Page 93 of Boneyard HEA

This is so civil. It’s a normal morning. Crows are cawing. Sky is blue. I’m calling Mr. Loxland by his first name still, and I’m pretty sure that friend of Tomás’s is attracted to Georgia even though he’s staying as distant as he can.

The day we sat in the room at what they called Evil House, discussing what to do, was…dislocated. The rush from disposing of those men was palpable. I could kind of taste it in my system and was laughing at times, floating. Yet I cannot remember much about walking to the car and driving out. My mind shut down for a few hours while Tomás and Rafael swapped driving.

Those men. I refuse to voluntarily say their names again, until the day I die.

I’m here now, alive and well, I remind myself as Rafael descends the stairway with Georgia, bringing her leather duffel bag. It’s the one Aaron gave her, along with some clothes and whatever she needed for this trip. Lucy is bouncing up and down the hallway with Tomás throwing her ball for her.

The girl has barely told me, or the men, anything about her prior life. The doctor the fraternity sent stitched and cleaned her finger, gave her antibiotics, and said she was lucky it was on her left hand and nicely severed at the joint, else it would’ve needed more surgery. Though she cried afterward on her bed, with me sitting there holding her, she said nothing more about the day it was done to her. Meals, endless scrolling on her new phone, walking on the beach with Lucy and us, and staring across the sea at the horizon while brave seagulls trotted on the sand and begged for food—that’s how she’s coped.

She’s sturdy, like me, now that she’s not being tortured daily, but I fear she may shatter, suddenly.

“Hope you find this is what you need, girl,” I say as she and Rafael arrive at the door.

He hangs back, but she comes in for a hug from me, nods to Aaron. She seems averse to the male touch, which is unsurprising. To even stay in her vicinity, Rafael will need the patience of a saint.

“Me too.” Her hugging arms tighten on me. “I need to get away from where it all happened. You know?”

I do know.

A little bit of scary lightning wriggled through my chest when she said that.

“Yes. I guess I do.” We separate but still hold hands, and smile at each other.

“Therapy?”

“Me? God, no.” I shudder. “However, promise me that one day we are going to chat, and I will get all your history out of you. Where you’ve been. Places you’ve lived. Favorite lipstick color. Stuff like that.”

“Sure,” she says too easily. “I’d better go.” Her hands slip from mine. “Bye, Aaron, Tomás. Thank you for”—she sucks in a long breath “for absolutely everything you have done for me.”

“I’d do it again. Just send up the bat signal,” Aaron assures her, lolling against the other side of the doorway in his chic pants and half-unbuttoned shirt. There’s a fuzz on his unshaven chin for the first time I’ve noticed.

“Ditto. You take care, Georgia.” Tomás is holding onto Lucy’s collar so she doesn’t lick the woman to bits.

She kneels to give Lucy a hug and a pat, gets a boisterous woof and tail wag in return. Us humans get a little wave from Georgia before she trots down the front steps to the car, Rafael obediently following.

I hope my fear that she will shatter doesn’t come true.

When she trips on something on the driveway, Rafael grabs her arm and holds her until she gathers her feet under her. She quickly shrugs off his hand and climbs in the car.

“If he ever hurts her, I hope he knows I will come get him, bat signal or not,” I murmur, just loud enough for Aaron and Tomás to hear.

“Him?” Tomás chuckles. “He would never do that, unless she wanted him to.”

“Wanted?” I raise my eyebrows. “That man looks like he’d spank himself, first, before her.”

“Hmmm.” Tomás barely changes expression, but I get the gist.

“Seriously?” Is he suggesting that man is kinky?

“He is in the fraternity. It was a requirement.”

Well then. I look to Aaron to verify this.

“She’s allergic to men right now, anyway.” Aaron ushers us back inside and shuts the door. “I hope therapy works. Speaking of that…Juniper?”

“You first, Aaron.”

“Me? No.” He grunts. “Our therapy is we’re off to Corfu in a few days. That’s my therapy and yours, unless we change our minds. It’ll be a holiday in the sun.”