Shift (The Disciples' Daughters #2) (26 page)

Hours later, Sketch and I were in the room that had once been mine, but I’d started to think of as ours, at the farmhouse. Emmy was already in bed, her puppy, Duncan, in a crate in the hall, directly between her room and ours. She’d knocked out early after all the excitement.

Sketch and I had spent the night since tucking her in talking about the house. We planned out how we would furnish it, which of the bedrooms we would install Emmy in, and I’d cried more than a handful of times at the realization that we would raise her where Dad had raised me.

We were in bed, Sketch sitting against the headboard, me lounging against him, when he said, “Got another gift for you.”

I sat up and turned to look at him. “It’s Emmy’s birthday, not mine.”

“Maybe, but four years ago, you brought that perfect girl into the world. That deserves celebrating, too.”

Crap. He had really been going for the waterworks all day.

Leaning over the side of the bed, he reached into the nightstand and pulled out a sheet of paper. His face was serious in a way that made me wary when he settled back into his spot.

“Before I show this to you, I want you to understand why I did it. I thought you needed this to move on. If there had been a different result, I would not be showing it to you. I’d take that secret with me to the grave. You’d have never known. But I want you to see this now.”

I took the papers from him, worried I already knew what it was.

The printed report was loaded with information I couldn’t sort through, but the top included a word that left me speechless. “Paternity.”

My eyes shot up to him. “I’m her father,” he declared.

My grip on the paper tightened until I was wrinkling it, but I didn’t care.

He went on. “I know you didn’t want to do the test because you were worried it wouldn’t be me. That’s why I didn’t tell you. If it had come back negative, I would have kept that secret. I would have loved Emmy the same either way. I did it for you, so you could finally let go of what happened. Emmy is ours, by blood and by something so much more important.”

He stopped talking, but started moving. His cut came off, and then his shirt. Beneath it, across the left side of his chest, was a bandage. I knew, even before he started to peel back the tape holding it closed, what he’d done. That spot was the only part of his torso that had no tattoos. At least, it had been.

The tattoo he revealed stole my breath. Despite the shiny cream covering it and the redness at its edges, it was the most beautiful tattoo I had ever seen. It was a jar, designed like a watercolor painting. Inside, were two glowing yellow shapes.

Fireflies.

“I decided a long time ago this spot,” he said, indicating his chest, “was for you. I kept it bare all this time, because it was yours. Now, it belongs to you and Emmy.”

For years, life had gone off course, taking me down a road I’d never expected. I’d accepted I would never get back to the dreams I’d had. I was prepared to accept a different happy, a joy entirely centered around Emmy. Looking at the ink on his chest, with the gifts he’d given me on the fourth anniversary of bringing my baby—
our daughter
—into the world, he gifted me those dreams back.

“You did it,” I whispered.

“What?”

“When we were just kids, you told me we were going to have all of this one day. You were going to become a Disciple, marry me, and we’d have kids together. You told me you’d make me the happiest wife ever.” I stared at him, having no idea how to react to everything I was feeling. “You did it.”

He kissed me then, until my body was on fire, and I was ready for him to make me a different kind of happy while returning the favor. Right against my lips, he whispered, “Do anything for you, Firefly.”

He would, I knew it. He’d claimed a Disciple’s daughter at six years old and made one of his own. He had already done it when he made my entire world shift.

ENGAGE

DISCIPLES’ DAUGHTERS #3

Jager’s Story

Drew Elyse spends her days trying to convince the world that she is, in fact, a Disney Princess, and her nights writing tear-jerking and smutty romance novels.

When she isn’t writing, she can usually be found over-analyzing every line of a book, binge watching a series on Netflix, doing strange vocal warm ups before singing a variety of music styles, or screaming at the TV during a Chicago Blackhawks game.

A graduate of Loyola University Chicago with a BA in English, she still lives in Chicago, IL where she was born and raised with her boyfriend and her fur babies Lola and Duncan.

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https://www.drewelyse.com

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https://www.twitter.com/DrewElyseAuthor

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The Dissonance Series

Dissonance

Harmony

The Disciples’ Daughters

Clutch

Shift