Chapter Twenty-Six Lily
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lily
The moment the words were out, I could breathe. A sweet rush of oxygen filled my lungs when he didn’t hesitate.
I couldn’t bear to be alone, not for another second. Sadness could be held at bay for only so long before the dam broke, and what I needed now was his steady, quiet strength to hold me together.
Silently, Barrett stood and pulled back the covers as I shifted to the side. He peeled off his sweatshirt, which left him in a thin T-shirt and the gym shorts he must’ve changed into after I escaped to the bedroom.
His scent—warm and masculine, like clean skin and musk—filled my head as he eased into the bed next to me, settling his arm underneath my pillow.
Then he waited.
Waited for me.
My ribs shook as I tried to hold everything in, only the quiet tears escaping down my face giving even the slightest hint as to what lurked underneath.
“Come here,” he said in a low voice.
My chin trembled, and he gently pulled me down into his arms, folding one behind my back and the other tight around my waist. I pressed my face into his chest and let the first sob escape.
His hands moved up and down my back as he let his chin rest on the top of my head.
“I’ve got you,” he said quietly.
And he did.
To feel wanted by him was something heady and dangerous. But this . . . this could crack my world open. A devastating consequence I hadn’t seen coming.
It had been countless days, months, years since anyone had held me this way. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been held like this. Like he was keeping me tethered to Earth. I gripped his shirt in my fists and let the tears come.
He didn’t ask me why. Didn’t ask for anything I wasn’t ready to give.
Because I knew if he did ask, he’d want nothing less than my entire heart. He deserved that too. Someone who could give him a future. Who could love him with reckless, wild abandon and not expect him to change who he was.
Planted in front of me, as I wept in his arms, was nothing more than my own fear. It stood dizzyingly tall. Thick as a redwood. Impenetrable for the last ten years, four months, and six days.
To climb it, to destroy it, I had to trust more than just him.
Trusting Barrett was effortless. Trusting myself was a little more difficult.
He held me like I was precious, like he wanted to absorb my tears. When they started to ebb, my throat raw and my nose almost completely plugged, he reached over to get a tissue off the nightstand.
I took it wordlessly, wiping underneath my eyes and discreetly blowing my nose.
In the dark room, it was hard to make out his features, but what I saw was heartbreak in the bent V of his eyebrows and the serious set to his mouth.
I kept the tissue balled up in my hand, tucking it between his chest and mine where we were pressed together, and eventually felt my pulse settle.
Barrett’s big hands never stopped their soothing motion. Up and down, up and down, until my muscles relaxed and my breathing steadied.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered once more against my temple. Tears welled again, and I closed my eyes to keep them from falling. “You’re safe.”
Instead of letting myself drown in embarrassment or shame or worry about how I’d explain this with the rising of the sun, I simply snuggled closer to the broad heat of his chest.
Barrett sighed, his arms tightening around my back. “I’m not going anywhere.”
As sleep claimed me, exhaustion pulling on my body and my heart expanding with the relief of this sweet moment, I decided to believe him.
I woke before Barrett, our position similar to how we’d fallen asleep.
We were facing each other, his arm still underneath my neck, the other slung over my waist, fingers dangling over my lower back.
His shoulders rose and fell on deep, even breaths.
Under the covers, one of my bare legs was tucked between his.
The light in the room was weak and gray, filtered through the edges of the curtains that didn’t quite cover the windows.
But it was enough to study the handsome angles of his face.
The straight, proud nose; the lines of his lips; the hard edge to his jaw—dark now with stubble, lending a dangerous air to his already attractive features.
Everything about him made my heart hurt, and I didn’t have much time to figure out what to do with that. Less now, as he began to wake. His eyes didn’t open right away, but he attempted to stretch his shoulder where it lay underneath my neck.
His patience with me defied anything I’d ever known, and as I waited breathlessly for him to wake, to take stock of the intimate way we’d slept, I felt an undeniable urge to give him something in return.
I didn’t want to make him work so hard. Didn’t want him to feel like he had to beg for scraps of what my life looked like. More than that, even, I didn’t want to make him ask something that he was afraid to ask. Afraid to upset me or push too hard.
The truth was, I was the one who’d enforced that invisible line. Erected boundaries that neither of us had ever named. And he’d respected every single one. Even when I didn’t make it easy.
Barrett’s eyes finally opened, his gaze on mine and a soft smile tugging at his lips.
“Morning,” he said, and the rough scrape of his voice lifted the hair on my arms.
“Thank you.” I didn’t want anything else said before that. “Thank you for staying.”
He adjusted his head on the pillow but didn’t move to take his arm back. There was no way it wasn’t numb as hell. Slowly, he curled it up, easing a hand over my shoulder and upper arm.
“You sleep okay?” he asked, studying my face carefully.
I didn’t even really want to think about what I might look like. A cry-headache bloomed behind my sinuses, and I could only imagine how big the bags under my eyes were.
I nodded, absently playing with the T-shirt covering his chest. He couldn’t have known the way anxiety tightened an invisible screw in the center of my heart, or how my body braced for impact as I tried to unearth my nerve.
“It’s early,” he continued. “If you want to go back to sleep, I can get up.”
My hands tightened in his shirt, anchoring him in place, and his brow furrowed as he studied me with a million questions in his eyes.
I licked my lips.
“The tattoo beneath my collarbone,” I said quietly. “You touched it last night.” Slowly, Barrett nodded. “It’s . . . it’s three stars.” I tugged the neckline of my shirt so he could see it. “It’s for my family.”
He sucked in a sharp breath, dropping his gaze to my exposed skin. His thumb brushed over it. That gentle brush of his calloused finger solidified my resolve, made it easier to find my voice.
“The biggest star is for my dad. His name was Robert. He liked fixing cars and spending time in his garage. He was always trying to teach me things. Even if I didn’t want to learn, he was so patient.” A tear slipped out of the corner of my eye, and Barrett brushed it away.
“The second star is for my mom. Kathleen. She was always in the kitchen. She and I used to butt heads all the time,” I said, my voice trembling now.
“But she’s the reason I know how to bake.
That’s how she showed her love to people.
Even when she was upset at me because I didn’t want to live in a small town like they did.
When all I could talk about was leaving and traveling and seeing the world.
She’d make me a plate of my favorite cookies, and they always made me feel better.
She never tried to change me, never made me feel bad for the way I was. ”
His eyes were red rimmed, but he simply listened.
“The smallest star is for my little brother,” I whispered raggedly, a sob climbing up my throat.
“Aaron. He was eight.” I had to stop and try to catch my breath, tears flowing down my face again.
“They were on the way to the airport to pick me up from a trip I took when I turned eighteen. A drunk driver crossed into the middle of the road.” I stopped, rolling my lips in and letting his perfect little face fill my mind.
Gap between his teeth. Freckles over his nose.
Black hair, just like mine. “Aaron never saw snow before he died. He always wanted to. H-he told me that it probably looked like magic in the sky.”
Barrett’s eyes were glossy with unshed tears now, too, and the sight of them was the only thing holding me together. I’d been alone in my grief for so long. Been alone for so long.
He kept using the edge of his thumb to wipe my tears, even when it was clearly a losing battle. He never stopped.
“Larry was his dog,” I said, my voice wet and full and thick.
“My parents got him as a puppy right after Aaron turned three. My dad named him after Larry Bird because the Celtics were his favorite team. He and Aaron . . . they were inseparable. Only person that fucking dog ever really loved.” I pinched my eyes shut as the loss of that little furball turned my chest inside out. “He was all I had left of them.”
“Oh, baby,” he breathed, tucking me against his chest while I wept.
Grief, kept locked away long enough, had a devastating consequence when it was finally given a chance to breathe.
My entire body shook as I cried. Saying their names, telling their story, was like breaking my head through the surface of the ocean.
I’d been drowning for years, without really trying to reach out for help.
I wrapped an arm around Barrett’s back and held him as tightly as he held me.
When I finally pulled back, he got another tissue and I managed a tiny smile before emptying my nose of the ungodly amount of snot blocking my breathing passages.
Barrett finally pulled his arm out from underneath me but wove his fingers through mine so he could bring my knuckles to his mouth.
He shook his head and simply breathed me in. “I am so sorry. I can’t . . . I can’t imagine, Lily.”
“There’s nothing you can say.” I tightened my grip in his. “I don’t like talking about it, as you can imagine.”
He pulled one hand from mine and smoothed it over the top of my head. “This is the third time you’ve finally told me about one of your tattoos.”
I exhaled a quiet laugh. “Yeah, it is.”
“You going to tell me why now?”
His eyes were soft, full of understanding. And I had a terrifying moment where I thought, I want to look at them forever.
“I’ve never met a man like you, Barrett King.” I adjusted my head on the pillow, tangling my legs further with his as he kept our hands anchored tight against his chest. “And you keep surprising me. I guess I felt like you deserved a piece of me no one else has ever had before.”
Oh, he liked that. His eyes did this warming thing, and his lips curved, and I wanted to lean forward and kiss them. A soft, sweet kiss, just because I could. Because he was close enough and would let me.
This wasn’t the moment for a kiss, and we both knew it.
“And that scares you?”
I let out a short, dry laugh and nodded. “The thought of putting my heart anyplace where it might get hurt again is the most terrifying thing I could imagine.” I licked my lips. “I don’t know what to do with you.”
With his free hand, Barrett cupped the side of my face, gently tracing the shell of my ear with the tip of his finger. “You don’t have to do anything.”
“No?”
He shook his head and gathered me close again, laying a gentle kiss on my forehead. “No. Right now, you just let me hold you. Okay?”
“Okay.”