“She’s worried about you. She loves you. And you’re upsetting her by acting this way. Think about her heart, Kiro. We don’t want something happening to her because you can’t get your shit together.”
He shook his head. “No, nothing can happen to my baby girl. I need her. Can’t lose her,” he said, sounding like a broken man instead of the angry drunk who had walked in here.
“Then snap out of this. Get your head on straight. Is this the way Emily would want you to behave? Would this make her happy?”
“Don’t talk about my Emmy!” he roared, this time shoving me back with more force. “You don’t understand what this is! You don’t fucking understand. My heart.” He stopped, tilted his head back, and looked up at the sky. “She stole my heart. That pretty angel face. So innocent and sweet. She’ll always have it. My life with her was perfect.” He turned his haunted gaze back to me. “Perfect! So fucking perfect! But it ended. I ended. And if I lose all I have left of her, I don’t want to live anymore. I can’t take this pain.”
His eyes weren’t those of the rock legend who appeared on the covers of magazines looking like he owned the world. He didn’t have that swagger that defined him. Not now. He was shredded.
Kiro Manning was gone. In his place was a man who was about to become untethered from this earth. If he’d been a good father to me, if I loved him the way Harlow did, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stand here and take this. My chest tightened in pain for a man I had spent most of my life questioning if he gave a shit about me.
“Harlow needs you. Lila Kate needs a grandfather,” I said simply, reminding him that if Emily was lost, his whole world wasn’t gone. “If something happens to you, Harlow will be crushed. That girl adores you. Could you really do that to her? Can’t you find the will to survive this and be the father she needs?”
Kiro stumbled back and leaned against the sofa, holding his head in both hands. “She’s fading away. I don’t know if I can make it without her. I love my baby girl. We both love our baby girl. She’s grown up to be a beautiful woman and mother. I’m so proud of her. I’ve given her nothing to be proud of.”
I would have liked to agree with him, but I knew Harlow wouldn’t agree. So I spoke for my sister, who didn’t have the ability to handle this herself. “You’re wrong. She’s proud of you. She’s always been proud of you. And when she found out that you stayed by her mother’s side through all this, it rocked her. She knows you love her mother. She’s seen it, and that makes her even more proud of you. She saw a side of you she never knew existed. We all did.”
Kiro rubbed his face and gave a frustrated roar before letting his hands fall to his side. “Did Dean call you? I don’t need this shit right now, son. Why can’t I deal with this the only way I know how?”
His way of dealing was getting trashed and upsetting Harlow. “Your way affects my sister, so that affects me. Dean didn’t call me. Rush paid me a visit. Grant was worried about his wife. He’ll protect Harlow any way he can. Surely you can understand that? Your little girl is loved just as fiercely as you love Emily.”
At the sound of Emily’s name, Kiro flinched as if it pained him. “What is it you want me to do? Be fucking Superman? I’m not motherfucking Superman! I’ve never been. Can’t start now just because you come in here demanding it.”
Kiro had tunnel vision. He was hurting, and that was all the man could see. He was losing Emily, and he could accept nothing more. I wanted to grab the man and shake him. Instead, I clenched my hands at my sides and took a deep breath to calm my frustration. “Do you want Harlow to lose you both? Do you think she can handle that? Do you want her brokenhearted? Don’t you want to be a part of your granddaughter’s life? Here’s your chance to be the man Emily would have wanted you to be. You and I both know you weren’t the father she would have wanted for Harlow. You can’t save her, but you can grant her the one thing we both know she’d want. She would want you to be the best damn grandfather on the planet for Lila Kate.”
“I’m the best grandfather on the planet. He’ll have to be second,” Dean spoke up as he kept playing on the Xbox.
Seriously? Did the man not realize this conversation was important?
“Fuck off, asshole,” Kiro grumbled.
“Just setting him straight,” Dean replied.
A hint of a smile touched Kiro’s lips. “I want to make Emily proud. She loves Lila Kate. She brightens up whenever Harlow brings her to visit. If she could, she’d be the fucking best grandmother there ever was.”
“I won’t argue with you on that one. Emily was special,” Dean said.
“Is special,” Kiro snapped. “She is fucking special.”
Dean tossed down the remote control and turned to look at Kiro. “She is special, Kiro. But we both know she’s not the same. The Emily who left the day of the accident didn’t return the same. She’s been locked in that body, unable to function, for twenty-three years. You’ve held on to her longer than any doctor believed possible. To want to keep her here like that is selfish, man. I miss her, too. She made you a better man. That man was lost twenty-three years ago, too. The boy is right. You can’t save her. But you can damn well make her proud of you. Don’t you want her to be thankful that she had a life with you? Of course you do! You would do anything for that woman. Do this for her. Fucking do this. For. Her.”
I didn’t need to say more. Dean had said it all. Perfectly. He’d lived in a world where my father had loved a woman and been happy. He knew things I didn’t. Seeing Kiro through Dean’s eyes was enlightening.
“She’d want me to be strong. She’d expect it,” Kiro said, staring at the floor in front of him.
Neither of us said a thing. We let him take it all in. Dean had stood up from his spot on the sofa, and we looked at each other over Kiro’s bent head. We both wanted our message to get through to him.
“I want there to be a heaven. I want it for her. She should be dancing and laughing. She has the best laugh. I want there to be a place where she can have all that. Tell me that when this life ends, it’s not over, that she has a new life ahead of her, full of all she was robbed of in this one.”
I swallowed through the emotion constricting my throat. God, I never wanted to go through this. Kiro had been an asshole most of my life, but no one deserved to deal with pain this intense.