Page 164 of Undone

Anger, frustration, grief—it all roars to life like a lit match inside me. But I try desperately to quell it, to keep completely calm for her.

Slipping off my shoes, I step around the bed, carefully pulling each boot off her feet. She doesn’t move. I want to undress her entirely, but my need to hold her wins out. I pull a blanket off the end of the bed, draping it over us both as my body crawls in behind her, enveloping her back and pulling her into my chest.

“How’s my wife?” I breathe, pressing slow, soft kisses to her hair and temple, more like light brushes of my mouth to her skin.

She doesn’t speak.

C’mon, Lily. Come out of that pretty head of yours.

“Paloma was asking about you,” I say. Pulling the too tight ponytail holder from her hair, careful and slow. I scratch her scalp slowly, massaging over it, smoothing out the auburn strands. “She let me in. I think she’s finally getting used to me here all the time. Did you tell her about everything?”

Lily shakes her head slowly, and I want to throw a goddamn parade for that small reaction.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispers, her voice small and half-cracked.

“With what, baby?”

Lily turns slowly in my arms, laying her neck on my bicep and looking up at me flatly where I hover half over her.

“The town house. Paloma.” She breathes slow again, like trying to soothe herself. “My dad cut me off— He said we need to figure out where to go because he won’t pay for it anymore. And I don’t get my inheritance without his sign-off. And this is all in his name anyway.”

Every bit of anger and rage I’d managed to snuff out with the cold of her darkness reappears, only ignited higher. God, I could fucking kill him. It might be a dark thought, but it’s real. And it’s no worse than the feelings I kept hidden at sixteen.

“Lily,” I breathe, my heart squeezing in my throat.

“I don’t know what to do,” she cries out quietly—almost silently—before tucking her forehead to my chest, ducking underneath my chin.

Helpless.

It’s a feeling I’m familiar with—that I’ve been familiar with before. For years it felt like no matter what I did, I’d never manage to fix what was broken in us both. When I was young, it felt like she fixed me. And maybe part of her had—the part of her that saw me as someone who just needed a friend, someone to care for him. I was seven and so full up with anger I didn’t know up from down.

She mended me, without meaning to, just by being herself. And I don’t think Lily understands that.

I tuck her tighter to me, swallowing her frame with the bulk of my body. She feels small in my arms, fragile in a way that’s always frightened me before. But now, it makes me feel stronger. More capable.

I’ll never be helpless again. Not when it comes to Lily.

She’s my wife now.

“I’ll take care of it, Lil,” I vow quietly. “Don’t worry.”

Chapter 63

Toren

I’ve been here before, but different.

He’s different. So am I.

I was careful to do this at LaBlanc’s house, though it makes the sick feeling in my stomach swirl worse at being so near to him without the proximity protection of Holden or Harris or the team. But not enough to have me turning around, the way it might have years before.

Any time my hand starts to shake, I picture Lily in her room, unable to undress herself. Lily under my care, my hands helping her into the shower, washing her hair the way I know she likes it. Lily letting me dress her like a doll, but one who can’t smile no matter how I pull her strings.

LaBlanc’s in his office. Carson is the one who answers the door. And somehow that fact is like a calming drug. I smirk at Carson, moving the stick of the grape sucker in my mouth so my canines are visible, before I wave with my left hand, making sure to flash the silver across my third finger.

Nice try, fucker.

Carson doesn’t speak to me, only leads me back. As if I’m a businessman meeting with his boss. LaBlanc’s puppy dog assistant.