“It’s Macallan 30,” I tried to encourage her.
She nodded listlessly and went through the motion of taking a sip, but I could tell she barely even tasted it.
I sat beside her, not knowing what else to do. For a minute, we just existed in silence—her staring at nothing, me watching her face for any clue about what the hell had happened.
“Did something happen with your father?” I finally asked, keeping my voice gentle. I figured it had to be something to do with Marc since she had just left his building.
The question seemed to break something loose in her. She squeezed her eyes shut, a fresh tear escaping down her cheek. “Don’t ask me about him.”
The venom in her voice when she said “him” made my blood run cold. What I saw in Alisa wasn’t just sadness. It was rage.
Though it made me curious, I also knew how much Alisa loved her father, despite the fact that he wasn’t around much inher formative years, given how hard he worked. She used to talk about him for hours. He raised her single-handedly since her mother died young, and for her to speak of him that way?
He must have done something very, very bad.
“Okay,” I agreed, sipping my whiskey. “We don’t have to talk about him.”
She and her chin trembled with the effort of holding back more tears. Then, to my complete surprise, she shifted closer to me on the couch until her shoulder pressed against mine.
And then, I heard her let out an ugly sob.
“Oh, Alisa.” My heart melted immediately, and I lifted my arm and wrapped it around her shoulders. For weeks, she looked like it pained her to even stand in the room I breathed in. Now she was leaning into me like I was the only thing helping her keep it together.
While this was progress, it wasn’t the kind I wanted.
What I wanted most was for her to… not feel this way.
“Shh,” I whispered into her hair, tracing patterns down her back to help her calm down. “Whatever it is… It’s going to be okay.”
She crumpled against my chest, sobbing even louder. Every cry she let out felt like a twist in my belly.
I tightened my hold on her, needing to do anything I could to help, though I wasn’t sure it would work. Her tears soaked through my shirt. “I’ve got you,” I murmured. “I’ve got you.”
Her fingers clutched at my shirt, bunching it into her fists. I set my drink aside and brought my other arm around her, cradling her against me as she broke apart.
This wasn’t the fiery Alisa I knew. This was someone weak, sad, and lost, and I hated seeing her this way. It scared the hell out of me.
“What happened, Alisa?” I tried again, running my hand up and down her back in slow, soothing motions. “Let me help you.”
She shook her head against my chest. “You can’t.”
“Try me.”
“I can’t talk about it,” she whimpered. “Please, Dante, just let it go.”
God, how could I help her without knowing what went wrong? I wanted to push for answers, but the desperate way she clung to me held me back.
I knew that whatever she’d learned at that courthouse was so bad that pushing now would only break her further.
So I just held her and let her tears soak my shirt as the minutes stretched on. My mind kept spinning through scenarios, each worse than the last.
Had her father refused to help her?
Or was it something else entirely?
Had something happened to him?
Eventually, her crying subsided to hiccupping breaths. She pulled back slightly, just enough to look up at me with those swollen, bloodshot eyes.
