Her hair flew around her in familiar shocks of red. Hair she claimed she hated, but he’d once loved. “So we finally meet.”
Though he regretted like hell not speaking to Jake, lived with the guilt of that every day, he’d never regret cutting Reece out of his life. “What’s your game here, Reece? You’ve been hanging around here for a month, not returning my calls, yanking my chain, showing up at Maizy’s school. Cut to the chase.”
If she was offended by his harsh tone, she didn’t react. Reece was clearly on a mission and when that happened, she was unshakable. “I was sorry to hear about Harper. There’s been so much death in the past few years, hasn’t there? So many important people in our lives gone.”
Jax’s lips went flat. Harper had been the only one who’d liked Reece when he’d dated her. He didn’t want to remember that. She didn’t deserve that. “Look, let’s cut to the chase. Why are you here and what the hell do you want?”
She let her eyes fall to the ground, but it wasn’t that coy, innocent gaze she’d always used when she wanted something. It was almost haunted. “I just had to see her. She’s perfect. So perfect.”
Alarm bells began their distant ringing. She wanted Maizy. Goddamn it, it wasn’t bad enough she’d taken Jake, but she wanted Maizy after all this time? Never gonna happen.
He checked himself. Forced himself to remain calm. “So what is it? Do you want to meet her, Reece? Talk to her, get to know her?”
Reece paused for a long moment, staring off into the distance, and he wasn’t sure if he saw regret or relief when she answered. “I know this will make you hate me even more than you already do, but no. I don’t want to get to know her. She’s better off not knowing me.”
Fuck. He had to hope she wasn’t going to play the martyr here. That wasn’t gonna fly. Jake wouldn’t want this, buddy. Do the right thing. He made you promise in his will you’d let Maizy see her. Damn it. “Look, aside from everything’s that’s happened between us, she’s your daughter. Yours and Jake’s. Jake loved you, Reece. He loved Maizy. He wanted her to know you. He said as much in his will. I had to promise I’d let you see her before I was granted custody of her.”
She shook her head, her mouth a grim line. “I never wanted her, Jax. Didn’t Jake tell you?”
“He didn’t tell me anything, remember? We weren’t speaking.”
Her finger shot up in the air. “Right. Because of me. Well, here’s the cold, hard truth. I was going to abort Maizy.”
He clenched his teeth together, clamped so hard, it was a miracle he didn’t crush his jaw. “Don’t. Don’t talk about her that way.” Or I won’t be responsible for what I do to you.
The cold wind whipped her hair against her creamy cheeks, rather sunken, something he hadn’t noticed when he’d first laid eyes on her today. “It’s the truth, Jax. Jake never would have known if I hadn’t been stupid enough to leave that damn EPT stick in the trash. I would have aborted her before he ever even knew she existed. Just before I dumped him, that is.”
“Stop.”
But Reece wasn’t stopping. She plodded forward, her eyes distant as though she was reliving her conversations with Jake. “He talked me out of it. You know what Jake was like—he could talk anyone into anything. Against my better judgment, I fell for the whole white-picket-fence dream. Turns out, it was his dream. Not mine. I just got his dream confused with mine for a little while.” She gripped the steel railing along the bridge, her pale skin reddened from the harsh wind.
Jax couldn’t move. He wanted to wrap his hands around her creamy throat and choke her right out of her red coat for almost taking Maizy from him by aborting her.
The picture she made, standing against the backdrop of the purple-and-blue-streaked sky, stopped him, though. She was frail. Reece looked frail and vulnerable. “The second I had her, I knew. I knew I didn’t want to be a parent, Jax. Jake knew, too. He just wouldn’t admit it. So I left him a note and I ran away and hid for all these years. I knew Jake was dead, and still, I hid. Because I was afraid, if anyone knew I was alive, they’d make me take her.”
The breath he’d been holding escaped his lungs. “Where? Where the hell did you go?” How? How could you have gone? “Jake looked day and night for you before he died, hired private investigators, according to his lawyers. Your father was worried sick. Did he need more grief after your mother?”
“Abroad,” she said flatly, as though Jake’s fears, her parents’ fears, never even occurred to her. As though the word abroad cleared it all the fuck up because it had helped her get what she wanted.
“That’s it?” He had to fight not to yell. “Just abroad? Do you have any idea what your parents went through? What Jake went through before he was killed?”