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“Thank god,” she says first, relieved, before that sharper edge I’m used to invades. “Where the hell have you been?”
“What’s going on, Blake?”
“It’s Lily.”
The words are like a gut punch that sends me nearly four years into the past.
Sirens. Red and blue lights making it impossible to see how much blood is on her head.
Am I bleeding too? What’s happening?
“Son, let her go—”
I shake the memory back, shoulders hiked. “What the fuck happened? Is she okay?”
“She’s . . . no, she’s—fuck, Kane, I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Try,” I say harshly. “I’m losing my mind over here, Blake.”
“She was just lying on the sofa when I got home and she’d been there all day, I think. Not eating or anything from what I can tell. She’s really, really upset. Like, crying a lot—and I don’t know what happened; she won’t tell me. She was at her dad’s house yesterday and stayed there overnight—”
Warning bells start inside my head.
He said I was acting like my mom.
“What else?”
Paloma pauses, dropping her voice. “She asked for you.”
I blow another breath out, fingers pressed to the bridge of my nose. “Okay. Okay. I’m on my way. Tell her I’m on my way.”
I hang up, looking up at Holden for a second. I’m sure I look unhinged, if anything, but my body is too exhausted to shake it.
“Sorry, pup.”
I turn, dropping my bag by the door as I head to the darkened hallway, seeing LaBlanc pulling his office door closed.
“You—”
The word isn’t fully out of my mouth, before I have a tight grip of his jacket lapels, slamming him into the painted cement blocks.
“What the fuck did you do to her?”
LaBlanc doesn’t flinch. He barely seems concerned at my grip.
I’m taller than him now. Bigger than him. With other options than him. He can’t hurt me anymore.
He can’t hurt me anymore. He can’t hurt me anymore.
It’s a mantra in my head, feeding directly to the little boy I once was.
No. But he can hurt her.
I slam him into the wall again.
“Toren!” Holden shouts, trying to pull me off LaBlanc.
“Let me go—”
