Page 127 of Bet On Me, Daddy
“No. Let her sleep. I’ll call you back when I know more.” No point in getting Lottie up, making her worry before they had the full story.
“Thanks. I’m about to go up and check on Lottie, try and get some sleep myself. If I don’t answer, just text me. Lottie will lose her mind if I have to tell her Frankie’s in the hospital and I don’t have any other answers for her.”
“Will do.”
“Appreciate it. And Holden… take care of our girl.”
Like he would do anything less. “Always.”
The call ended, leaving him alone in the car with his thoughts. And his panic, though he was doing his damnedest to keep that tamped down. Whatever had happened tonight, Frankie would need him to be calm. Steady.
She would need her Daddy.
At the hospital, he parked, silently cursing the number of cars filling the parking lot as he ran for the emergency room doors. A rather frazzled-looking nurse glanced up when he approached the front counter.
“I’m looking for Francesca Legare.”
“Family?” the woman asked, tapping the information into the computer.
As a rule, he didn’t make a habit of lying. But his babygirl had asked for him, specifically, and he’d be damned if he let a bunch of bureaucratic bullshit keep him from her. “I’m her Daddy.”
There. Not technically a lie. Nobody needed to know exactly what kind of Daddy he was. And if the nurse was put off by the term, it didn’t show on her face as she took down his information before finally giving him a visitor’s badge and pointing him in the right direction.
Heart threatening to pound out of his chest, he made his way up to Frankie’s room.
And stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of her, looking so small and frail in the oversized hospital bed. Her eyes were closed, her lashes dark against her unusually pale cheeks.
Oh, baby. What the hell happened to you?
Forcing his feet forward, he stood beside the bed, forcing his own chaotic emotions down as he took her hand. Her eyelids fluttered open, revealing the deep brown, glazed with sleep. Or possibly whatever medication they had her on.
“You came,” she croaked out, her voice hoarse.
“Of course I came, little siren. Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.”
He’d hoped to make her laugh, but to his horror, tears filled her eyes, slipping down her cheeks. Cheeks, he was noticing now, that seemed a little too sharp, a little too hollow. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know who else to call. I fucked up and now I don’t know how to fix it and everything is ruined and I just… I need you, Daddy. Please.”
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he gathered her in his arms as sobs racked her body. “Don’t worry baby. Daddy’s here. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it. Together.”
He held her as he cried, and the thought flitted through his mind that he’d finally gotten what he wanted. His babygirl, back in his arms.
Immediately on the heels of that thought came a question that made his blood run cold. Yeah, he had her back, right where she’d always belonged.
But at what cost?
After monthsof chasing down his wayward babygirl, Holden is finally getting what he’s always wanted: Frankie, in his bed, safe and sound where she belongs. But his girl has been keeping secrets. Big ones. And he’s determined to get to the bottom of them, no matter what it takes, in Break Me, Daddy.
The End!
