Take This Regret (Take This Regret #1)(13)
Author: A.L. Jackson

I had to protect her. “Lizzie, go inside.” When I spoke, Christian turned his attention from me and gazed down at Lizzie with adoration. Why was he looking at her like that? Like she meant everything. With eyes alight, Lizzie stared up at him, grinning as if any second she would run across the street and into his arms.

I could not let this happen.

“Lizzie . . . go inside, now.”

“But, Momma . . .”

“Now!” I cringed, hating the way I sounded, especial y because it was directed at my daughter. The look on Lizzie’s face tore me apart, the confusion at being yel ed at when she had done nothing wrong. Tears fel down her chubby cheeks, and she hesitated only a moment longer, looking one more time at Christian before running into the house.

Undoubtedly, I had broken a part of my daughter’s heart by sending her inside, but what I was protecting her from was so much greater than that. Her innocent mind could not begin to fathom the hurt this man would ultimately bring her.

Slowly, I turned back to Christian, struggling to appear strong, to be forceful, and to make him understand he was not welcome here. My knees were shaking almost as much as my bottom lip, and I was certain he knew I was anything but. Every emotion I’d ever experienced boiled just under the surface—the love, the hate, the fear, the loss, and most of all , the betrayal— the turmoil within causing my body to tremble with rage.

He looked at me, his expression remorseful, earnest, hopeful even. It made me furious. Standing in front of me was the man who had left me to raise a child on my own, certainly never giving us a second thought. Now he stood just feet from me, expectant, as if Lizzie and I owed him something.

Unbelievable.

“How dare you.” The words were not what I expected to flood from my mouth, but they were fitting. How dare he show up here at my house after what he’d done. Quickly, I wiped my tears, trying to erase them from my face. He didn’t even deserve them. He deserved nothing.

“Elizabeth.” His eyes fil ed with emotion that I had once believed to be genuine, a softness that spoke of love and loyalty, but I knew now it was nothing more than a tool of manipulation. I refused to fal victim to it again.

“How dare you come here.” I stood up tal er in an attempt to stand my ground.

What I said did nothing to sway Christian from whatever purpose had brought him here, and he took another step into the street. I began to panic, my mind grasping for anything that would make him comprehend just how serious I was. “If you take one more step, I’l call the cops.”

Christian halted in the middle of the street, looking shocked and a little bit frustrated as he roughed his hand through his black hair. He shook his head, the pain in his voice catching me off guard.

“Elizabeth, I’m not going to hurt you.” His words brought me firmly back to reality.

A barking, contemptuous laugh escaped my lips.

“You’re not going to hurt me?” I looked him in the eye, making sure he understood. “Nobody has ever hurt me as much as you hurt me, Christian. No one.” Yes, I sounded like a lover scorned, but that was exactly what I was. “Now I want you to leave.”

“Elizabeth, I’m so sorry . . . It was my fault . . . I know . . .

Please.” I watched as he stumbled over himself, tried to apologize as if any excuse he could give would gain him access into our lives. I refused to believe his lies. Once I would have trusted him with my life, but now I knew better.

I’d never all ow myself, especial y my daughter, to be put in the position for Christian to freely dispose of us again.

“Leave.”

“Please, Elizabeth. I need to see my daughter.” His daughter? all these years I had known Christian to be a selfish man, but I could never have imagined the depths it went to. I swall owed hard, shaking my head at his impudence, unable to believe what he had just said. “She’s not your daughter. She’s my daughter.” He could apologize all he wanted, but it would never change what he did. He had discarded us, and he had no right in our lives.

I turned and left him standing there. I couldn’t bear to be in his presence a moment longer.

Lizzie was at the window, appearing wounded and frightened by events she couldn’t understand. In just five minutes, Christian had managed to throw my family into complete turmoil, and I had no idea how to repair the damage he had already done. all I knew was that my daughter was hurting. I rushed inside and pried her away from the window. At first she resisted, struggling in my arms to get back to him before she buried her face in my neck. I could feel her confusion, the way she needed me to comfort her all the while being drawn to the man outside. Her tears ran down my neck and onto my shirt. I shushed her as I rocked her, holding her with one arm while my free hand ran from the top of her head and down her back over the silky strands of her hair.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” I murmured against her head.

“It’s going to be okay.”

She pulled back, her perfect face tearstained and broken, and asked me the one question I felt incapable of answering. “Mommy, who is that man?”

How could I tel her that the man I had just sent away was her father or deal the questions that would assuredly fol ow? Instead, I pressed my lips to her forehead and whispered, “Mommy loves you so much, Lizzie.”

She nodded against them as if her four-year-old mind understood that I was asking her for time, that my heart was not yet ready to break hers any further. She clung to my neck desperately as I hugged her before I reluctantly set her on the floor.

“Can you be a big girl for Mommy and go upstairs and play in your room until dinner is ready?” I caressed her cheek as I implored with my eyes. She gazed up at me, never looking more like Christian than in that moment. I smiled sadly at her, wishing that it didn’t hurt so much.

She cast one last glance toward the window before looking back at me. “Okay, Mommy.”

Once she was safely upstairs, I cautiously peered through the curtains, praying that Christian was gone, though intuitively knowing he was not. He sat in his car, his gaze meeting mine, his eyes pleading for forgiveness while mine silently begged him to just leave us alone.

Dinner was quiet. Lizzie said very little the entire evening other than thank-you, Momma when I set her smal plate of lasagna down in front of her. Neither of us ate much, and I knew her mind was focused just as much on what had happened this afternoon as mine was. I owed her an answer to her question, but I still hadn’t found the right way to tel her.