“So that was why you took her there?” he rages at me. “Not to protect her, but so you could take advantage of her?”
“No,” I shout.
“I would never have allowed you to take here there if I’d known you were fucking her.”
“I wasn’t fucking her,” I run my hands through my hair. “Not then.”
“You said before Dallas?”
“There was one night before Dallas, but then I realized how wrong it was and I put a stop to it—”
He scowls at me. “Because you’re such a fucking stand up guy!”
“I tried to ignore how I felt, but I couldn’t.”
“You didn’t try hard enough, Jax. Of all the women in LA, in the whole fucking world, you had to choose my daughter. It’s fucked up.”
“It’s not like I watched her grow up—”
His entire face darkens further and he squares up to me again. “Are you suggesting because she’s adopted that this is somehow okay?”
“Not even for a second,” I snarl back at him. “All I mean is that she was almost seventeen and pregnant when I met her. It’s not like I used to take her the park and push her on the fucking swings.”
“So you’ve always looked at her like that?”
“Fuck, no. Not until—”
“Until when?”
I swallow hard as I recall that night I picked her up from some dive bar downtown. I walked in there and saw her dancing with some guy, wearing the shortest dress imaginable. It’s not like I’d never seen her body before then. I’d spent plenty of time with her wearing nothing more than a bikini around Alejandro’s pool, but there was something about seeing her dancing in there. Watching the way she moved. The way some jock was salivating over her. Suddenly, she wasn’t a little kid anymore. Then I’d taken her home; she was drunk and she’d thrown her arms around my neck, kissed me and told me that she loved me. I’d driven home with a raging boner.
“It was last year some time. I picked her up from a club and drove her home. Nothing happened, I just saw her differently.”
“My fucking daughter!” he snarls at me, his teeth bared like a rabid dog.
“I know,” I reply. Does he think that I’ve forgotten this fact? “I wish that it wasn’t her, Alejandro.” I shake my head because saying that feels like I’m betraying her. But I do wish that the one woman I can’t live without wasn’t my best friend’s daughter. But he is more than that to me. He is my brother. Since we were fourteen years old, we have stood by each other’s sides. He has been with me through every high and low I have ever experienced, and I for him. I am godfather to his sons. He is the only true family I have.
“What if I asked you to choose?” he says, his eyes narrowed as he stares at me.
“You wouldn’t!” I glare back at him.
“Oh, I would. Choose, Jackson. You can’t be my brother if you are screwing my daughter. So which is it to be?”
My throat constricts as I try to swallow. Surely he’s not asking this of me? I have been nothing but loyal to him for over twenty years. I have watched him become the man he is today, stood proudly at his side as he took his place as head of the Montoya family. I can’t imagine a life without him in it.
“Then there is no choice,” I say as I drop my head to my chest and in that moment, the only thing I can think about is all that I have lost.