Page 126 of Branded

“I need…” She stops, shaking her head. “I don’t know what I need. Everything feels surreal. Like it happened to someone else.”

“That’s shock. It’ll wear off eventually.”

“And then what? Then I have to deal with the fact that fifteen people died today because of me?”

“No, not because of you. Because they made choices. They took you, threatened us. They paid the price for those choices.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“It is simple. Someone tried to take you from me, and I made sure they couldn’t.” I cup her face gently. “I’m not going to apologize for that. For getting you back. For eliminating the threat. For any of it.”

“I’m not asking you to apologize.” Her voice goes quiet. “I’m just trying to figure out how to live with it. How to be the kind of person who’s okay with what happened today.”

“You don’t have to be okay with it. You just have to survive it.” I pull her against me. “And I’ll help you with whatever it takes.”

She wraps her arms around me and holds on tight. We stay like that for a long time, just holding each other while the reality of the day slowly sinks in.

Eventually, Warren comes out of his room, and Cage and Cole come back from getting cleaned up.

“We should eat,” Warren says, eyeing the food Caroline left. “Been a long day.”

We gather around the table for an odd family dinner. Lennox picks at her food but doesn’t really eat. I can’t blame her. My own appetite is gone despite not having eaten since morning.

After dinner, Warren heads to his room, the exhaustion visible on his face, but he says he needs to call someone. He’s moving more slowly and relying on his cane more than I’ve seen him use it before.

Lennox whispers, “He has a girlfriend. Claire, that’s who he has to call.” She giggles quietly, and my heart settles at the sound. “Isn’t that ridiculous, my dad has a girlfriend?”

“Good for him, he deserves to have a companion. Your mom’s been gone a long time, and if she can put up with him, she’s probably a saint.” I laugh with Lennox, and her brothers shake their heads.

“It’s gross, he kisses her and she sleeps over.” Cole rolls his eyes. “He’s our dad, it’s weird.” That gets us all laughing even harder. Laughing about my father-in-law having a girlfriend isn’t exactly how I expected tonight to end, but it breaks the tension.

The boys head upstairs, and I start cleaning up, giving Lennox space to just sit and process.

“Sebastian?” Her voice is small.

“Yeah?”

“Will you…” She stops and starts again. “Will you go to bed when I do? I don’t want to be alone.”

“Of course.” I move to her, pull her to her feet. “Come on. Let’s get you upstairs. You need rest.”

In our bedroom, I help her out of her clothes, the same clothes she was wearing when they took her, now rumpled and dirty. She stands passively, letting me undress her like she’s a doll.

“Bath or shower?” I ask.

“Bath. I want to soak the feeling off me.”

I run a bath while she sits on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing. When it’s ready, I help her in, then start to leave.

“Stay, please. Just sit with me.”

So I do. I sit on the floor beside the tub while she soaks, occasionally adding hot water, not talking unless she wants to.

“They kept me in a basement and tied me up, but they didn’t… they didn’t do anything to me. Didn’t touch me inappropriately. Just kept me tied up.” She stares off into nothing. She’s told me all this before, but this is her processing, and she needs to talk it out.

“I’m glad.”

“But if they had, if they’d hurt me that way, would you have made them suffer more?” She lets her head roll along the tub to look at me, her eyes focused now.