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His eyelids fell shut, then he opened them slowly and met my gaze. “Know what it’s like to get lost in those nightmares. To be alone there with no one to help you.” He dragged a hand down his face, then looked away. “It’s always worse when you’re alone. When no one’s there to wake you. To tell you that you didn’t just watch your friend get blown to smithereens. That the bullet in your man’s head wasn’t put there by your gun. Night after night, while you stand there watching them get murdered again and again, before those guns are turned on you and it’s your body being torn apart by their bombs, and the pain you never had to feel is tearing you limb from limb until all you want is to be granted death because that means you don’t have to watch it all over again tomorrow night. And the next. And the next.”
His words cut off, but the way he worked his mouth made me think he had more to say. Words that wouldn’t—or couldn’t—fall from his lips.
This time, his silence lingered, and that heavy ball in my gut grew cold, right along with the rest of my body. Images of the things he said flashed through my head like a war movie. Explosions and death and gore playing out before me with no context, and nothing but the pain on his face and the tight grip he kept on my fingers to tell me he was still here.
With me.
Neither one of us was alone.
I moved my finger—to comfort him or to pull away, I wasn’t sure—and only then did he return his attention to me. To where he held on to me like I was the only thing tethering him to the present. His face twitched, the skin around his eyes crinkling for a split second before he let go.
He picked up his fork, but only stared at his plate of food. “Took years to get the nightmares to stop. Never once had someone there to tell me it was okay.”
Lee didn’t start eating again until I forced myself to pick up my fork and take a bite myself. We ate in silence. I wanted to say something, but every time I thought to open my mouth, my throat tried to close up. When I finished off my glass of orange juice before getting halfway through my plate, he finally spoke.
“Sorry it’s not much. Haven’t used the house in a while, and this was all that was in the freezer. I’ll go out and get some groceries later, get out of your hair—”
“No!” That tightness in my throat pressed at my chest, like it was trying to stop the hard racing of my heart. Spots dotted my vision as I was hit with a wave of intense dizziness. Lee pried my fingers off the edge of the table and pulled me against his chest as I shook.
“It’s okay.” Those two words spoken in his deep bass almost had me believing that maybe it was. But the panic wouldn’t subside.
“Don’t leave me alone.”
He pressed my head against his chest, and I gripped his shirt, holding on as another wave of dizziness hit. “I won’t leave. Not if you don’t want me to. I’m right here. You’re okay.”
“Don’t leave.”
“I won’t,” he whispered against my forehead. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
6
LEE
The floor and I were becoming best friends. For over two weeks now, I’d camped out beside her bed so I could be there for her when the nightmares hit. During the days, while she was curled up on the couch, I often sat on the floor in front of it, trying to figure out a way to move forward.
My business partner, Frankie Sarcone, was still on her extended honeymoon. She knew nothing of what went down, despite the fact that her new husband was Jen’s older brother. Or that Vinny—the man who’d handled every bit of my staff recruiting and more than half of onboarding new clients in the past few months—was her cousin. Her family wanted her to enjoy her honeymoon, not be stressed out and cut it short.
Had this not happened, I would have been fine. I’d been in the Marines. I’d been a bouncer at multiple clubs, started this business and worked my ass off to turn this dream of mine into a reality. I could handle a little PR while Frankie was away.
But this was a bit more than I’d anticipated. Fielding calls from the police and the press, from my clients and staff, from Vinny’s hacker friends who were working diligently to find the kid who’d disappeared when Brendan was shot.
All while taking care of her.
Kelly shuffled back into the kitchen, hair a mess and coffee cup in her hand. She didn’t bother looking at me, just headed straight for the coffee maker to refill the mug. She topped it off with a splash of milk before stirring in a spoonful of sugar, then tested the brew before setting it back down.
She stared at the wall in front of her as she licked the spoon—first the tip, the inside, the back, and finally the neck. She switched hands with it, took a small sip from her mug, then nodded her head. When she turned, she jolted, as if she hadn’t realized I was sitting at the table where she’d left me five minutes ago.
“How many cups is that now?”
With a blank expression on her face, she blinked slowly. Then she shuffled over to the table, either ignoring the fact that I backed away or not caring, and took a seat. “Third.”
She stared down at her breakfast on the plate in front of her, then took another sip before she picked up her fork and dug in. Breakfast sausage and fried potatoes, just like I’d made her that first day. There was a bowl of fresh fruit, but if I’d learned anything about her the past two weeks, it was that her mood was better if she ate protein and carbs first.
I scooted my chair back in place and took the last few bites of my food as I looked over the webpage on my laptop screen. We sat in companionable silence, until, just as I’d come to expect, she jabbed her fork toward my computer and said, “That one.”
Lifting my chin, I pretended to give it some thought, when really I was looking into the mug.
Empty.
