If I hadn’t been holding on to her, I might have missed the way she flinched and jerked away when I called her ‘sweetness’. But it only lasted a second before her hand relaxed against my chest. When she smiled down at me I could see how forced it was. That earlier instinct to hold on to her and never let go filled me again and I tightened my hold on her hand.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded, taking a closer look at her eyes. Her lashes were damp, her eyes swollen and bloodshot. There were twin trails down her cheeks that told me she must have been crying for a long time. “What happened while I was out, Lu?”
“It’s nothing,” she told me with another tight smile, but didn’t meet my gaze and I knew she was lying.
“Don’t.” I threaded my fingers through hers and watched as her eyes dropped to watch our hands. “Tell me what happened. Please.”
She swallowed hard and shook her head. “No. Not yet. You should rest. I promised your dad I would sit with you while he and Natalie got some coffee.”
My dread only escalated. “Tell me. Now.”
“No.” She stubbornly shook her head, but the look in her dark eyes made it hard to suck in my next breath. “I took care of it. There’s nothing for you to worry about now.”
“What was there to worry about in the first place?” I demanded. “Stop this, Lu. Tell me what the fuck I missed. I can’t fix that damn haunted look in your eyes if you don’t tell me.”
Instead of answering me she turned her head away, blocking me out. Fuck no. I couldn’t deal with this shit. Something had happened and I knew it was bad from the way she was acting. She was there, but she wasn’t. She was my loving Lucy, yet she was a cold robotic version of her too. I wanted—needed—to fix whatever Tessa had fucked up because it felt like I was losing the only person I couldn’t live without.
Desperation clutched at me and I glanced around, hoping there was someone else who could tell me what was going on. I needed answers. The room was empty though and I was desperate to know.
“Sweetness,” I started, but she jerked in my hold again, making my stomach hollow out. “Fuck this. Tell me. Now.”
The door opened behind her and I turned my eyes reluctantly away from her to see who it was. Seeing Emmie and Natalie standing in the doorway, I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. You’re here. Tell me what the fuck I missed, Nat.”
Natalie gave me a grim smile as she crossed the room to stand on the opposite side of Lucy. Emmie came to stand beside her niece and wrapped an arm
around her waist, as if offering Lucy her support.
“You missed a bunch of things, kid.” Natalie tapped a finger to the back of my hand that had an IV sticking out of it. “Nothing you need to worry about right now, though.”
“I want fucking answers,” I bit out.
“Okay. Tessa has been arrested. She’s being charged with attempted murder…among other things. With Emmie’s help we were able to find that bitch and make her talk. The DA has promised to keep the details out of the media as much as he possibly can.”
I was glad Tessa was going to have to face what she had done, but I couldn’t help but focus on something Natalie had said. “Among other things? What other things?”
Emmie produced a phone—Lucy’s phone—and tried to hand it over to me. Natalie reached for it, trying to snatch it away. “No. Stop it, Emmie. He isn’t ready.”
“He’s got to find out sooner or later, Nat. Better now with you here than from some other source,” Emmie told her, exhaling tiredly through her nose and tightening her hold on Lucy.
Clenching her jaw, Natalie glared at Emmie over my head for a long moment before reluctantly nodding. I took the phone from Em.
Lucy
I didn’t know what to expect when Harris took the phone from Aunt Emmie. He opened the text message I’d gotten the night of my birthday party and watched with eyes that went instantly emotionless. He played every video Tessa had sent me.
Inside I was breaking. I had seen every one of those videos, had watched with my heart cracking as the guy I loved fucked someone else. I’d thought things were over between us. That I would never be able to see Harris Cutter the same way ever again.
Then Kin had called and had turned all those thoughts upside down. I’d come to terms with what had happened. Tessa had drugged him. He wasn’t responsible for what had happened when he wasn’t himself. It wasn’t his fault.
My head knew that, but my heart still didn’t completely understand. It couldn’t turn back the hands of time and make me un-see what I’d seen. I couldn’t un-feel what I’d felt as I’d watched Harris touch Tessa the way I’d been aching to be touched by him.
I’d been sitting in his hospital room since the night he’d been brought in. I hadn’t left his side for anything more than to use the bathroom. My father wasn’t happy. Emmie wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy.
Our families knew every detail now. His father. My father. Not one of them were blind to the truth, except for Harris, until right at that moment.
Things had been tense at the hospital. My dad had dealt with everything a lot more easily than Devlin Cutter had. Jesse Thornton had gone from wanting to kill Harris to full-on understanding in the blink of an eye once he knew what Tessa had done. While Devlin understood, he wasn’t taking things quite the same way Jesse was. He was pissed, but I could tell it wasn’t at Harris. All his rage was focused on one person.
Tessa.