Chapter Twenty – Jason #2
Laina rolled over, sluggish in sitting up.
Her eyes lifted, meeting my stare and holding it.
They weren’t rimmed in red or extra watery; she hadn’t cried, not that I could tell.
No, in fact, she held a deadly serious look as she whispered, “It was Tessa. I know it was.” She inhaled deeply, a long, even breath that drew out the next few seconds before she told me, “I’m going to kill her. ”
Spoken so softly, and yet, though she sounded broken, I knew she wasn’t lying. That sentence was, perhaps, the most truthful thing she’d ever said to me.
“And if you try to stop me, I’ll kill you, too.”
I didn’t think I’d ever heard a death threat sound so calm, so gentle.
Again, she meant it, and for the next few moments, all I could do was sit there and let her words simmer inside me.
Out of habit, I wanted to leap to protect Tessa and of course myself, but…
but if there was one thing this city had taught me—one thing Laina had shown me—it was that my daughter had ceased to be my daughter a long time ago.
“I believe you,” I said, “and I won’t try to stop you.”
Laina almost seemed surprised. “You won’t?”
With a shake of my head, I said, “Some actions have consequences, and sometimes those consequences are the difference between life and death. I know you want vengeance, and I don’t blame you.
I won’t stop you, but all I ask is that you give her the chance to come clean.
If she’s responsible… she should admit it, just like she admitted to trying to have Kieran killed. ”
She swung her legs out, hanging them off the side of the bed as she moved to sit closer to me. Her next words were so out of the blue I almost laughed: “Your daughter’s a bitch.”
“Yeah. She didn’t get that from me.”
“If she was more like you, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
” She sighed. “I never would’ve been kidnapped.
I’d still have all my fingers.” As she said that, she lifted her left hand and bent the metal fingers fastened to the nubs attached to her knuckles.
“My life would be so different if she was more like you. I probably would never have met Kieran, and without that first kidnapping, I never would’ve met Fang or Mike.
” She turned those bright pink eyes to me. “Or you.”
There was a weight behind those two words, a weight I definitely noticed, but something stopped me from commenting on it.
Strange as it might’ve been, I was pretty damn sure I felt the same.
I missed Montana, yes, but there was something to be said about my time here, time I spent watching her, learning about her.
Laina’s gaze fell to her lap, and she toyed with her hands. “It doesn’t feel real. It’s been hours, but it still doesn’t feel real. When will it feel real?” Her voice cracked at the end, as she asked me that hard-hitting question.
I told her the truth: “I don’t know. It might feel real an hour from now, or tomorrow, or next week. Or maybe six months from now.” I studied her, feeling a heaviness settle on my chest as I looked at her from the side. “It may never feel real.”
“My dad raised me by himself. I loved him, but I never really got to be a kid. He got into politics, and then… then I had to smile, pretend, act for the cameras. I had to be the perfect daughter so he could show he was a good dad. For years, I thought that meant he wasn’t one.”
She bit her bottom lip. “I didn’t realize it until recently, because I spent so much time hating him.
For a while, I thought he was responsible for my kidnapping.
I thought it was him, and I spent two years watching him move on, watching him get married and keep smiling for the cameras. I hated him so much for it.”
Laina’s shoulders slumped. “But then when I got out… when I learned the truth, I felt so stupid. Could I really blame him for trying to find happiness again? We’re all human. We’re not perfect. We make mistakes.”
Wise words. It was something some people never learned, even after eighty years on this planet.
“I asked him if he’d leave the spotlight for me,” her voice broke, “and when he didn’t answer right away, I thought that was it.
But he told me—” Her hands on her lap curled into fists.
“—just recently, that he would. That he would leave it behind in a heartbeat for me. Maybe if I would’ve asked, if we would’ve left the city, he’d still be alive. ”
The way she said that last part nearly broke my heart for her.
Grief was never something one could easily wrestle with; if it was easy, then was it true grief?
Did you actually care about that person?
No. True loss and grief went hand-in-hand.
While it was true everyone processed it differently, it still hurt, just in different ways.
And Laina? Laina was most certainly hurting. Her eyes had started to tear up. She was trying to hold it together, but slowly losing it. Maybe the shock was wearing off and the true weight of it all was finally crashing down upon her.
“You can’t think like that,” I told her. “Thoughts like that will only haunt you. There’s a whole world of different possibilities, but you can’t let every single one haunt you like ghosts.”
“I found him.” When she said that, I could hear the pain inside her.
“I found him in his office, just sitting there in his chair. I thought… for just a split-second I thought nothing was wrong. When I close my eyes, I can still see him there. His eyes were open, but there was nothing in them. There was nothing. I’ve seen things, done things… but nothing like that.”
I couldn’t say why, but I found myself moving closer to her.
I had to. The grief had come for her at last, and tears had welled in the corners of her eyes.
I set a hand on her back, and she responded by leaning against my arm.
It was instinctual after that. I pulled her onto my lap and wrapped both of my arms around her, holding her as her body trembled, as the tears began to fall.
“I miss him,” she whispered into my chest.
“I know.” I smoothed down her hair. “I know.” There wasn’t anything else to say.
I didn’t like seeing her in such a state, which was bizarre to me, but I couldn’t explain it if I tried.
Maybe, somewhere along the way, I’d come to care about her without realizing it.
Maybe that’s what made this whole thing so hard.
We remained that way for a long while, with Laina on my lap, curled up, crying, and me simply sitting there and holding her. It did cross my mind, what the others downstairs might’ve been thinking, but I didn’t care enough to move her off me. No, I was right where I was supposed to be.
It was insane to think of how fast things changed, how I’d come to this city with the singular purpose of helping Tessa deal with Laina, and now… now everything had turned on its head. Everything was opposite. Literally everything had changed, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.
Take Laina, for instance, the crying ball on my lap. I didn’t want to let her go. Even if she were to stop crying, I wouldn’t want to move. She fit so well on my lap, leaned into me for comfort like she was always meant to.
Something in me was changing, slowly recognizing something I didn’t want to face before now.
Suddenly I understood how Laina had hooked Kieran, Mike, and Fang, and gotten them all to agree to a relationship with her.
It was atypical, not of the norm, and yet it was the very definition of Laina Hawkins.
Someone like Laina didn’t go for normal or easy.
The hand that had smoothed down her hair slowed, fingers spreading.
Those same fingers weaved into her hair as my hand held the back of her head.
It was, in the grand scheme of things, not much of a movement on my part, but it displayed the change in me as well as any motion could’ve. A more tender embrace.
Everyone else downstairs could wait. Truly, the only thing important right now was her.
I didn’t know how long we stayed like that.
Like I said, it didn’t matter. I’d stay here with her as long as it took, as long as she wanted me here.
It hurt me deeply to see her in so much pain, and I’d do anything to reach inside her and take it, bear the brunt of it myself, shield her from the specific kind of agony only aching, raw grief could bring.
After a while, after who knew how long, the trembling in her body stopped, and I no longer heard her crying. My shirt was wet, but it didn’t matter. Gently, I asked her, “Have you eaten at all today?”
She shook her head against my chest and mumbled, “I’m not hungry.”
“It doesn’t matter. You need to eat, even if you don’t feel like it. I know it’s hard, but you still need to take care of yourself. I see food on the nightstand. Do you want me to run it downstairs and reheat it for you? Or do you want me to run out and get you something else?”
Laina said not a word.
“Even if it’s only a few bites, you need to eat and drink something.”
She told me in a hushed whisper, “Maybe in a bit. I just want to lay down.”
It wasn’t like I could force-feed her, so I said, “Okay.”
As I helped get her off my lap, she pulled her face away from my chest and stared up at me through red-rimmed, puffy eyes. “You don’t have to go. You could… lay with me.” Such tentative words, as if she was afraid to speak them—and she probably was, for a whole host of different reasons.
For one, she had at least three other men downstairs who would gladly lay down with her. It wasn’t something I could easily forget. Stepping into this wouldn’t be simple. It’d be beyond messy, the messiest mess I’d ever put myself in, and yet…