Chapter 28 #2
Tyrone carried Kelsey all the way across the courtyard, and Glenna stayed so close beside him her shoulder repeatedly bumped his arm. She didn’t care, because she refused to let either of them out of her sight until she managed to convince herself that the last several hours were finally over.
At the door to the main building, Tyrone stopped. “Glenna.”
Her entire body went tight again. “What?”
“Nothing bad.” His voice softened immediately. “I want to check her over, but I can do it in the suite. With you there.”
Kelsey buried her face against his shoulder. Glenna rubbed a hand over her girl’s back.
“Does anything hurt, baby?”
“My arm where Kitty scratched me.”
Tyrone’s mouth twitched. “The cat did more damage than Petrovic.”
“He was scared,” Kelsey protested.
Not half as much as I was.
Glenna caught the name, Petrovic. The bastard who had taken her daughter. She wanted to ask if he was alive, or if the universe had managed to scrape together enough justice to make sure he never put his hands on another child. But Kelsey came first.
“Your suite?” Glenna said.
Tyrone nodded. “You got it.”
Kelsey had never been inside Tyrone’s Operator suite before, although Glenna had only been there once herself, and they’d spent most of that visit lying on his bed crying over things neither of them had been ready to say until then.
She hadn’t exactly been paying attention to the decor, and this time she noticed even less because Tyrone carried Kelsey straight through the door as though there was nowhere else in the world he’d even considered taking her.
Whatever adrenaline had kept Kelsey awake through the drive back from the mountains had finally burned itself out, leaving her heavy and exhausted in Tyrone’s arms, her cheek resting against his shoulder while one hand remained stubbornly wrapped around the orange kitten.
Her eyelids kept drifting closed for several seconds before she forced them open again, and Glenna couldn’t decide what hurt more, seeing how desperately tired her little girl was or realizing that some part of her might still be fighting sleep because she didn’t completely trust that it was safe to let go yet.
Tyrone crossed to the bed and sat with Kelsey still curled against his chest, while Glenna followed close enough that her knee brushed his when she lowered herself beside them.
“I’m tired,” Kelsey mumbled, the words slurred enough that Glenna barely understood them.
“I know, baby.” Tyrone glanced down at the plate carrier wedged between them and grimaced. “Give me a minute to get this shit off, then we’ll get you into bed.”
Kelsey’s fingers tightened in his shirt beneath the edge of his carrier. “Mommy?”
Glenna immediately covered her little hand with her own. “I’m right here, sweetheart.”
That seemed to be enough, because Kelsey’s eyes drifted closed again, and Glenna looked at Tyrone over her daughter’s head, suddenly aware that this was only the second time she’d been inside this room, except now she was sitting on his bed with Kelsey between them and an orange kitten trying to burrow headfirst into an opening in his plate carrier.
Jesus Christ, what a fucking morning.
Tyrone caught the kitten before it disappeared somewhere neither of them wanted to retrieve it from. “Absolutely not, Furball.”
Kelsey made a sleepy sound of protest without opening her eyes.
“I’m not evicting him, Kels-Bells. I’m stopping him from crawling into my gear.”
Glenna took the kitten from him and tucked it securely against Kelsey’s chest, where the tiny creature immediately settled. “There. Crisis averted.”
“One of them.”
She looked at him, and Tyrone looked back, both of them apparently deciding they were too fucking tired to acknowledge the dozen things that needed to be resolved, all of which were waiting for them outside this room.
Getting Kelsey to release him long enough to strip his gear took some persuasion, but Glenna kept one arm wrapped around her while Tyrone stood and dealt with the equipment he’d been wearing for hours.
He secured his rifle first, followed by his helmet and plate carrier, every movement practiced and efficient despite the exhaustion carved into his face, and Glenna watched Kelsey track him through increasingly heavy eyes until he came back to crouch in front of her.
“Anything hurting, Kels?”
She shook her head.
“Anything feel weird?”
She replied with another tiny shake of her head.
Tyrone didn’t push her for more, and Glenna was grateful because Kelsey was barely keeping her eyes open now.
He’d already had enough time with her on the drive back to know whether there was anything immediately wrong, and whatever else he wanted to check could wait until she’d slept and could do it with Glenna beside her.
“Nothing I’ve seen says it can’t wait,” he told Glenna quietly. “Let her sleep.”
“Okay.”
His gaze stayed on her for a moment, probably hearing everything she couldn’t fit into that one word, but thankfully he didn’t make her explain any of it.
Getting Kelsey out of her filthy clothes without waking her completely became a joint effort, although neither of them attempted anything more ambitious than cleaning her face, hands, and the worst of the dirt from her skin with a warm washcloth before Glenna found one of Tyrone’s T-shirts to put her in.
The shirt swallowed her whole, hanging almost to her knees, and something about seeing her daughter lying in Tyrone’s bed in a shirt that belonged to him hit Glenna harder than it probably should have.
She was home, that was what mattered. Whatever else had happened tonight could wait until she’d slept.
Glenna slid in beside her and pulled the covers over them, and Kelsey’s hand immediately found hers beneath the blanket. Her eyes were already closed when she murmured, “Uncle Zorro.”
“I’m right here.”
“You came.”
Something moved across Tyrone’s face as he leaned down and gently brushed Kelsey’s dark hair away from her forehead. “Always gonna come for you, Kels-Bells.”
That seemed to be all she needed, because within minutes her breathing settled into the deep, even rhythm of a child who had finally reached the end of everything her body could give.
Her fingers loosened around Glenna’s while the cat tucked himself more firmly against her stomach, his tiny orange body rising and falling with every one of Kelsey’s breaths.
Glenna couldn’t stop watching her. If she took her eyes off her for a second, she might disappear again.
Even when Tyrone moved quietly around the room, she kept her gaze fixed on the rise and fall of Kelsey’s chest because knowing her daughter was alive and watching the proof of it were apparently two completely different things.
Her baby was alive. For the first time since Remi had turned away from those monitors and told her Zorro had Kelsey, the words finally reached the part of her that needed to believe them, and the first tear slipped free before she even realized she was crying.
Tyrone saw it, of course he fucking did, and he sat on the edge of the bed beside Kelsey’s feet rather than climbing beneath the covers, his boots still on and his tactical pants streaked with dirt from the mountains.
He didn’t say anything when he reached across their sleeping girl and brushed his fingers over Glenna’s cheek, and that tiny bit of tenderness demolished the last of the control she’d been clinging to.
Glenna clamped a hand over her mouth before the sob could escape loudly enough to wake Kelsey, but there was no stopping the tears once they started.
They came hot and relentless, making her shoulders shake beneath the covers while everything she’d forced herself to hold together from the moment she discovered Kelsey was missing finally broke loose.
Tyrone leaned across Kelsey, curved his hand around the back of Glenna’s neck, and held on while she cried as silently as she could.
“I almost lost her again,” she whispered when she finally trusted herself enough to speak.
Tyrone’s thumb moved slowly against her skin. “But you didn’t.”
There were a hundred things Glenna could have said after that and a hundred different ways she could tear herself apart over the last few hours, but she was too fucking tired to start picking at wounds that were still bleeding, and Kelsey was lying safely between them. Maybe for once that had to be enough.