Chapter 16 Grief #2
“Sophia…”
“Tell me, Lucas.”
His hand tightened on mine. “She’s dead.”
I blinked several times, trying to make sense of those words. She couldn’t have died. She was taken to the House. I’d pictured her in a brothel.
Ice spread through my veins, froze me in place. My lips and the tips of my fingers tingled.
He was talking, but my shock smothered the words. My body shook as I visualized her beautiful face, smiling, always watching over me.
“—Sophia?”
I focused on his eyes. “How?”
He hesitated, worry softening his expression and brightening the aquamarine. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Yes.”
He pressed his lips together, and after a tired sigh, he said, “She was captured with several others. I remembered her as soon as I saw the cause of death. I was going to send them to the Stability bloc, but she spit at me, and the other colonels decided she needed correction, so they—” He shook his head, closing his eyes a moment and swallowing.
“I tried. They—they’re—I did try, but they wouldn’t stop. Afterward, they decided she should go to the House. She was hauled off toward the transport truck. They pushed her around as they went. She was limping after they—” He shook his head again.
His hand gripped mine so tight his knuckles blanched, and his other lifted like he thought to wipe my tears.
Except he didn’t. He let them fall. “Paul pushed her toward the ramp to the truck. She stumbled and caught her foot on the edge. Her hands were tied behind her. She had nothing to brace her fall. She hit her head on the metal platform. We thought she’d knocked herself out, but I went to check on her, and she had no pulse. ”
My throat closed, and I couldn’t catch my breath. Stifled and smothered, I gasped for several seconds before I jerked off the couch to run for the door, the open air, the rain. I had my hand on the doorknob before he caught me.
Strong arms circled me, pinning mine against my sides, unbreakable as I struggled to free myself.
“You cannot go out there.”
But I needed air! I needed it.
“Breathe, Sophia!”
I couldn’t. I couldn’t.
“You can’t go outside like this. It’s storming. It isn’t safe.”
A strangled breath caught in my throat as I choked on the absurdity of the word safe. None of us were safe. I’d never be safe.
Tekqua’s voice echoed in my head.
“You my girl.”
“Sisters?”
“Sisters.”
Lucas wouldn’t release me, as if he believed with absolute certainty that his arms were safer than the world outside. His front pressed against my back, body chained around me like iron bands, voice trickling through my panic.
I tried to picture the forest. Warm rain. Cypress.
His scent drifted into my nose instead. Peppermint. Incense.
“Shh. Just breathe. It’s okay to be upset, but you have to breathe. Focus. In. Out. Good. Like that, okay? Keep breathing.”
The air came easier as I focused on his voice, his scent, the pressure of him everywhere, holding me together.
His arms loosened, but I yanked them back around me, scared I’d fall apart without the support.
Eventually, we stood in silence, his arms encircling my shoulders, my hands gripped on his forearms. Eyes closed, I kept my attention on the beat of his heart against my back, the rise and fall of his breaths.
He let me decide when to break the embrace.
And it was definitely an embrace.
Tears fell and dripped onto his arms. I relaxed back, my head resting on his shoulder. He bore my weight without comment, even though my wet hair was probably soaking through his shirt.
Had I known deep inside that Tekqua was dead? Why wasn’t I surprised?
The worst part was the sense of normalcy. It had grown easier to grieve with each death that passed. Was I growing callous, or had I gotten used to the loss?
The storm thundered loud enough to match the crumbling foundation inside my chest. Cracks of lightning bleached the darkness surrounding us.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered close to my ear, and his lips found my temple.
His lips…were touching me.
Lucas Scott’s lips, on my body.
But he didn’t kiss me. The pressure was there. Nothing else.
I should have yanked away, but I couldn’t because it helped. Something inside unknotted, and it felt as if I’d taken a breath after spending far too long underwater. My worst fear had come to light—Tekqua was gone, never to return—but Lucas Scott stood there, volunteering to anesthetize the pain.
I seized that offer without qualms.
Turning, I clung to him, burying my face in his neck. He tensed before his arms settled around me, his steady pulse giving me a drumbeat to follow. My traitorous heart sighed in relief, like this was where it wanted to be all along. It just…clicked into place like an interlocking puzzle piece.
I ignored the hell out of it. Pretended it didn’t exist at all. Because I was simply upset, and he was offering something to make the pain go away. Of course I wanted to stay in his embrace.
But I couldn’t ignore his finger as it drew shapes on my back, couldn’t stop myself from gripping him like he held me to the earth. Minutes passed before I managed to lift my head from his shoulder, unable to meet his eyes. “Thank you. You didn’t need to do that.”
His hand gripped my chin, lifting until I couldn’t avoid his gaze. The blue-green band of his irises had thinned behind the expanding blackness at the center. He studied me from behind a guarded expression. “You’re going to be all right.”
Not a question. Not a command, either. Just a statement of fact.
You’re going to be all right.
Maybe I was and maybe I wasn’t, but in that moment, I thought it might be possible. I could be all right. Someday.
I stepped away from him and sat on the couch. He chose the seat across from me, and we stared at each other in silence. Lightning flooded the room, erasing the golden light from the candles for a beat.
“Do you have any information?” I asked.
“Nothing that can’t wait until next week.”
My shoulders fell. “You—you’re not going to tell me?”
“You deserve the brain space to process what you just learned,” he said in his softest tone. “Be selfish, Sophia. You deserve it.”
Those words unlocked the dam, and I burst into tears.
His eyes widened, and he leaned forward like he wanted to touch me again. “Don’t cry. I’m sorry. I’ll tell you if you really want to know.”
I shook my head. I didn’t care about his information. My heart was mangled, tortured, and I clutched at my chest, weeping into my knees.
“Tell me what to do,” he said, voice strained.
I sobbed and kicked the table between us. It extinguished the candle, and the light halved.
“I’m going to kill him. Paul, you said? Paul Kingston, right? Another Blood Colonel?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll kill him.”
His brow crinkled with worry. “Not tonight, you won’t.”
I scowled because he was right. There was nothing I could do. “Someday, then.”
“Sure. Someday,” he said, like he was mollifying a child.
He let me cry for several minutes, and I finally squeaked out a watery, “What am I even doing here?”
“You’re trying to stop the bad guys.”
I sniffled. “It isn’t working. Things keep getting worse.”
“You’re wrong,” he said, and my blurry gaze rose to his. “It’s definitely working, Sophia. You won’t have to do this much longer.”
My tears stalled. “You think so?”
He dipped his chin in a small nod.
“What happens to you when this all ends?”
The corner of his mouth lifted in a small smile, but he didn’t answer. In the silence that followed, I rose to leave, but he stood at once. “What are you doing?”
“Going…home?” I gestured to the door.
He pointed at the window. “The storm isn’t letting up.”
“I don’t care.”
His expression hardened. “It isn’t safe.”
I was beginning to hate that word.
With a sigh, I glanced around. What was I supposed to do? Wrung out and exhausted, I needed sleep. When I met his eyes once more, he offered me a hand. “Come on.”
He took me to the master bedroom and pulled back the covers on the bed, inviting me to lie down. I blinked at it, then at him. “You want me to…”
“Sleep,” he said. “The storm will pass by morning.”
Too tired to argue with him, I slipped into the bed. Into his bed. Dressed in his clothes. Coated in his scent. Wearing the invisible tattoo of his lips against my temple.
“I’m less safe here than I would be at headquarters,” I said.
He pulled the covers over me. “No, you’re not.”
“There’s safety in numbers,” I said with a yawn.
“There’s safety with me.”
I paused in my effort of finding a comfortable position to look at him, brow raised.
“For you, there’s safety with me,” he corrected, rolling his eyes in that why-are-you-such-an-idiot way.
“Yeah, yeah. You need me alive. Why’s that again?” I asked, already knowing he wouldn’t answer.
He pivoted toward the door. “Just know I’m not leaving, so the monsters won’t get you tonight.”
I might have smiled if my face were capable of it. Instead, I drifted to sleep.
After a dreamless night, I woke with tear tracks dried on my cheeks. Tekqua’s face was the first thought in my mind, and her dedicated space in my heart gave a painful throb.
Gone.
She was gone.
And if she was gone, if they were all gone, what was the point of anything?
My sore eyes cracked open. Morning sunlight filtered through the sheer curtains in soft gold, illuminating the dust in the air. It took a moment to place my surroundings, but when I did, I sensed the emptiness of the house.
He wasn’t there.
When had he left?
I sat up. The air smelled of incense, and I caught sight of a burned stick on the nightstand.
Two items sat beside it: a note and a handful of tea bags. I snatched the note, unfolding it to find Lucas’s familiar handwriting with the funny-shaped Ds.
Sophia,
I know this hurts. I know it feels like it will last forever.
Grief is like snow. Harsh and cold. Destructive and unforgiving. It comes in silence, and it buries everything.
But snow doesn’t last forever. You’re the one who taught me that. No matter how dark and cold the night, the sun will always come out.
Don’t hide in the darkness. You belong in the light. You are made of it.
—L
P.S. Peppermint tea helps me with anxiety. Take it.
P.P.S. Please destroy this note before you leave.
I stared in wonder, reading and re-reading. Heat simmered in my chest, deep inside parts I wasn’t aware existed. How could he possibly believe that I had taught him anything about healing from grief? My grief was still burying me, destructive and icy, just like he described.
I wasn’t made of light. I was made of shattered glass and broken hopes.
Still, I refolded the paper, smaller than the single crease he’d left down the middle. When it was no bigger than a pack of matches, I slid it into the cup of my bra. It stayed there, and when the time came for me to remove my bra back at headquarters, I transferred the note to my sock.
It became kindling for the flames he’d ignited in my heart last night, burning me from the inside out. I kept it on me, day after day, reading it before I fell asleep at night to remind myself I wasn’t alone.
I treasured it, and never once, despite his request, did I consider destroying it.