He pulls back and tugs me back to his chair, pulling me into his lap. He tucks me in and starts wildly typing again. I try to figure out what he’s doing, but I’m at a loss. “What are you doing?”
“I’m looking up everything I can about that asshole,” he growls, surprising me. “He can’t hide from me.”
“Holden,” I say gently and wait for him to look up, “Why don’t you come out to the living room with us?” I don’t like that sound coming from him or the almost frantic way he’s typing.
“No,” he says, shaking his head, “I have to find him.”
“Holden,” I say more forcefully, “I think you need to take a break.” He’s already shaking his head, so I put my hands on each side of his face when he won’t stop. “Holden. Stop.”
He closes his eyes, and his hands fall away from the keyboard. “I can’t fail you again.”
“Oh, Holden.” I pull him into my chest; he wraps his arms around me tight. “You didn’t fail me.”
“Yes, I did,” he says adamantly. “I couldn’t find you. It was myjobto find you, and I couldn’t.”
“You did, though.” I know he’s the one that found the house by backtracking Jay’s hack job. “You did find me.”
“Not soon enough,” he whispers. “Not before…” he trails off and swallows.
My heart sinks. “Before what?” I ask, and he won’t answer. “Before what?” I ask again.
He finally looks up, and his brown eyes are tortured. “We saw the camera footage.”
“You what?!” I practically yell, sliding from his lap. I knew Jay was recording us because he told us that he would know everything we said or did. What did they see?
“We just saw the last day,” Holden says, standing up and trying to grab me. I step back. “We didn’t watch anything else.”
“What did you see?” I ask, vibrating with emotion at such a high frequency I don’t know whether to burst into tears or punch something.
“Bright eyes,” Holden begs when I step back again. “We saw you get away.”
I close my eyes. If they saw that, they saw Jay trying to rape me. I can feel my lungs seize in my chest, and my vision goes blurry. I can’t do this, not yet.
“I can’t,” I choke out, jerking the office door back open and running toward the back of the house.
“Bright eyes!” Holden yells behind me, but I don’t stop. I shove out onto the patio and try to suck in a lungful of fresh air, but my lungs aren’t working.
“Shit,” I whisper miserably, sinking to my ass on the patio, knowing what’s about to happen.
I hear someone bust through the door, and feet appear in front of me where I’m staring at the ground.
“Baby girl,” Dex rumbles, sinking to his knees in front of me. “You need to breathe.”
I try, and I can’t. Everything is starting to black out around the edges, and I get a flash of Zane with that bullet wound between his eyes from my nightmare.
Oh god. Please no.I beg in my head; I can’t be sucked back there again.
“Alessa. Listen to my voice,” Dex says, tilting my head up. “You aren’t there. You’re here with us. Safe.”
I focus on the sound of his deep raspy voice, and his face wavers into view. I latch onto the massive tattoo on his neck, and it starts bringing me slowly back to reality.
I suck in a huge breath, and I can see his shoulders sag in relief. “Good girl,” he says, and I can feel my body tingle from hearing that leave his mouth. God, I missed him. “Breathe for me.” I follow his cues until the burning in my lungs stops, and I can finally breathe properly. “There you go,” he encourages, jerking me to his chest.
I latch onto him like a lifeline. He scoops me up against his chest easily before striding into the house.
He takes me back to the living room and sinks on the loveseat with me in his lap. It’s hard to believe that I couldn’t do this with him not long ago since he didn’t like to be touched. Now here he is, offering me every bit of strength he can.
“I’m fine,” I whisper against his chest.
