Ryan's Love - C.A. Harms Page 0,40
of me. “Whoa, brother. Where are you storming off to?”
“I’m gonna stomp that boy’s butt. He needs to know that messing with my daughter is the worst mistake he’s ever made. I’m gonna make sure he understands that he better not get within five feet of her unless he wants my foot up his ass,” I said, trying to move around him.
Noah and I were comparable in size, height, and build, but I knew I could get past him without a problem. Jackson, on the other hand, was the biggest of us three, thanks in part to labor on the ranch. He used his size to his advantage way too often.
My mother must have been thinking the same thing, because she rushed off, leaving me with Noah. I knew I had about sixty seconds to overpower him before Jackson intervened.
“You don’t want to do that,” Noah said. “Ryan, he’s not worth it. He’ll get his own, you know that. He was driving drunk and endangered two other people as well. He is seventeen, almost eighteen. I’m sure he’ll be suffering for this mistake for years, brother. Use your head, Ry.” Noah was doing what he did best—trying to talk me down.
When Jackson stepped up behind him, I knew I was fighting a losing battle. Jack squared his shoulders and crossed his arms over his built chest, puffing up and widening his stance.
“Calm down there, Hercules.” I chuckled at Jackson, and he grinned in return. “I don’t need you holding me back. Dr. Logic here just put a stop to my rage.”
Jackson looked disappointed that his strength was no longer needed. He was such an arrogant ass.
I spent a good fifteen minutes outside Olivia’s room calming my nerves before I stepped back in. As I did, she looked up at me with eyes full of unshed tears. I stood at the end of her bed, staring down at my little girl. I remembered her with her hair in pigtails, running around the backyard, and the days when Claire and she would blow bubbles off the back deck and then run around, trying to pop them all before they hit the ground.
She was no longer my little chubby-cheeked girl. She was now a beautiful young woman, and I had no idea how to handle that.
“I’m so sorry, Daddy.” Her chest shook as she tried to control her tears. “I never should have drank or gotten in the car with Charlie after knowing he’d been drinking. I never should have lied and left Jackie’s house. I know right now you hate me, but—”
My chest tightened and I rushed for her. I leaned over the left side of the bed and pulled her good side flush against mine. “I don’t hate you, Liv, baby girl,” I soothed. “I could never hate you. You’re my world, Olivia. I’m hurt by your choices, sweetheart, but I could never hate you, ever. I love you.”
She curled into my chest, and another part of me broke as she sobbed against me.
“I miss you,” she whispered. “It’s been just you and me for so long, and now it feels different. You have Amber, and I feel like—” Her voice cracked just before she breathed in deep.
“You feel like what, darlin’?”
“Like Mom is fading away more and more. I can’t see her anymore when I close my eyes. I can’t remember what she sounded like when she would talk to me at night until I fell asleep.” Her tears began to soak through my shirt, and my throat burned at her confession.
“Remember that pillow I have on my bed? The one that smelled like her?” Olivia looked up at me, her eyes red and swollen. I nodded. “I can’t smell her anymore,” she continued, shattering me a little more.
She pushed back from me and looked directly into my eyes. “I know you like Amber, and I also know you spent the night with her. Or at least you were going to until you got called to come here.” She shrugged. “I saw your truck there when we drove by the bakery.”
“Sweetheart—”
“I just know that when things get more serious with the two of you, Mom will then be a distant memory, and I’m having a really hard time with that. You’ll forget her, I’m forgetting her, and she’ll just be a picture on the nightstand. Just an occasional thought hidden in the back of our minds. I hate that. I can’t remember what it felt like when she brushed my