Page 125 of The Wildest Ride

But really, it was the eyes that did it. In all the world, she’d never met another person with eyes like hers. Until her father.

She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, then opened it again, only to close it again.

She had imagined this moment an infinite number of times throughout her life, mentally playing out every emotion and then looping back around to cycle through the ones she felt the most—anger, fear, sorrow, joy—and none of it had been any preparation at all for the reality.

And though she’d thought out the first thing she would say to him so many times that she was known for whispering words in her sleep—why didn’t you look for me?—the words that actually came out of her mouth, the first words she had ever spoken to her father, weren’t her own, but AJ’s:

“‘A cowboy is always prepared,’my ass.”

She didn’t think she’d yelled them, but apparently she had.

Every sound in the room ground to a screeching halt, even the fans.

Every eye and camera trained on Lil and the man in front of her.

Familiar gray eyes, narrower and closer set but the same in surprise as her own, widened into horrified shock in slow motion, though his body was as frozen as if he’d been carved from stone.

The expression was more than Lil’s lacerated heart could take.

All this time, and he had had no idea she’d even existed. That much was clear in his expression. She’d pined and wondered and pushed it all so deep she could barely register it anymore, and he’d never even known. All of that she could forgive, but not the fact that in finding out, he wasn’t happy. There was no rejoicing in the face that stared back at her.

A strange, high-pitched twisting sound escaped him, and Lil realized it was air, seeping out from between his petrified lips.

From far away AJ’s voice carried. “What’s going on? Where’s The Old Man? I need to ask him something.”

The sound was yet another sword through her heart, his nearness when she couldn’t have him somehow more painful in this moment than it had been the night before.

Probably for the first time since winning his first world championship, no one in the gym moved a muscle or spoke at AJ’s command.

But it didn’t matter because a moment later he was there, positioned between her and her father, looking back and forth between them, a true scowl on his face.

The reality of him was even more potent than the sound, and the fact that she was right about everything did absolutely nothing to lessen the sting of no longer having the freedom to reach out and take his hand. Especially not when she needed to so badly.

Beside AJ stood the friend who’d called her the enemy at the qualifier. He too scowled, his expression aimed entirely at her.

Finally, nearing three decades too late, The Old Man spoke. “It can’t be.”

Lil’s blood turned to ice in her veins, a part of her reflecting that his first words had been just as abysmal as hers had, the rest of her sinking in the affirmation of her worst childhood fears, long buried but no less potent.

Piper had once asked if she’d ever thought of looking for him, the fly-by-night cowboy she was supposed to call a father, and Lil had laughed as she shook her head no. She never had. She’d told Piper it was because she didn’t need another man in her life trying to tell her what to do. In reality, it was because she was petrified he wouldn’t want her.

Like he didn’t right now.

“Will somebody explain to me what is going on? We’ve got a truckload of boys here that are ready for us to get this challenge rolling,” AJ said, no easy smile in his voice this time to soften the words.

Cracking back to life, The Old Man recovered first. He answered without taking his steel eyes off Lil, his voice resonant and deep with a bit of rasp to it, not unlike her own, his rigid spine straightening further. “This young woman is my daughter.”

Beside him AJ paled, his brown skin losing all its light, but neither Lil nor The Old Man saw. They had eyes only for each other.

Horrifyingly, hers filled with moisture. More horrifyingly, his did, too.

Shaking his head, he whispered, the sound carrying in his rich voice but meant for her, “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

She’d waited a lifetime to hear those words, and they’d been perfect, exactly what she’d wanted him to say and never even known. He somehow had. The thought flickered across her mind and heart that the knowing was what they meant when they talked about inheritance—the bond that connected them explained all the strange quirks of her personality and existence.

But after AJ she was already bleeding out. She couldn’t lose any more of herself and still survive.

Shaking her head, she shuttered her gaze, slamming an invisible wall down between them as if holding him at a distance could undo the revelation that had already occurred.