Thomas
Lou rubbed her eyes. “When will Jemma be home?”
Pulling her duvet up to her shoulders, I bent low and kissed her forehead, my eyes squeezing shut as I whispered, “Soon.”
“It’s getting late,” she said as if I didn’t know.
“She’s just busy.”
Lou rolled onto her side, peering up at me. “Is she with that man who made me cookies?”
My stomach revolted at the reminder.
“Yes, he’s an old friend. Did you eat them?” Thoughts of the many different poisons he might’ve laced them with flashed through my mind.
Lou laughed at my expression, then pouted. “No, when Jemma arrived, I forgot to take one.”
My next breath was ragged as I told myself to calm down. He wouldn’t poison a child, but he apparently had no issues taking her and my Dove hostage.
Running a hand over my hair, I said, “Good night, Lou.”
“G’night, Daddy.”
It never got old, hearing her say that. The first few times had been jarring, to say the least. Considering I was so far from a paternal figure when she came to live with me, it was ridiculous. But over time, she wormed her way beneath my skin and slithered inside my heart. Tenacious little thing.
Eventually, I went from being confused to cringing to smiling so hard my face hurt.
Back in my room, I paced quick strides over the rug, my mind whirling with what-ifs.
What if she didn’t forgive me when I saw her again? What if he was hounding her for information? What if he was begging her for another chance? What if she was so upset over my irrational actions, she took him up on the offer? Or, worst of all, what if he’d touched her, and she’d let him?
It was a mistake to instantly place the blame on her slender shoulders. I saw that now, but then, all I could see was rage and every worst-case scenario.
Forgetting the way someone touched you, laughed with you, and loved you was as easy as flicking a switch when part of your heart had been momentarily ripped from your chest cavity.
Over and over, thoughts twirled and overlapped, each becoming worse than the one before, until Murry appeared before me, shaking my shoulders. “Hey, hey.” He slapped my cheek.
I growled, shoving his hand away.
He stepped back, raising his hands. “I was worried. You’ve been in here for an hour, mumbling to yourself”—his eyes shot upward—“and ruining your hair.”
“She hasn’t called. Beau hasn’t called …” I turned and strode to the French doors, staring unseeingly to the dark depths beyond. “He said he’d call.”
“I know,” Murry murmured.
Beau was waiting in the city, not far from the precinct where she’d been taken in for questioning.
“I have to go.”
“You don’t. What can you do? Charge in there and demand they release her?”
I didn’t answer that, and Murry soon left me to my anxiety-laden thoughts, for which I was thankful. One glance at the bed she’d made the morning before had me wanting to set the sheets aflame. Her scent was in my pillows, the hurt look in her eyes everywhere I turned.
Murry’s last words came back to me, and I grabbed my phone, scrolling until I saw the last unknown number Jemima had dialed, and hoped to god it wasn’t her father who picked up.
“Hello?” a sleepy voice greeted.
“Hope?” I asked.
“Yes, who is this?”
Breathing a sigh of relief, I said, “Thomas Verrone. Your sister’s … boyfriend.” The word boyfriend sounded empty. The title nowhere near the realm of suitable for what we were.
Immediately, Hope went from tired to alert. “Where is she? What’s happened?”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I asked, “How much has she told you about me?”
“Just that you were weird when you first met, and that she’d been staying with you over the summer. Why?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
Weird. I shook that off and steeled myself, ran a lie through my mind, then confirmed it’d do. “I can explain quickly, but then I need your help.”
She listened, and ten minutes later, she said she was on her way.
I hung up and inhaled a deep breath, the tension in my body loosening for the first time in hours as I slowly set some of it free.
My Dove. My Little Dove.
I’d sent her away, discarded her like she hadn’t even mattered. Threatened her life knowing I could never take it. No matter what she did or didn’t do.
But I was too taken by anger and fear to remember that she and Lou … one wasn’t more precious than the other. I needed them both for different reasons, and I loved them both for different reasons, but ultimately, I couldn’t survive without both.
They were the only things that kept me sane.
They were all that glittered in a world of dark gray.
They were all that mattered.
And so I waited, and then I got my keys and decided I could wait closer.