Lou caught me looking and sighed. “I don’t know what to do anymore, Z. She just…she just can’t get it together anymore.”
“Can’t blame her,” Harleigh Rose said from the circle of Danner’s arms, tipping her chin to say her next words to the man holding ’er. “I wouldn’t get over you, not ever.”
Danner dipped to press a kiss to her upside-down mouth, and I blinked away the image as I looked away, not needin’ to see my baby girl in the arms of a cop, even if he was one’a the good ones.
“How bad?” I asked.
Lou bit her lip, and it was Priest, lingering to our right with Bea and her mum, who surprised me by sayin’, “Me bad, brother. Me when I first came to ya.”
“Fuck,” I muttered, closing my eyes against the memory of Priest, barely a man, cut up like someone tried to make him into ribbons, eyes more haunted than the battlefield’a the Somme.
He’d wanted to die, that boy.
And now, apparently, Cress did too.
I kissed Angel and blew a raspberry on Walker’s neck that resulted in a husky giggle before I passed them off to Loulou who propped them on either hip like a fuckin’ natural.
“I got ’er.”
She smiled at me, that secret kinda smile that was like a hand reaching through my chest to clutch at my heart and remind me it beat just for her. “I know it.”
Tipped my chin up her and took off across the asphalt. None’a the brothers tried to stop me, which let me know just how fuckin’ bad Cress must’ve been.
When I was a few feet out, Cress still hadn’t raised her head, but Ares stepped forward, forehead creased and arms crossed.
It was a physical warning to be gentle with her, to treat her with care or I’d have him to answer to.
Fuck me, but no grown man should be so moved to fuckin’ tears that many times in under an hour.
I cleared my throat and offered him a grin. “Ares, buddy, you gonna give your ole man a hug?”
He hesitated, eyes flickerin’ as he tried to decide between bein’ a kid or a man at that moment. But he was only nine, he had a whack’a time to grow up and not a whole lotta time left to give into the tenderness of youth, so I made the decision for ’im when I dropped to one knee and opened my arms.
He was in ’em in three seconds, little body wrapped up tight around my own.
I clasped the back’a his head and held on tight. When Ares gave ya affection, it wasn’t somethin’ to squander.
“They missed you,” he whispered in my air, his thick Spanish accent somethin’ I hadn’t even realized I’d craved until I heard it again. Seemed to me, I’d left five kids on the outside, Ares included.
“Missed them. Missed you,” I admitted.
“Were you scared?”
“Nah, not of anyone inside. They were all scared’a the big, bad Zeus Garro,” I teased as I pulled back to look at his face.
He grinned slightly. “Everyone should be scared of you.”
“Not you,” I reminded ’im. “Not them.” I indicated the family gathered in the parking lot of the prison like it was an average fuckin’ family reunion.
“Nah,” he agreed. “You’re a teddy bear for us.”
The laughter felt good in my throat after months of disuse, so I laughed even harder just to feel it move through me. “Yeah, kid.” I ruffled his hair and stood. “Great big teddy, that’s fuckin’ me.”
His big grin faded as I looked over him at Cressida and he said quietly, in a voice more fearful than I’d ever heard from ’im and that included when he found ’im lost and alone squatting in my cabin. “Please, help her.”
I tipped my chin at him and squeezed his shoulder as I moved passed and finally arrived in front’a my son’s girl.
She stirred, liftin’ her head so those long lashed, pretty as hell brown eyes met mine. They weren’t so pretty then. In fact, they were fuckin’ dead.
“Z,” she said on a tremblin’ breath. “Don’t touch me.”
I cocked my head. “Gotta give my girl a hug.”
“You touch me now,” she warned. “I’ll shatter like a glass in your hands, I swear.”
“Teach,” I said gently, but she shook her head.
“I’m not a teacher anymore,” she reminded me as she always did. Then she opened her palms and looked down at them as if surprised to see them empty but for the scars Fallen enemies had put there. “I’m not anything anymore.”
“You fuckin’ are,” I growled. “You’re my daughter-in-law, my wife and oldest daughter’s best friend, you’re the owner of the best fuckin’ bookshop in the nation, and one’a the best fuckin’ woman I’ve ever known. You’re everythin’ and just ’cause my boy isn’t ’ere anymore to fuckin’ prove it to you every single fuckin’ day in the way only he could doesn’t make it any less true, yeah?”