I could remember the ringing in my ears the time I’d been blown up and suffered cracked ribs along with a concussion and a busted clavicle. I had felt like I was in a fugue state, constantly vibrating, never able to get my bearings. I’d never been so nauseous in my life, from what seemed like the constant movement, the relentless motion-sickness nearly driving me over the edge until the damage to my inner ear was repaired and the world stopped its continual quaking.
This was different from both of those, and I had to figure out why.
I wasn’t the guy who freaked out. I ran toward the fight, always, my whole life, never away. I was the guy who everyone counted on to watch their back. You could turn around, whenever, and I’d be right there like a faithful golden retriever. In the zombie apocalypse, I was the guy you wanted. But this wasn’t about me and being brave or not, protective or not, or anything else. This wasn’t fixing something like that day with Jenny Rubio’s ex-husband. This wasn’t me carrying someone out of a firefight, dead or alive. This was me, physically safe yet emotionally lost, totally losing my shit.
Because I’d heard Mal’s words. He was saying I could stay in Ursa and have not just a job but the job that would be perfect for me. I could stay and have a life and everything I’d ever wanted—if Emery actually wanted me. If Emery and his girls and his dog wanted me.
But he didn’t want me, so that wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t, it wouldn’t happen, and to have what I yearned for suddenly be within my reach, for it to be possible because the good people of Ursa wanted to give me a job… that was a bit too much at the moment.
If Emery had wanted me, my life could go from pretty good to great in the blink of an eye. It was thinking you won the lottery only to realize you had the right numbers on the wrong day. It was a bit too much strain on my heart, and so my brain shut down because it was taking care of its good buddy.
There was no pain; I was simply in a bubble of static.
Even when Mal put a hand on my shoulder, opened the front door, led me through the house to the kitchen, and sat me down on the bench, still it was like the volume was turned way up on one of those sound machines, and all I could hear was white noise. Mal knelt in front of me, one hand on my knee, the other on my cheek, and seemed to be checking for signs of life. After a few moments of studying me and looking pained, he stood and walked away. I sat there frozen, panicked, and suddenly exhausted, zapped of strength, staring at the sink and the avocado pit held up by toothpicks that Olivia was trying to sprout. When April appeared in front of me, she put her hands on my face and smiled at me, her eyes lighting up like they hadn’t done when I first arrived.
“Are you in there?”
“Shit,” I gasped, startling her, grabbing her wrists and holding on.
“It’s a bad word; I told you,” Olivia stated, shaking her head as she joined her sister, smiling as well, pleased with me, as evidenced by her climbing onto my lap.
“Hey, buddy,” Mal said slowly, kneeling in front of me. Emery was there now as well, next to Mal, his hand on my knee. And it hit me like a freight train that even though I was the center of a storm of concern, the girls and Mal, the only presence I truly registered was Emery’s. Because when he touched me, whenever he touched me, I felt it down deep.
“What’s going on?” Emery asked, cupping the side of my neck, listening to Mal but holding on to me, his thumb smoothing over my jaw, again and again, as I tried really hard not to lean forward into him.
It was back in an instant, all my stupid instincts that said things like stand up, press your body into his, and wrap him in your arms. Every day, all the time, I wondered what it would feel like if he’d just yield to me. If he just… gave… in. Because yes, I loved his kids apart from him, but I loved them more because they were his and part of him.
It was a mess.
“Who is that again?” a man asked, a stranger in what I thought of as my house.
“He’s their nanny,” Shelby told him, her voice seductive and snide at the same time. “Can you imagine?”
I refused to be on display, and since I couldn’t go with my first instinct—to order everyone out of my house, as it wasn’t, in fact, my house—I had to get out of there.