I squeezed his hand tighter and rushed, “I love it here, and I love you. I love the children. I love the dance classes and the Sunday school classes. All of it. You don’t have to worry. I want to do this. I want to help.”
“But you deserve more than giving your entire life to this school, Eden, and then turning around and spending your nights working at a restaurant.”
He brushed his thumb over the dark bag under my eye. There was no hiding the exhaustion from the lack of sleep. His voice shifted into dread. “I have this feeling, Eden, this feeling that there is something you’re not telling me. That you’re taking a risk you shouldn’t.”
“I’m fine.” I breathed it.
God. I definitely was transparent.
He ran his fingers through a lock of my hair, tucked it behind my ear, his eyes full of a plea and adoration. “I already lost one daughter. I can’t lose another.”
“Daddy…”
His anguish speared me.
“You’re all I’ve got left,” he whispered on his grief, and I sat up on my knees and hugged him as hard as I could.
“I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere. You don’t have to worry. That’s the whole point of me working extra…so you can focus on the people who rely on you. The ones who actually need you.”
He pushed to standing, taking me with him. His arms were strong around me. Rocking me and holding me. The same way as he’d always held me as a child.
My hero.
My strength.
The one who had always been there for me, no matter what. No judgement. Just love and belief.
“I want the world for you, Eden.”
“My world is right here.”
“I know you want more than this.”
“I’m happy,” I whispered.
He breathed a soft sound into my hair. “You’re content. But I know. I know, sweet girl. I know you ache for more. And I pray every night that you find it.”
Thirteen
Eden
Tonight, working the club passed in a blur. A blur of nerves and energy and worry.
Music thrummed and the lights were dimmed. It felt as if I’d fallen into a daze of the beating bass and rumbling floors and calls for refills.
Cash would be left on my tables, trapped under empties, while most tips were added to credit cards. Alcohol made people loose with their money, which was the whole purpose I was there, but each time I grabbed a twenty stuffed beneath a drink it didn’t have the same impact as it normally would.
Tonight, I couldn’t seem to concentrate on the debt. My goal. My purpose. The only thing I could focus on was the fact that for the first night since I’d started working at Absolution, Trent Lawson was nowhere to be found.
No sight or intonation.
No wash of that energy or heat from that stare.
I’d drifted through the foggy hours in a state of stupor, my stomach twisted in regret over the way I’d acted toward him earlier that afternoon. I should have been kind…openminded…asked him what was wrong…if there was anything I could do to help, rather than throwing insults and accusations at him.
Now, that was the only thing on my mind.
Was he okay?
Was he in trouble?
Was there an issue with Gage?
My heart stuttered at the thought of that, and my eyes continually tracked the thriving, roiling space.
Searching the darkness.
Wanting to go darker.
Deeper.
Of course, it didn’t help at all that in Trent’s place was his brother, Jud, the man standing against the far wall with those massive arms crossed over his chest.
A sentry standing guard.
Fierce.
Intimidating.
Every bit as menacing as his brother, though in a different way.
He was sheer size and strength and brute force.
But there was something softer about Jud than Trent. Something playful in the way his mouth twitched beneath his thick beard, though he kept watching me in a way that left me unsettled.
Like he knew something.
Like he was assessing.
Like I was a part of the reason Trent didn’t show.
Narcissist, much?
But I couldn’t help it. I had to stop myself at least fifteen times from sneaking onto my phone and sending Trent a message. From telling him I was sorry. That I was scared. That I needed to see his face.
That I…missed him.
Awareness slipped across my skin in a wash of chills.
I missed him.
God, I really was in trouble.
I cast another longing look around the bar as the last of my tables left for the night. The hour was late, the club now closed, so I quickly cleaned my area, grabbed my tips from Sage, and started for the locker room so I could change into my regular clothes.
Just before I ducked into the hall, a gruff voice hit me from the side and stopped me in my tracks. “Good night?”
A quiver of nerves slaked through me, and I froze, swiveling around to again find Jud leaning against the wall, hidden in the shadows.