Page 59 of But For You

I moved out from under his arm, turning to look at him. “Thank you so much for being here, for planning to take me to look for Sam, and then for being his backup.”

“Of course,” he said softly, smiling at me.

Handsome man, tall, the same six-four that Sam was, and built with a similarly powerful physique, but whereas Sam moved fluidly, Duncan Stiel moved like a bull. He had light-blond hair and gray eyes. They were not Dane’s gray, not charcoal and flecked with silver, but more gunmetal and ringed in black. He had sharp, chiseled features and a great smile. I had no idea how Pat could not say, when asked, what precisely Duncan Stiel looked like. He was absolutely memorable.

“Now, you sit tight, and I’m gonna see if I can extricate Sam from everyone so you can talk to him.”

But they hadn’t even moved the body yet. I knew it would be hours.

Getting up, wrapping myself in the blanket, I returned to my room and lay down beside my kids, comforted as I watched them sleep. I didn’t even remember closing my eyes.

When I was gently shaken awake, I opened my eyes to find my husband standing over me. Checking the digital clock on the nightstand, I saw that it was just after three in the morning. I got up, and he steadied me, still with the lightweight blanket around me as he steered me out the door of the room, closing it behind us.

He walked me to the living room, which now only had one lamp on, casting the room in an amber glow, and then turned me to face him.

“I thought about letting you sleep, but I know you want to know things as soon as I do and not the next morning.”

I nodded.

“So, first off, you protected the kids, and you didn’t get yourself hurt in the process. That’s fuckin’ amazing.”

My eyes went down to my socked feet.

“I was more than mad, I was furious. You scared the fuck out of me because you would have been eaten alive if you had stepped foot in that damn bar. You can’t be the one riding to my rescue, J. You have to depend on other people now. You have kids.”

“So do you,” I breathed out.

He stepped in close to me, and his hands went to my face, gently, tenderly, and when he lifted my head so I would look at him, I saw how scared he was.

“Sam?”

He took a shaky breath as my hands closed over his wrists. “I didn’t think I’d get here in time. I thought … and you and Kola and Hannah …” He squinted, but I saw how red his eyes suddenly were. “I can’t lose any of you. It would kill me. Just … I’d be done.”

“I feel the same about you.”

I was grabbed so tight, crushed against the mountain of muscle that was Sam Kage.

“Did Duncan leave?”

“Yeah.”

“It was very nice of him to sit with me while the detectives were questioning me.”

“Well, he’s a caretaker at heart. He just doesn’t get the opportunity to be one very often.”

“Why not?”

Softly, slowly, he related Duncan’s story to me. It was a sad one, about how he couldn’t come out, not at work, not to his family, how his last relationship with an English professor had ended because Duncan was in the closet, and how he was currently cruising bars and picking up one-night stands. I felt bad for him, but by the same token, Sam Kage had come out to everyone he knew, both personally and professionally. It had been hard for him, and friends had been lost along the way, but for him, it was all he could do. Sam was not the kind of man who lived a secret life for anyone, and the fact that Duncan was made me feel terrible for him. But as Sam quietly reminded me, we all had to live with what we were comfortable with. Sometimes, being brave was not an option. Not everyone had the same support system or safety net.

“He really liked you,” Sam assured me. “But everybody does.”

“That’s not true at all,” I argued. “And you were mad earlier.”

“Because you took ten years off my life, just thinking about you running around without me.”

“I would have had Duncan with me, and he looks terribly capable.”

“Does he?”