Dove straightened. "Okay. You deal with this. I'll go to Okeechobee and?—"
"No."
“I can’t sit around here. I have to go identify my uncle's body."
"And you will. With me. Not alone." He closed the gap between them. "I just need to wait for Fish and Wildlife to get here and get set up. Once they're on the property doing their thing, I'll go with you."
"That could take hours."
"Then it takes hours."
"I'm not going to fall apart driving to Okeechobee by myself."
"I know you won't." He kept his voice low. Gentle but immovable. "But I also know what it's like to walk into a room and look at someone you love on a table and have nobody standing next to you. My mother took her last breath with me sitting next to her. Alone. Then I sat there, alone, waiting for them to take her. Then I sat here for hours because I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. All alone.”
Her eyes glossed over.
"You're not doing that by yourself,” he said. "I won't let you. So we wait."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. He could see the war playing out across her face—the part of her that needed to move, to act, to do something before the grief caught up with her, fighting against the part that knew he was right. That recognized the truth in what he'd said because she'd seen her own version of that utter sense of aloneness.
He took the Glock from her hands, gently, and set it on the end table by the old sofa. “I care about you.” He cupped her face, his thumbs tracing the dark circles under her eyes, the tear tracks that had dried on her cheeks.
She looked up at him. Those blue eyes, rimmed in red now, bloodshot from holding back the tears and filled with something that wasn't quite fear and wasn't quite grief but lived in the space between them. The morning light was soft on her face, washing out the edges, making her look young and exhausted and so far from the woman who'd walked into his life like she was built for war that it broke his heart.
“I’m not okay,” she whispered.
"I know."
"I don't know how to do this."
"Nobody does." He pressed his forehead against hers. "But you don't have to figure it out by yourself. That's the whole point of this. Of us. Whatever we are."
She let out a shaky breath. Her hands came up to grip his wrists, holding on like he was the only solid thing in a world that had gone liquid and uncertain.
"Okay," she said quietly. "I'll wait."
“Good decision because if you had said no, I would’ve had to tie you down, and that’s not how I wanted that to go, if you know what I mean.”
“Now you’re being a pig.”
“I’m a man.”
She chuckled as she pulled back and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Then she straightened her shoulders—a deliberate thing, like someone putting on armor one piece at a time. “I’m going to make muffins."
Trent narrowed his stare. "Muffins?”
"I need to do something with my hands, and if I can't shoot something or punch something, baking is the next best option." She moved toward the door, then stopped and looked back at him. "You have flour, right?"
"I have flour."
"Eggs? Butter? Sugar?"
"I think so."
"Blueberries?"
"Fresh ones that you bought the other day."
