hugging herself and her shoulders are heaving. I
think she’s still crying.
Then I huff and, swearing to myself, go to the
back room and grab her jacket while Jay and
Aaron ask me what the hell is going on. I open the
door—slowly this time because I don’t want to
scare her—and wrap the jacket around her
shoulders. Her sobs subside a bit before she turns
to me and buries her face in my chest.
I am frozen with my arms in the air, and I’m
fucking terrified.
No woman has ever cried in my arms, not even
my little sisters. They prefer to go to my mom or
any other one of my brothers. It’s not because I
don’t want to comfort them, but because I’m not
able to. I’m practical and rational. I only know
how to punch people or tell them to go to hell.
Sympathy and understanding really is not my
thing.
The calm lasts a few seconds and the hiccups
return; Erin is shaking and sobbing and it’s a fight
against myself, against all that I am and have been,
and against the strongest part of me.
I fight and lose miserably, because after two
minutes and fifty-five seconds I close my arms
around her body. I pull her closer to me, close
enough to feel the heat of her tears through my
shirt—shit, I brought her a coat and I’m out here in
a T-shirt! And I don’t know how or why, but I
brush my lips against her short dark hair that’s
