You can’t cry.
“Lottie?” Roe set the bottle back on the bed without taking his eyes off me.
Wyatt sat up. “Did we hurt you?”
I shook my head before tilting it back to look at the ceiling.
“Hey,” Roe said softly as he cupped both sides of my face. Gently, he made me look at him. “It’s okay.”
I couldn’t hold the tears back then. They fell from my eyes, rolling down my cheeks, one after the other. “No, it’s not, Roe. It’s not,” I cried. “It’s not okay.”
Roe scooted up the bed and wrapped his arms around me, hugging me. “I know it’s not okay. I meant it’s all right to cry.”
That wasn’t okay, either, but there was no going back now.
I’m not okay.
I wept into his shoulders, soaking his shirt with my tears. “It’s never going to be okay,” I cried, hurting my throat. To breathe in, to sob, hurt, and I couldn’t stop.
“Yes, it is,” Roe said with such certainty that I wished I could believe him. Even if I could, I wasn’t a terrible enough person to let him prove it to me.
I’m not okay.
“I can’t do it anymore!” I wailed against him. “I just can’t.”
“You won’t.” Roe leaned back. He grabbed the sides of my face to make me look at him again. “It will be okay.” I shook my head, but Roe refused to back down. “I swear that it will be. You are in the safest place you can be. They can’t get you. Not anymore. They’d have to get through me and Wyatt. Even Reid, who’s butthurt and sulking in the living room because you yelled at him.”
“It’s his own fault for being an idiot,” Wyatt grumbled next to us.
Body shaking from silent sobs, I closed my eyes. “I won’t drag you three down with me.”
“Look at me,” Roe ordered.
Reluctantly, I did as he said.
His eyes bored into mine as his thumbs brushed away the tear tracks going down my cheeks. “Then there’s Bram, Lottie. He’s your father. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you. At least, not right now. But believe me when I say that Bram is probably one of the scariest men I know. He’s the president of the Haven’s Rebels. You don’t become that by being weak or stupid or without fighting. No one is getting through him to get to you.”
I yanked my face from his hands. Staring down at the blankets, I watched my tears dot the fabric. “He gave me up before. He can do it again.”
With that, Roe went quiet. The only sounds in the room were my sniffles and jumpy inhales and exhales as I continued to cry.
Someone other than the three of us cursed, drawing our attention toward the door. Reid stormed over. “I can’t listen to this anymore.” He glanced at Roe. “Get up.”
Roe frowned as he slowly stood from the bed. “What are you doing?”
“Just fucking trust me and get out of the way,” Reid snapped.
Roe’s frown turned into a glare, but he still moved to the side.
Reid grabbed the blankets and tossed them off me. I stiffened when his arms went under my legs and around my back.
“What are you doing?” I said in a panic as he lifted me.
He didn’t respond and started walking away with me toward the door. Roe and Wyatt were quick to follow.
Bram was leaning against the hall wall just outside the room, holding a wooden tray with a bowl of soup on it. He wore a faraway, somber expression. I had a feeling he had been standing there listening for a while. Just like Reid had been, apparently.
The moment Reid went to pass with me in his arms, Bram snapped out of where his thoughts had taken him andstraightened. Reid walked down the hall until we reached a door that was slightly ajar.
