His cheeks take on a slight tinge and he rubs a hand over his beard. His hair is lighter than mine. A little longer. One of the few differences between us. “Ain’t no thing. You’re lucky he didn’t do it just to spite me. Billings and McGrath heard him yellin’ all the way from the break room.”
“Jas, it was everything. Without the job…I might not have made it long enough to get…here.”
He flinches, and I kick myself for being such an insensitive asshole. Losing his career almost broke him. And since I’d kicked him out of my life, I didn’t know it until he needed my help protecting Emi.
That stakeout would have been mine—should have been mine—but I was still so fucked up over losing Grace, the chief benched me. Instead, I’m still on the job and Jasper’s looking for something…anything he can do to feel…useful.
Before I can find the words to tell him how sorry I am for abandoning him, Grace cries out. I almost trip over my own feet trying to get to her.
“Don’t…I’ll be good,” she whimpers. Tears gather at the corners of her shuttered lids. She’s shaking, her right hand fisting the blanket like it can somehow protect her from whatever’s threatening her in her dreams. Her nightmare.
“Grace?”
Fuck. Do I wake her? What if that makes things worse? She doesn’t know me, but I’ve got to do something.
Taking a chance, I cover her hand with mine. “It’s okay, darlin’. I’m here. You’re safe.”
Grace turns her head slightly. The tension around her eyes eases. With one final, tiny sob, she relaxes.
“Well,” Jasper says from behind me, his voice so low it’s practically a whisper, “if that ain’t proof Grace—your Grace—is in there somewhere…I don’t know what is. She’ll come back to you, AJ. Just give her time.”
Grace
The constant headache I’ve had since I first woke up here is starting to fade. My eyes still feel like sandpaper, and I have to blink hard for the rose garden outside to come into focus.
Something’s…different. A sweet, floral scent wraps around me, and it’s almost…familiar.
I turn my head.
Shit.
AJ. My husband. He’s stretched out in a narrow recliner next to the bed, legs crossed at the ankles, eyes closed. Soft breaths escape his parted lips. He’s asleep, I think. And holding my hand.
I jerk my arm back, then regret the motion as it makes the room tilt on its axis.
AJ sits up so quickly, he practically falls out of the chair. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice rough. He runs his fingers through his dark brown hair. A memory tries to push through, but before I can grasp it, it’s gone, like a ghost that was never truly there. “You were havin’ a nightmare, and I couldn’t…I had to try.”
I want to know if it worked—if he kept the monsters away—but fear stops me from asking.
This is ridiculous. He’s my husband. Why am I so afraid to ask him a simple question? To touch him? To let him hold my hand?
“I brought some of your things with me.” He gestures to the bed, where a colorful quilt now covers the dull beige hospital blanket. “Your mama made that for us when we got married. It’s been on our bed at home ever since.”
I run my fingers over the material. Each square has a different type of flower. Black-Eyed Susans, bluebonnets, sage, golden poppies, lilies, roses. It’s so bright and happy—such a contrast to the drab sheets and scratchy blanket I’ve had for days. With the guardrail on the side of the bed down, I can almost imagine I’m somewhere else. Somewhere that might be a home. I can’t quite close my still clumsy left hand around the edging, but with my right, I lift the quilt to my nose.
“Do you recognize the scent?” Leaning down, AJ rummages in a black duffel bag. When he straightens, he’s holding a pearlescent glass bottle with a gold top “This isn’t the one you had when you…were taken,” he says, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I spray your pillow with this scent every Saturday. It’s the only way I can sleep in our bed without you. I bought a new bottle last year. Damn near had a panic attack in the store before the clerk told me the company had switched from blue glass to this.”
He won’t meet my gaze. This man, who traveled all the way from Austin to get to me, sat with me while I slept, and held my hand through a nightmare, is breaking into pieces over a bottle of perfume.
“I almost gave up.” The first tear rolls down his cheek. “So many times. Belle and the job were all that kept me going.”
His pain fills the space between us until I can’t not ask what he means.
“Gave…up?” I fumble for the remote to raise the bed, but it somehow ended up on my left side, and I can’t make my fingers work the buttons.
AJ leans over and eases the small device from my hand. The brief touch seems to settle him a fraction. If I’m honest, it helps me too.
“After we graduated from college, my brother joined the State Troopers right away, but I took a month off and went to Spain with a couple of friends. You were twenty-two, doing a semester abroad, and it only took me a single date to decide I was going to marry you one day.”
