Page 64 of Shadow Justice

“That message is designed to make you worry more.”

Holly closed her fingers around the phone and looked toward the door. Her shop was empty below them, locked and dark, but it no longer felt separate from the apartment, Linc’s kitchen, Hopper’s house, or Allen’s wounded voice on the phone. Her safe place had become a jumbled mess like the community board in the shop, and everyone she cared about was pinned to it.

“I’m worried,” she said.

Reid’s voice gentled. “I am too.”

The admission didn’t sound like a warning or a strategy. It sounded like the truth underneath both. Holly hated how much she needed that truth.

She hated even more that when Reid reached for her hand, slowly enough that she could refuse, she let him take it.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Reid hadn’t planned to reach for her hand. He’d been arguing, making his case, trying to get her to hear the logical concern beneath the personal one, and then Holly had said she was worried. His hand had crossed the counter between them without any tactical intervention from his brain.

She didn’t pull back. Her fingers were cold. Holly ran warm, always so full of life, plans, and forward movement. Cold fingers meant the day had gotten under her defenses, and that was his fault as much as anything else.

He’d come in with perimeters, assessments, and his careful management of information, and he’d made her feel like a problem to solve instead of a person to stand beside.

“I know I’ve been pushing too hard,” he said.

She didn’t answer, just looked at his hand and sighed.

He turned it over so hers rested in his palm. “I do that when I’m worried. I start building structures and moving people behind the right walls. I make sure the exits are covered.” He looked at their hands because it was easier than her face right then. “And then I forget that I’ve put the person I’m most scared for behind a wall, too.”

“Reid.” Her tone was softer, more careful, and it made the space between them feel very exposed.

He pressed his thumb against her knuckles until her hand uncurled slightly. “I’m afraid something is going to happen to you, and I haven’t been handling it the way I should, because instead of saying that, I made you feel like your compassion is a liability.”

“I know what you were trying to say.” She squeezed his fingers. He felt it through every nerve ending he owned. “And you weren’t wrong. I didn’t want you to be right, but you are, and I needed to hear it.”

“I wasn’t trying to be sanctimonious about it.”

She gently pulled her hand free and wiped at her eyes. Then she removed the band holding up her hair and shook it out. “If you’d been gentle about Allen, I wouldn’t have heard you.”

He raised his brows, surprised by the confession.

Dark blond strands curled at her temples, the rest of her hair falling over one shoulder. She looked tired.

“You haven’t eaten since this morning,” he said.

She let out a breath that was nearly a laugh. “We just had a breakthrough conversation about fear and manipulation, and that’s your follow-up?”

“I’m a sequential-priorities man.”

“Clearly.” But she moved toward the refrigerator anyway, as if the argument had used the last of what she had for arguing

She opened the door and stood in front of it for a few seconds without taking anything out. Reid leaned against the counter and waited. After the case had spilled through the apartment—Hopper, the jury list, and Allen’s phone call—the ordinary defeat of a person standing in front of an open refrigerator and not knowing what to want seemed totally understandable.

“I’m not going to fall apart,” she said without turning around.

“I didn’t think you were.”

“I just—” She stopped, closed the refrigerator. Then, she turned around and put her back against it and crossed her arms, not defensively but more like she needed it to keep her upright. “I’m tired. Not the kind of tired sleep fixes.”

He waited.

“I’ve been managing this shop for six years,” she said. “And before that, I was managing every place we lived in, every situation my mother put us in, every feeling in every room I walked into, trying not to let things catch fire.” She looked at the ceiling for a second, then back at him. “I love what I built here. I love knowing what my customers need and making Sanctuary work. But somewhere in all of it, the thing I’ve actually been doing is making sure everyone else is okay so I didn’t have to feel how alone I am.”