He had me.
Maybe just for a minute. Maybe for ten. And even though I knew it was dumb and that I had no right to and I needed to get it together, I leaned into him. I went a little limp against his body, even tilting my head forward until it rested right between his neck and collarbone.
For one moment in time, I let Lucas Ripley hold me up while tears just dropped out of my eyes, making the ones I’d shed in my bedroom after my grandmother’s funeral seem like nothing.
All I had ever wanted was to be loved.
And one of the only people I had expected to give me that unconditionally for the rest of my life had let me walk right out of her place, without as much as just... talking to me about how school was going. Or work. Or anything.
We had driven all the way over here and….
One of the arms around me moved, and what had to be his hand landed on the back of my head, fingers dipping into my hair, running through the ends before coming back up to do it all over again.
“Ten more seconds,” I mumbled into my hands, into his shirt, into him.
“Ten more seconds,” he agreed into my cheek, his hand cupping the back of my head again.
I sucked in a breath through my nose and pressed my face even closer into the high point of his chest, feeling bones and hard muscles beneath it—a reminder that this man was immovable. Tough. Hard. Even leaning into him with more of my weight than I had ever let someone support, he held it without an issue.
His fingers worked their way through my hair to touch my nape.
Those rough, calloused fingers worked their way to straddle the back of my neck, to hold my head in place, right where it was.
Thea loved me. I knew it. But it didn’t feel like it.It didn’t feel like it.
“I just… I just….” I tried to say but couldn’t find the words.
“I know.” Those fingers kneaded my muscles lightly, the band around my shoulders tightening. “I know. You’re good. You’re fine.”
Iwasgood. Iwasfine.
I sucked in a breath through my nose and nodded against him.
Iwas.
I had food. I was fine. I had everything I wanted and needed.
I wasn’t going to be upset over Thea.
I wasn’t.
I wasn’t.
I was good. I was fine. I was loved.
I was—
“Five more seconds,” I told him, knowing somewhere in the back of my head that it was more like five minutes after my initial request.
Those fingers went through the ends of my hair some more. “Five more,” that gentle voice agreed.
I sniffed, fighting the urge when more tears popped up in my eyes again.I was fine, I was fine, I was fine.But I still didn’t move. When his fingers went through my hair once more, I whispered, “That’s really nice, Rip,” hearing it sound all broken and chopped.
I was fine.
I would be fine.
“It always made me feel better when my mom would do it for me,” he told me, doing it all over again, so soft, so naturally. “Didn’t matter if I was scared or sad or mad; everything always felt better after she did it.”
