Page 77 of Pretty Lies

He didn’t say a thing.

She walked until they couldn’t be seen. Until she was sitting on the curb of a sidewalk on a road that wasn’t very busy.

Cory sat down beside her. Della’s hands met her face as all that strength and adrenaline finally gave way. The tension in her back let go; she hunched over her drawn-up knees when the first sob fell from her lips. He wrapped her in a hug, pulling her into his side where she could hide away from the rest of the world for as long as she needed. His chin rested on her shoulder that lifted and fell with her pain.

And finally, she cried.

Loud and aching and broken.

She cried—he let her.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m sorry, babe.”

The sad truth?

He knew it didn’t help.

Nothing would.

•••

Cory rounded the side of his bed to check on Della one more time before he headed downstairs to the main lobby of his apartment building. Then, he would need to handle yet another thing before he could finally put an end to this whole day—and now night, considering the late time. He barely remembered leaving the hospital, but he couldn’t forget how heartbroken Della looked when he asked if she wanted to go to her place or even her parents’.

“He’s there,” she’d said.

Her brother, she meant.

Without asking her to explain, he already understood exactly what she meant. He bet at his place, tucked away under blankets and hidden in a mound of pillows, she was able to pretend for a little while that today hadn’t happened at all. She wasn’t faced with reminders of her brother on the walls in the form of pictures and forced to relive the trauma over and over again.

Reality would catch up.

It always did.

Cory would give her the night, though.

She could stay on his side of the bed if she wanted; he didn’t mind. Earlier, he’d sat out in the hallway while she cried herself to sleep because he’d come to learn that Della really didn’t like people seeing her emotions when she felt they were a weakness.

He didn’t know how to tell her.

Grief wasn’t a weakness.

That was human.

Nonetheless, he left her alone.

And hurt all the while.

Cory never felt worse than he did when he realized he cared for Della—of course, he already knew that—but couldn’t help her. He wasn’t accustomed to not being able to fix something when shit was all wrong.

This wouldn’t be made right.

It couldn’t.

Cory drifted his fingertips through the ends of Della’s hair that splayed over the dark comforter. She didn’t move when his fingers traveled over the curve of her naked shoulder. Her warmth gave him some sense of comfort because it was only then that he understood the part of him that was scared today.

Or rather, why he’d been scared.

For her.