the paper and go shoot pictures of something that I'd seen in a magazine that fascinated me. I'd come back like a new man. But in the long run, I guess that fed into some resentment I didn’t want to admit to. I tried again to get Serena to come with me. Even just for the short trips. But she didn't want to go, so I started to cut back on the trips and then eventually stopped them all together. I loved my family and didn't want to lose them."
"You said Bethie was a surprise."
"She was. Serena and I had been arguing more and more. Nothing seemed to make her happy and I guess I felt like I was going stir crazy. Bethie's arrival helped calm things for a little while, but then we found out she was sick, and everything went to hell again. Serena would have these crazy mood swings where she would be screaming at me one minute and crying in my arms the next. Emma was around ten at the time. She started getting into trouble at school and acting out at home. I knew she was only reacting to the fights her mom and I were having, so I asked Serena to go to marriage counseling with me. She said she would, but every time I'd make the appointment, she'd find a reason not to go. It went on like that for two more years."
"How did it end?" Lex asked.
&nb
sp; "I came home from work one day and found Serena and Emma both passed out on the couch. Serena had let Emma drink with her. She'd always treated her more like a friend than a daughter," I explained. "It turned out that it hadn't been the first time. I sent Emma to stay with her grandparents, Serena's parents. I told Serena that if she didn't get some help, we were through. The day… the day Bethie died…"
My throat clogged up with emotion. I felt Lex's hand on my back and then he was leaning into my side. "Shhh, it's okay, my love. Let them fall." It wasn't until he said the words that I realized tears had started to slip down my cheeks. I didn't know how he'd known that, but he had.
"The day Bethie died, I told Serena I was filing for divorce. I'd already moved out of the house at that point and we were legally separated, but Serena had refused to believe I'd go through with it. After what happened with Emma, I didn't trust her to take care of either of the girls, so I told her I was going to seek full custody unless she got some help. I shouldn't… I shouldn't have left Bethie with her. It's my fault, Lex. I knew Serena was unstable—"
"Gideon, if you’d truly believed Serena was capable of hurting either of your children like she did, you wouldn't have left them with her. I don't need to see to know that about you. There's a big difference between a parent acting irresponsibly and a parent intentionally putting the lives of their children in jeopardy. From everything you've told me, Serena did the former, not the latter. So you had no way of knowing that she would do what she did."
Deep down, I knew Lex was right. Had I thought for even a second that Serena would deliberately set out to hurt either of our children, I would've taken them from her and never looked back.
I nodded and squeezed his fingers, hoping he'd get my silent message. His hand moved to the back of my neck. He began massaging the stiff muscles there. "What happened with Emma after Serena and Bethie died?"
"She didn't want to have anything to do with me. When I went to pick her up from her grandparents’ house after we’d gotten the news about Serena and Bethie, she kept screaming at me that it was my fault. I tried to console her, but Serena's parents told me to go." I looked at Lex and whispered, "I shouldn't have left her, Lex. I realize now that she needed me, no matter how much she hated me. But all I could think about was that she was right. That it had been my fault."
"You were grieving, Gideon. There's no right way to do that."
I knew he was right.
"You never got Emma back after that, did you?"
"No. Her grandparents thought it best that she stay with them for a while. I was okay with it because I wasn't really in any position to take care of Emma. I waited too long to go and get her. Emma wanted nothing to do with me and Serena's parents told me all I was doing was hurting her by coming around. I blamed myself for what had happened, so I thought they were right. I thought Emma was better off without me. It took a long time for me to get my head out of my ass. By the time I did, it was too late."
"What do you mean?"
"Serena's parents filed for full custody of Emma. They got it."
"But you were her father. Surely, the judge recognized that—"
"There was no judge. I didn't contest the petition for custody. I couldn't."
"I don't understand. Why not?"
My fingers shook as the truth hovered on my tongue. It wasn't that I didn't want to tell Lex, it was just that I'd never uttered the words out loud. "She's not mine, Lex."
"I don't—"
"Emma isn't my biological daughter. Serena cheated on me and got pregnant. But she told me the baby was mine. I didn't find out until a few years after Emma was born. She fell out of a tree house and cut her arm pretty badly. The hospital typed her blood. Serena and I had the same blood type. Type A. But Emma was type B. When I confronted Serena about it, she told me the truth."
"Gideon," Lex said softly.
"It didn't matter," I said. "I'd raised her. I’d loved her from the moment I'd seen her on the sonogram. She was mine. Nothing was ever going to change that." I paused before adding, "When I talked to a lawyer about getting custody of Emma from her mother, he told me I'd have to take a paternity test. It was just standard procedure. As much as I didn't want Emma to find out that I wasn't her biological father, I'd been willing to risk it to get her away from Serena. But when Serena died and Emma blamed me, I knew I couldn't let her find out the truth. I didn't want her to feel like she’d lost two parents…"
"So you let Emma keep blaming you for what happened. For wanting the divorce. You didn't fight her grandparents for custody because you wanted to protect her from finding out that you weren’t her real father and that her mother had lied to all of you."
"Yeah."
"What about Bethie?"
"She was mine," I said.
Lex didn't say anything, but he leaned in and put both arms around me. I took strength from his comfort. "After about six months, I knew I'd made a terrible mistake. I contacted a lawyer to see if I could get Emma back. He thought I had a good case. I wanted to give Emma's grandparents a chance to talk about some kind of custody sharing arrangement, but they refused to even consider it. My lawyer filed the motion, but it didn't matter."
"Because they took her and ran," Lex murmured.
"They saw me as the monster responsible for their daughter's death. And it wasn't like we’d been on great terms before Serena had died either. I didn't really have a lot of options at that point. The courts didn't recognize me as Emma's legal guardian and my lawyer doubted the judge would file any kind of restraining order against Serena's parents since I wasn't her biological father. The lawyer said it could take years to even get a court to hear my case and act on it. Serena's parents had enough money to stay lost for as long as they wanted."
"So you spent every penny you had on private detectives to try to find them," Lex said.
I sighed. Apparently, King had really done his homework.
"There were some leads at first, but none of them ever checked out. I still have a guy keeping an eye out, but I think he's just going through the motions so he can collect his monthly fee."
"King said when your grandparents left you this house, it was paid off. Did you take a loan against it to pay the private investigator?"
I couldn't even be annoyed with King. It was all information I would've told Lex eventually. But then a dark thought went through my head and I turned toward Lex and grabbed his face. "Lex, I swear to you, I was never going to ask you for any kind of loan or anything. Or to pay off my debts. I don't need or want your money—"
Lex leaned forward and kissed me hard. It wasn't until I began kissing him in return that he pulled back and said, "I never thought that, Gideon."
I looked him in the eye and knew instantly that he was telling me the truth. I breathed a sigh of relief and then pulled him forward and wrapped my arms around him. "I guess I'm kind of understanding why your brother beat the shit out of me. On paper, I probably look a lot like Grady."
"Grady was a selfish asshole who just wanted to make a quick buck. You’re nothing like him." Lex held on to me for a moment longer and then he was leaning back. The furrowing of his brow that I’d become so familiar with had returned.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Gideon, King found something while he was looking into your background."
"Okay," I said. Since I'd pretty much told Lex everything about myself, there really wasn't anything he could've shared that would've surprised me.
But, of course, I was so very wrong.
"He found Serena's parents, Gideon."
I stared at him in disbelief. Hope flared to life in my chest as my sluggish brain processed what he was telling me. "You found them? You found Emma?"
The relief was instantaneous and swept through my entire body. Although I'd known Emma was safe with her grandparents, not knowing where she was had still taken its toll. After hearing about the god-awful things that Lex's nephew had been through, I'd started to imagine something like that happenin
g to my daughter and I’d been oddly grateful to Serena's parents. Thankfully, I'd only had to spend one night imagining Emma enduring what young Gio had. I couldn't even fathom how Gio's father had survived it.
"Thank you!" I breathed as I wrapped my arms around Lex. I'd intended to ask him if he could use his computer skills to help me try and find Emma, but I'd wanted to wait till the thing with Gio had settled down a bit more.
Lex returned my embrace, but his silence began triggering alarm bells. Why wasn't he celebrating with me?
"Gideon—"
"No," I instantly said as I began shaking my head. "No!" I repeated as the worst kinds of thoughts began assaulting my brain one by one.
"Gideon!" Lex shouted and then he was grabbing my hands and squeezing them hard. "She's alive! Emma is alive and she's okay!"
I was afraid to believe him and I was afraid not to. I felt like I was on the worst kind of roller coaster ride imaginable. One that went up and down but had no end in sight and no way to get off. "Lex," I choked out because I just couldn't take it anymore.
"She's alive, Gideon. But she's not with her grandparents anymore."
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"From what King can tell, Serena's parents took her to South America for a while. Apparently, Serena's mother was from Argentina."
"Yes, she was. I had PIs searching for them down there, but they never found anything."
"They didn't stay down there long. They moved back to the US about a year ago. King had a guy go down there—they're in Louisiana. King's guy sat on them for several days, but he never saw Emma with them. King gave him the go-ahead to break into the house when Serena's parents were gone for the day. There was no sign of Emma except for some boxes in the basement with her name on them. There was no room set up for her."
Foreseen: Lex (The Four Book 2) Page 25
