Page 134 of Lethal Attraction

My brother grins, his eyes soft with affection. “That’s my girl.”

Lox slips an arm around Atlas’s waist, melting into his side as they talk quietly. Their voices fade into the background. All I can focus on is the tiny girl in my arms. I stare down at my niece, and fresh tears sting my eyes for what feels like the hundredth time today.

She’s perfect.

I sway gently, holding her close as she nestles against my chest. Her tiny mouth opens in a sleepy yawn, and my heart squeezes so hard it almost hurts.

“I missed you,” I whisper, my voice trembling.

The words feel too small for everything I mean. I press a kiss to the top of her head and breathe in that sweet baby scent, trying to hold myself together.

“Aunt Thalia has done something really stupid,” I confess softly. “So you can’t judge me, okay?”

A tiny sound escapes her, and her deep brown eyes blink open. For one precious second, it feels like she’s looking right at me—like she’s listening.

A watery laugh catches in my throat, and I brush a dark curl away from her forehead. My smile breaks beneath the weight of my tears. “I think I ruined everything with Uncle Reed.” The admission shatters something inside me. My voice cracks, and I have to swallow around the ache lodged in my throat. “He was so happy about you. So excited to meet you.” I blink rapidly, but the tears spill over, anyway. “And I messed it all up. I hurt him. I ruined the best thing that ever happened to me, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

The words leave me in ragged breaths. For a moment, all I can do is hold her tighter, as if she can somehow keep me from falling apart. Then a tiny fist stretches toward me.

My chest tightens.

I slip my finger into her hand, and her impossibly small fingers curl around it with surprising determination. A broken laugh escapes me as fresh tears slide down my cheeks.

“Thanks,” I whisper.

She doesn’t understand a word I’m saying. She’s too little to know about heartbreak or regret or all the ways people can break the things they love. But somehow, in this moment, her tiny hand wrapped around my finger makes the pain feel a little less unbearable.

No, nothing is okay.

Not really.

But as I hold her close and feel her grip tighten around mine, I realize that maybe it’s okay for things not to be okay right now.

And for the first time all day, that thought doesn’t feel quite so impossible.

Chapter thirty-nine

Reed

One Week Later

Iscrub myself in the ER sink behind the nurse’s station; the suds washing over the red inked into my wrist—one of the last reminders everything was real. The only memory left behind that’s tangible of what Thalia and I shared. I’m supposed to be sterilizing myself before my next round of patients, yet all I can do is stare at it as the soap passes repeatedly. It passes over my missing finger, yet another reminder, and I’m utterly haunted.

Why did she do it?

Did she not feel the same as me?

Was this not consuming her day and night?

I feel like I’m going insane.

My eyes screw shut as I slap the handle roughly, ending the stream before my skin begins to bleed. My chest is one, gaping cavity, but no one here has any clue.

“Hey, did you see the news about that guy who used to own a hospital?” One of the nurses asks from behind me.

I release my breath as my hands squeeze the sides of the sink. I listen to them, hanging my head.

“Oh, yeah,” another nurse chimes in. “Wasn’t his name like Bernie? Burton? Whatever. Apparently someone leaked some files that proved he was laundering money for some underground network. No one knows what it was, but they brought him into custody yesterday. He ended up having a mental breakdown and screaming about assassins.”