“I’m fucking terrified, baby.”
I pushed myself to sit up and crossed my legs so I could look directly at him. “Why?”
“I’m afraid I’ll say or do the wrong thing and you’ll bolt.”
I looked down; I’d grabbed the pillow and set it in my lap as a barrier. Not that a pillow would hold anyone back, but it felt good to have something in my hands.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” I confessed. I didn’t know how to give him what he needed. Not anymore.
“You don’t have to say anything, Grace. Just don’t shut me out. Please don’t push me away. I want to be by your side while you work through this shit.”
“It could take years.”
“I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
I bit my lip and looked away. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay again. If I’ll ever want to...” I couldn’t even say the words. How would I ever act on them? I was no longer myself. I wasn’t Grace anymore.
I was Stephanie again.
The shy little girl who watched TV while her mother was raped down the hall. Who never told anyone because her mother begged her not to.
“Grace, I fell in love with you long before we had sex. If you are never in a place where you can do that again...” He shrugged.
“That’s not fair to you.”
“Call it my penance for not letting you go when I should have. I want you, Grace. Your body is a bonus. A gift. One that isn’t required for me to love you.”
I wanted to believe him. He was saying all the right things, but the voice in my head—the voice that sounded just like my mother’s—told me he was lying.
“Men leave, Grace. It’s what they do. They hold you tight until they get bored, then they push you away as if you’re nothing.”
“You feel up to going to the hospital?”
My head lifted quickly as I studied him. I bit my lip again as I ran the scenarios through my head. The distance to the hospital, the possibility of being ambushed, taken a second time.
But Johnny was there. I wanted to see him. Needed to see him. Make sure he was really okay. Beg him to forgive me. And Maureen was there.
My eyes snapped up to King’s. “Did Maureen have the baby?”
He nodded with a wide smile. “She did. Healthy baby boy. She named him Bennett after Hash.”
All at once the memories flooded. The alarm going off seconds before the door flew open and men stormed in shooting at everyone. Aspen and I huddled behind the bar as glass and alcohol rained down on us.
Hash, Jade, and Crystal were all dead. Tank and Keys were still in the hospital with injuries. Not even the clubhouse was safe.
“Hey.” King leaned over and dipped his head to catch my eyes. “What happened? Where did you go?”
“There’s nowhere safe.” I shrugged. “They came for me at the bar, here, Trudy’s. I want to go see Johnny; I need to see him. But I don’t know how to not be afraid.”
“Baby, we can take the whole fucking club, if that’s what you need to feel safe. Every one of those men downstairs would give their life for you.”
“I don’t want that. I just want to see Johnny. I need to see with my own eyes that he’s really okay.”
King stood up and held his hand out to me. I stared at it for a fraction before I slipped mine into his and let him pull me up. I stood in front of him and stared at him as his eyes bored into mine, and I wanted to shut down. I wanted to close myself off so he couldn’t see everything I was feeling inside.
“Nothing has changed,” he whispered. “I love you, Grace.” Then he leaned down and kissed my forehead.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
