Page 72 of Marcus

Cella cleared her throat. “Oh, uh … do you know what that is?”

“A shirt of your husband’s that your brother had made into a pillow after he passed, yes. Tiffany explained to me. That’s why I am handling it with care, and making sure it gets fixed so that she can wake up with it like I suspect she’s always done since you gave it to her. When was that, by the way?”

He glanced up to look at her.

In the doorway, Cella kept eyeing that pillow covering he held, shifting from foot to foot while her throat flexed with every swallow. Clearly chewing on her words, he gave her the moment or two that she needed to gather her thoughts and speak.

“It was very recent after his passing when I got it,” Cella managed to say. “But she was older when I gave it to her.”

He hated that her voice was so faint.

The memory of pain, he bet, never quite went away.

“Is she sleeping?” Marcus asked. “I heard you go check on her before you came in to see me. I worried she might not fall asleep without the pillow.”

“She is sleeping, but she’ll appreciate waking up to it.”

“Good.”

Once more, Cella went quiet as Marcus continued to work. It hadn’t been as simple as just sewing the rip together when the shirt had been sewed closed around the pillow as a covering. He’d needed to rip the seam open at the top, pull the covering off before turning it inside out, and then sew the tear. After he finished closing the rip, he’d need to sew the seam he’d ripped open almost entirely closed, but for a couple of inches, stuff the pillow back in, and then finish the seam.

Eventually, Cella joined him, coming into the office to sit on the stool in front of the leather chair. She held the pillow while he worked to close the seam after finishing with the tear. All the while, she said nothing but didn’t look away from the item in his hands either as he worked.

He thought … well, he just decided to ask, “It’s important to you, too, hmm? The pillow, I mean.”

“For different reasons, yes. William only wore suits—part of the job, you know? So on the weekends, he’d wear anything but suits. This shirt was one of his favorites. God, it was old. I almost threw it out a few times, but I couldn’t. My mom saved it when they cleaned out his things from the house because I couldn’t do it. It was in the dirty laundry, so she washed it and my brother took it to have it made into a pillow.”

“You said reasons, meaning more than one.”

Cella sighed. “My brother, I guess. We didn’t have a great relationship, and it just felt like when he gave me that, it started to fix something that had been broken for a long time with me and him. I never explicitly said it, and neither did he but it happened. Anyway, Tiff was about two when she started sneaking it off my bed and taking it to her own. I never stopped her. I thought she probably needed it more.”

“Cella?”

“Hmm?”

Her gaze lifted to meet his, and while he hated when this woman had tears in her eyes, the wetness he found staring back at him let him know every little last thing running through her mind. Both for the things she’d lost, and everything that she was finding now.

Was it hard to come second—to be a man who came into a woman’s life when she’d already had love taken from her by no choice of her own, leaving her afraid and hurting always?

Yes.

It made this situation between them much more delicate, but he wasn’t a fool. He knew these things, and so every step he took with Cella, he kept that in mind. He kept the man who had been here before him in mind because he knew that man was constantly on hers.

“I hope you know,” he said quietly, “that I have no intention of trying to replace your husband, or her father. That was never my purpose here, Cella, and it won’t be regardless of what happens after today. I don’t want to be a replacement for someone who isn’t me—what I do hope for, though, is that you’ll make space for me here with you. If you can make space for me with you and her, I would be forever grateful.”

The shaky exhale that left Cella’s trembling lips made her words all the more faint when she asked, “Where did you even come from—I wasn’t looking for someone like you.”

“Sometimes, that’s the point. You shouldn’t look for the good things, Cella. They should just find you when you need it the most.”

“Forever, you said?”

Marcus grinned. “Is that all you heard?”

“It’s quite a statement to make.”

“Could I have that?” He pointed to the pillow in her hand. “I just have to finish the seam once I put it back in the cover, and you can take it back to Tiffany.”

She handed it over, asking, “Who taught you to do something as menial as sewing?”