I bit my lip and could practically feel my face heating up as embarrassment started to set in.
“Your house?” he asked when he realized I wasn’t going to expound on my blurted words.
“Yeah.” I looked around. “I used to live here with my family until I was seven or so. Then my parents got divorced, and then I was here only every other weekend for a while,” I mused as I looked around. “I broke my arm on those stairs.”
“I know it was. I also know that you would’ve told me all about it had you wanted to. I was being nice and not calling you out on it.” He hooked his arm around my waist and pulled me into his solid chest. “I bought this place from an old man.”
“Vito sold it to move in with Grace and Cody when I was ten or so,” I explained.
“Vito?”
I winced. “Slip of the tongue.”
He smoothed my hair back from my face. “You’re allowed to be angry at your father. You’re also allowed to not want to address him as a father when it’s apparent he doesn’t intend on acting like one.”
I felt my face begin to crumple.
He noticed and pulled me in to him, lifting me up off my feet again and planting his ass into the couch before sinking backward, taking me with him.
When I had my head resting on his collarbone, the tears started to fall.
It was because of his gentleness.
The way that he held me so tenderly, as if he was afraid to make any sudden moves because he thought I might break.
I don’t know how long I lay there, silently crying, but it must’ve been long enough for me to fall asleep in his arms.
He’d slipped my jacket off of me at some point and tossed it onto the couch beside us.
He was probably sweltering in his, because it was still pillowed underneath my face when I woke up to his chest rumbling who knew how long later.
Twenty-Four
Apologies, my good bitch. But what seems to be the fuck?
—Text from Hux to Creed
Creed
Her phone wouldn’t stop ringing.
I sat there with her in my arms for a solid four hours, sweating my ass off but unwilling to move.
Thank goodness that I turned the heat down before I left, or I would’ve had to move to shuck the jacket and possibly woken her up.
I’d watched, totally content to have her in my arms, as the day had slowly slipped away.
Before it’d gotten dark about an hour ago, the snow had really started to pick up, and everything was covered in a solid layer of white as the sun slipped below the mountains behind the house.
I silenced all the calls she’d been getting, and had used her password—I’d learned that in the last few days of taking care of her—to send out texts to everyone that she was sleeping and would call back when she woke up.
That worked for the first hour with Shade.
It didn’t work for the second hour.
Eventually, he got impatient enough that I chose to answer the phone call instead of risking him calling out a search party.
“Shade,” I said quietly.
