Exactly the way I meant it.
But I didn’t need either of them privy to that. No one got that piece of me, not that there was ever anyone there to hold it.
Except everything slowed, and the playfulness drained as Meems set her mixing spoon aside.
The woman looked at me as if she’d known me my entire life.
Like she cared about me.
Wanted the best for me.
“You are worth every good thing in this world, sweet one. Don’t you ever question it or let anyone make you believe that you don’t deserve it.”
“I…” I couldn’t force real words out around the lump in my throat, but I finally managed to whisper, “You don’t even know me.”
She eased around the counter, and there was no stopping the burn at the back of my eyes as she approached.
She simply took my hand and squeezed it. “But I can see you. Hear you. Feel you. And I feel your pain the same way as I’ve had to feel it in every single one of my grandchildren.”
Sorrow wisped through her aged features. “I couldn’t stop it, though Lord knows I wish I could have, but somehow I’ve been blessed enough to get the chance to try to see them through the other side of it.”
A rush of tenderness and understanding gushed out of Elena, and she held Kai tighter as she stepped toward us like she was drawn.
That same pain that I’d sensed in her last night was present, but it was muddled by the type of hope that her grandmother was talking about.
“And no, I can never take away the atrocities that were inflicted on them. Can never erase the horrors or the memories or the scars. But I can love them through it. I can be there to urge them to accept everygoodthing that is set in front of them rather than them rejecting it because they’re afraid of it being ripped away.”
She squeezed my hand a bit tighter. “Trauma does that to you. It tries to steal the joy from your future, too.”
Her voice shifted to a desperate wheeze. “You can’t let it.”
A tear slipped free. I didn’t even know it was there. I’d never felt so vulnerable or exposed in all my life.
It appeared the harsh façade I normally wore had been left at this house’s front door.
Part of me wanted to run out and grab it. Don it the way I did my clothes and shoes.
Protect myself the only way I knew how.
But Elena was looking at me with her spirit splayed wide, soft hazel eyes shining with moisture, and she was hugging that little boy.
I was still reeling from the bare glimpse Silas had given me into what the child had likely suffered.
“Meems is right, just like you were last night,” Elena prodded, dragging me back to when I’d been trying to give her encouragement. And there they were, turning around and doing the same for me.
“Your heart will know,” she emphasized.
Then she laughed a tinkling sound. “And I’m not saying it’s my brother who will make you feel that way because that man is about as overbearing as they come and you can do a million times better…”
Playfulness ridged her brows, and I knew she wasn’t truly trashing Silas since she grinned this wry, overindulgent grin as she mumbled out of the side of her mouth, “But I can’t help but feel a littlesomethin’ somethin’when the two of you are in the room together.”
“Oh, you aren’t the only one,” Meems agreed. “Two of them are nothing but flame and gasoline.”
“You should have felt it, Meems, when Silas came waltzing back late last night and I was in there having a chat with our Brinley? The energy was as heavy as a bomb.”
Kaboom.
Obliterated.
