Her lips pursed, because she had no good rebuttal to that.
“Your carrot may not look like my carrot, but it’s there, Candy.” He paused. “Please allow me to clarify that I do not refer to any of my more intimate extremities asmy carrot.”
She snorted.
“My point is that your students know you care. Your means of expressing it is simply different from mine.” He raised his brows. “Since you mentioned your relationship with our colleagues, Ms. All-Stick-No-Carrot, let’s discuss that too. I know you mentor first-year teachers each and every fall. I know you sponsor the literary magazine because Khalid was depressed and needed to shoulder fewer responsibilities. I know you coordinated weekly meal drop-offs for Yelena all last year, as soon as her husband became ill and for months after his death.”
Candy’s mouth dropped open. “Who told you—”
“Furthermore, I saw you help with Rose’s ridiculous promposal at that faculty meeting, and you were magnificent.” He stabbed a forefinger into the desk. “If our colleagues don’t realize you have a heart as big as the skies, that’s on them. Not you.”
He allowed his hand to rest on the desk, surrounding her on that one side, leaning in close. Her apple scent filled his lungs, and her heat wracked through him in a shudder.
“But—” Her eyes had turned glassy, her voice so quiet he could barely hear her. “Mildred called me a bully.”
He knew. Rose had already told him. More importantly, Rose had told himwhy.
He put his other hand on the desk, surrounding her without a single inch of their skin touching. Providing the mute comfort of animal heat. Blocking out the world outside the two of them. Making certain he could hear her or read her lips, no matter how quietly she spoke.
Within the circle of his arms, she looked up at him and blinked, lips parted.
He lifted his shoulder a fraction. “Mildred called you a bully. Why? What’s the context, Candy?”
She was an intelligent woman. She knew what he wanted her to articulate.
“She decided to skip her meal-delivery week for Yelena, but didn’t alert me or find her own replacement. When I told her that was unacceptable, she got embarrassed, so she wanted to turn the blame on me. I get that, Griff.” Her chin trembled, and the urge to duck his head and plant a comforting kiss there almost overwhelmed him. “But that doesn’t mean she was wrong.”
Dammit. More tears. “Candy…”
He couldn’t stand it. He had to touch her somehow.
Lifting one hand, he gently thumbed away the tear creeping down her cheek. “What’s going on? Why are you suddenly so determined to think ill of yourself?”
When she leaned into the contact, he maintained it. Cupped her cheek and watched her struggle to find words for a long, long time.
Finally, she sighed, still resting against his hand.
“Dee and I…” She swallowed back a rough, raw sound. “She’s—she was—my baby sister. My only sibling. Just a year younger. Our mom died when I was three and she was two. A drunk driver. So Dad raised us, and he worked a lot, and he was—”
Her laugh broke in the middle. “He loved us, but he didn’t know how to talk to us or what to say when we were sad or angry or lonely, and we didn’t know how to talk about it either. We were just kids. So we mostly just sat and watched movies together, and at some point it became kind of a family game. Our own language, really.”
He tipped his head, confused. “What became a family game?”
“To use stuff we’d seen from the movies to talk to each other. Especially when we got a little older, and he let us watch his favorite mobster films.” Her lips stretched, but it didn’t look much like a smile. “Instead of sayingI’m sorry you’re sad, we’d threaten to deliver a horse’s head to whoever was teasing Dee at school. Instead of sayingI’m worried about you, we’d tell Dad we were going to put a hit out on him if he didn’t start sleeping more. He responded better to that than…”
When she bit her lip, he took a guess. “Emotions?”
She nodded. “He loved us, but the way he showed that was through service. Working hard. Helping us fix our bikes. Going to Dee’s flute recitals. We didn’t—we didn’t talk about it.” Her eyes searched his. “It was like reading a poem. A novel in a foreign language. Everything required interpretation and translation. Our words, what we did. And when we said we were fine, we were unreliable narrators.”
Through the new lens she’d just offered him, he suspected he could see her more clearly. But he couldn’t use it to study his memories of her, his observations. Not yet.
He needed to keep paying attention. Because she was still crying, and he still didn’t know why. And somehow, while he’d been sorting through his thoughts, she’d entirely misinterpreted his expression and taken his silence for judgment.
“I-I’m not trying to excuse myself, Griff.” She shrank back against the desk, away from his touch, her face crumpling. “I swear on my mother’s grave I’m not. I’m forty-seven years old. I’ve had plenty of time to learn better and find the right words. I’m just trying to explain why—”
For some reason, she was pleading with him, tears pooling beneath both eyes and dripping from her chin, and his scarred heart ripped open along a new axis.
“Sweetheart.” He ducked his head to catch her gaze, hands hovering yet again. “I don’t understand, but I also can’t imagine why you would ever need an excuse for anything. You try your best, Candy. Always. Youcare. Always. Please stop crying. Please.”
