Smiling sadly at me, she squeezed my hand again and then tugged it to get me to roll back on my side. “I thought that might’ve been the case. I’m not saying I wasn’t pissed off, but I can understand it. Heck, even seeing the crossing where Mum was hit by the car triggers a shutdown inside me emotionally, so I can only imagine what that would’ve been like for you.”
I didn’t know how I’d become so lucky but fuck me, Sadie was proof of it.
“Just so you know, I wasn’t running to escape you. I was running to get my head on straight to come back to you with none of the hang-ups that I had before. I didn’t want to be the guy who was on an emotional rollercoaster, you deserve better than that. I needed to come to terms with it, put what Coop’s parents said in a box, and lock it all up.”
“Grief is a process that takes a lot of time, and every person and circumstance is different. Fighting it isn’t going to make it go away, it’s just going to bury it in the ground until it pops back up again.”
“I know, and that’s what I’d been trying to do with it, so I went where we used to stay together when we were both off work, and I made peace with it. I think I’m always going to be affected by the shit his parents said to me—”
“I know they blamed you for it and were arseholes at his funeral, and that was so fucking wrong,” she sighed, looking close to tears. “A lot of people lash out when they’re grieving, but it doesn’t fix it and make the person come back. They should have manned the hell up and apologized by now. Them not doing it makes me wonder if they’ve got some guilt going on as well, so they’re projecting the blame onto you to help them through it.”
Gently pushing a chunk of hair off her forehead, I whispered, “So wise.”
“What can I say?” she shrugged, smiling shyly. “Have you thought about contacting them? Does he have any siblings you could reach out to?”
“Right now,” I said slowly, “I think it’s too much. I’ve only just put it away and closed the door on what they did. If I was to contact them and open that door back up, I think it would be too soon. My focus has to be you, our baby, and keeping you safe.”
“And yourself, Elijah. You can’t protect everyone before your own safety and wellbeing. You matter just as much.”
Scanning her face, I took in the shape of her eyebrows, the light blue color of her eyes with the pretty crystal blue striations through them, how plump her lips were, and her adorable chin. I don’t think there was one feature of hers that didn’t do it for me. Hell, even her fingernails were making me hard right now, which was inappropriate given what we were doing.
“I just needed to make sure I was in a better place so that I could look after you. If I’d known all the details, and that you were getting the stuff in the postcards, Sadie…” I trailed off, grinding my teeth together. “I thought having Jackson and my cousins watching over you would be enough on top of your dad’s security, but it wasn’t.”
“Okay, this is what I was talking about,” she snapped, pushing my shoulder. “You’re taking on everyone else’s shit as your own. No one is responsible for the unhinged bullshit that Orson Riley’s doing apart from the wanker himself. I understand feeling protective or concerned over someone, but you can’t apologize for needing time away to sort your shit out. Everyone has to at some point. If you’d known what he was doing, you wouldn’t have gone. But you didn’t know what he was doing, neither did I. And if you hadn’t gone away, you’d still be suffering, so it’s not an issue. Your brother kept me safe, my alarms kept me safe, Dad and his security gorillas kept me safe, your family kept me safe—I was safe. So, please, just drop it all now. Life isn’t meant to be about guilt and duty, and now there’s a baby on the way, so our focus has to shift again.”
“Don’t,” I growled. “Don’t minimize what he’s doing. The second we do that, we’ve opened you up to whatever he has planned because we’ve relaxed our defenses. Right now, let me be worried and concerned about it because it means that I’ve got my eye on the ball, and you and our baby are protected.”
The look on her face would have been scary if she wasn’t so adorable. “I fucking hated that man before, but now I wish I could drop bleach on his scrotum just to cause him unbearable pain. No, drain cleaner on it, because that’d burn like a bitch.”