“I found him.” When she said that, I could hear the pain inside her. “I found him in his office, just sitting there in his chair. I thought… for just a split-second I thought nothing was wrong. When I close my eyes, I can still see him there. His eyes were open, but there was nothing in them. There was nothing. I’ve seen things, done things… but nothing like that.”
I couldn’t say why, but I found myself moving closer to her. I had to. The grief had come for her at last, and tears had welled in the corners of her eyes. I set a hand on her back, and she responded by leaning against my arm. It was instinctual after that. I pulled her onto my lap and wrapped both of my arms around her, holding her as her body trembled, as the tears began to fall.
“I miss him,” she whispered into my chest.
“I know.” I smoothed down her hair. “I know.” There wasn’t anything else to say. I didn’t like seeing her in such a state, which was bizarre to me, but I couldn’t explain it if I tried. Maybe, somewhere along the way, I’d come to care about her without realizing it. Maybe that’s what made this whole thing so hard.
We remained that way for a long while, with Laina on my lap, curled up, crying, and me simply sitting there and holding her. It did cross my mind, what the others downstairs might’ve been thinking, but I didn’t care enough to move her off me. No, I was right where I was supposed to be.
It was insane to think of how fast things changed, how I’d come to this city with the singular purpose of helping Tessa deal with Laina, and now… now everything had turned on its head. Everything was opposite. Literally everything had changed, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.
Take Laina, for instance, the crying ball on my lap. I didn’t want to let her go. Even if she were to stop crying, I wouldn’t want to move. She fit so well on my lap, leaned into me for comfort like she was always meant to.
Something in me was changing, slowly recognizing something I didn’t want to face before now. Suddenly I understood how Laina had hooked Kieran, Mike, and Fang, and gotten them all to agree to a relationship with her. It was atypical, not of the norm, and yet it was the very definition of Laina Hawkins.
Someone like Laina didn’t go for normal or easy.
The hand that had smoothed down her hair slowed, fingers spreading. Those same fingers weaved into her hair as my hand held the back of her head. It was, in the grand scheme of things, not much of a movement on my part, but it displayed the change in me as well as any motion could’ve. A more tender embrace.
Everyone else downstairs could wait. Truly, the only thing important right now was her.
I didn’t know how long we stayed like that. Like I said, it didn’t matter. I’d stay here with her as long as it took, as long as she wanted me here. It hurt me deeply to see her in so much pain, and I’d do anything to reach inside her and take it, bear the brunt of it myself, shield her from the specific kind of agony only aching, raw grief could bring.
After a while, after who knew how long, the trembling in her body stopped, and I no longer heard her crying. My shirt was wet, but it didn’t matter. Gently, I asked her, “Have you eaten at all today?”
She shook her head against my chest and mumbled, “I’m not hungry.”
“It doesn’t matter. You need to eat, even if you don’t feel like it. I know it’s hard, but you still need to take care of yourself. I see food on the nightstand. Do you want me to run it downstairsand reheat it for you? Or do you want me to run out and get you something else?”
Laina said not a word.
“Even if it’s only a few bites, you need to eat and drink something.”
She told me in a hushed whisper, “Maybe in a bit. I just want to lay down.”
It wasn’t like I could force-feed her, so I said, “Okay.”
As I helped get her off my lap, she pulled her face away from my chest and stared up at me through red-rimmed, puffy eyes. “You don’t have to go. You could… lay with me.” Such tentative words, as if she was afraid to speak them—and she probably was, for a whole host of different reasons.
For one, she had at least three other men downstairs who would gladly lay down with her. It wasn’t something I could easily forget. Stepping into this wouldn’t be simple. It’d be beyond messy, the messiest mess I’d ever put myself in, and yet…
I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t deny her, couldn’t tell her it was probably a bad idea for me to lay down with her. She was hurting, and I would do anything to make her feel better. I just had to be careful; people dealing with grief tended to act irrationally and make mistakes they would regret in the future.
A mistake was something I didn’t want to be, not again.
This could end badly. This could blow up in my face. Hell, Kieran would probably want to take a knife to my throat if he knew I was about to give in to her request—but my son wasn’t here to shake some sense into me, and second after second I could feel my inner willpower crumbling when it came to Laina.
So I did the only thing I could, and I told her, “Whatever you want.” Because it was true. It really was whatever she wanted. I was damn near helpless to stop her, to guide her somewhere else.
She slid off my lap, and together we moved positions until we were both laying down. I let her choose her position first, before picking mine; she laid on her side, so I chose my back. She fit perfectly in the crook of my arm, spooning against my side. She set an arm on my chest, herfingers curling in the fabric of my shirt.
“I’m sorry I got your shirt all wet,” she whispered.
“Don’t worry about it.” My eyes were open, and I stared hard at the ceiling as I tried desperately to ignore the way she gripped my shirt. What a dangerous position we were in. So much more dangerous than I thought before.
“It’s the first time I cried since…” Laina trailed off, growing quiet. “God, I can’t even remember. I don’t cry. I didn’t even cry when I woke up chained to a bed in a basement.”
“Not even when you cut off your fingers?”
