Others, it was a sharper blade, and it cut deeper than ever.
I placed her fox under her arm and backed away from the bed, my heart splitting in two. I needed to go back to Folk—Ineededhis embrace, his warmth, hislove, so fucking much.
But I couldn’t leave my girl. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.You should’ve left her where she was. Maybe, but she was always a little shit when she woke up in my bed. Couldn’t say why. Just that it always put her in the mood to make her day and mine a clusterfuck of lost socks and defiance.
So?I didn’t care about socks. Or if she never did a single thing I asked her ever again. I just fucking needed her to be okay.
To be happy.
To besafe.
That word stuck in my mind, lit up by phantom neon lights, pulsing in time with my heavy heartbeat.
I sat in her doorway, one eye on her, the other on Folk across the landing. The temperature had dropped while I’d been asleep, and he was still on top of the covers. He didn’t look cold, but I wished I could see his face from here. I wished for a lot of things as the night stretched into the early hours of the morning and I remained in Ivy’s doorway. I didn’t sleep. At least I thought I didn’t, until something roused me.
It was still super dark. I squinted into Ivy’s room, already halfway to my feet, but she was in the same position she’d been in the last time I’d looked, upside down and hugging her fox, face so peaceful it was hard to believe the last twenty-four hours had happened to her.
I rotated to the other room on my watch. Folk hadn’t moved either, but then he did, and that awful, haunted gasp broke the silence. The same one from last night.
His distress was probably the only thing that could tear me from Ivy right now. I left the doorway and crossed into my room, but by the time I reached Folk, he’d already rolled onto his belly and reached under the pillow for his weapon.
Goosebumps littered his golden skin. I rubbed my hands together to warm them, but I hesitated before I touched him. I was agitated and Folk was empathetic as hell. He didn’t need my angst on top of whatever horror show he was living through while he slept.
I settled for stretching out beside him, forgoing the sheets for as long as he was. I held out for a full minute before I skated my palm over his bare shoulder.
He didn’t react, but the goosebumps faded, and it wasn’t long before I fell asleep again.
Morning came with a thunderstorm. Thick grey clouds and lashing rain. Rainbows in the sky as the sun tried to fight the menacing shroud in her way.
Folk and Ivy made breakfast. Then he retreated upstairs while I got her ready for school—a task that took half the time without a foot and a half of hair to braid.
My phone began to ring at eight o’clock on the dot. Without Folk in the room to stage an intervention, I glanced at the screen in the same moment Ivy did, and we both flinched.
Lauren.
I picked up the phone, the urge to fling it at the wall so consuming my biceps ached with the effort of resisting.
“You should put it in the freezer, Daddy.”
“What?” I jerked my gaze to Ivy. She’d dragged a big cushion into her lap to hide behind. “Why?”
“That’s where Rubi hides records he doesn’t want River to play so loud when he’s asleep.”
Nothing about Rubi and River’s adoring relationship was anything like Lauren. But the idea had legs, if only because I lacked any of my own.
I buried my vibrating phone behind a box of rocket lollies and kicked the freezer door shut as Folk came downstairs.
He shot me a quizzical glance.
I admitted nothing, and neither did Ives. She came to the kitchen door and pointed at a mug on the counter.
“Daddy made you tea.”
Folk somehow managed to eye us both at the same time, but whatever he was thinking, he let it go and claimed his tea. “Are you coming back here after the school run? Or do you want me to meet you somewhere later?”
For the legal meeting that was probably going to get me nowhere. But I had to work first, cutting and packing a massive timber order, squeezing a five-hour job into three, when all I wanted to do was stick my head in the blender that now lived on my kitchen counter.
Folk came closer and wound his arms around me. Water dripped from his hair and onto my T-shirt, and his lips brushed my cheek. “Why don’t you come back here after you drop Ivy off and share that cup of tea with me? We don’t have to talk—about this or anything else.”
