“What’s your name, darlin’?” Trouble asked, suddenly desperate for all the details about this young girl. Liz’s daughter. One no one new she had. How and why she kept the little girl a secret was a question that could have a clear answer.
Simply, she didn’t wanthimto know.
“Erika,” the little girl answered, and Trouble’s life upended.
Struck, his breath slamming from his lungs, Trouble grabbed the door handle with trembling, white-knuckled hands, and tried to breathe through the unbearable weight on his chest.
Trouble could feel Odin’s eyes on his face, no doubt surprised as shit.
“That’s a beautiful name, sweetie,” Odin spoke, because Trouble couldn’t speak, his surprised and concerned gaze flicking between his VP and the road.
“Th-thank you,” Erika mewled, her tiny voice loud as a plane engine in Trouble’s ears. “My mama said I was named after my daddy.”
Erika…named after Erik. Him. She was named afterhim. Shuddering, he closed his eyes against the avalanche of realization cascading with disbelief and desperation.
“Your daddy?” Odin inquired, taking a sharp right turn onto Breckenridge, and gunning it.
“Yeah, but he isn’t here.”
But he was! He was there, he was right fuckingthere!
And he’s coming for you, darlin’!
Trouble finally forced a word through the thick, strangling hands of shock and terror around his throat. “No?”
“No. Mama said he wasn’t around because he was trouble. And we don’t need trouble.”
For the first time in ten years, a tear slipped from Erik Skaarsen’s eye. No, they didn’t need Trouble, but, God…Trouble just might need them.
