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“Baby?”
“I’m fine.”
Shit on a shingle.
“Is that a fine as in you’re okay knowing your father’s dead or is that a fine as in I need to take you home and talk this shit out.”
Nebraska pulled her cheek off my shoulder, tipped her head back, and gave me a small grin.
“My father’s alive, honey. Zenith was never my father. And the world is a better place with him no longer in it.”
She looked like she was telling the truth.
“You sure?”
Her grin became a smile.
“Positive. Can I have a little while longer with my mom or do we need to get back upstairs?”
I wasn’t sure why she was asking me when she was in control.
But still I answered, “Anything you need.”
“Anything I need,” she whispered.
I heard Anna’s sob rend the air but I didn’t stop staring at Nebraska, and that was because she didn’t stop staring at me.
I was right, I’d hit rock bottom.
There was no further to fall.
TWENTY-SEVEN
This was strange.
Very, very strange.
And if I allowed myself to feel the fullness of it I’d probably burst into tears.
The strange being Easton in the kitchen wearing an apron with a silverback gorilla on it surrounded by the words Silverback Rule The Jungle With 6 Centimeters. This given to him by Bridget Keller. After everyone in the room—everyone being Theo, Smith, Jonas, Cash, Cooper, Kira and of course Bridget and Easton—finished roaring with the rowdiest laughter I’d ever heard, Easton pulled Bridget in for a hug. The hug ended with a gut punch from Bridget after Easton called her Birdie Bird.
None of this I understood.
The other strange was that the team plus Kira’s husband, minus Layla and her husband (they had dinner plans with friends so they couldn’t make it) were over for dinner.
At the safehouse.
This was strange.
Yet it wasn’t strange because I understood what was happening. Everyone was checking on Easton after a shit day. And me. They’d made it clear they were there to make sure after I’d spoken to my father and spent hours with a woman who had faked her death, leaving me motherless, that I was okay.
I wasn’t.
But everyone being there went a long way getting me there.
And Easton, he’d get me where I needed to be. I knew he would. He’d repeatedly told me he’d give me anything I needed and I believed him.
Fully and totally.
