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I wasn’t going to push her. Hell if I was. Like any man, I was capable of my dumb moments, but I wasn’t that much of a fuckwit.
She hadn’t thrown me out.
Yet.
I’d offered to go, but she hadn’t accepted that offer.
Yet.
No way in fuck was I going to do anything that would have her shoving me out the door.
I let go of my hold on her waist and raised my hands in surrender. “I won’t say or do anything that you don’t want me to.”
Her chin firmed before she nodded, and she twisted around and moved toward the hall door. As she dragged it open, I heard Lena say, “Look who’s here, Jake? Mommy!”
Inside, I froze, but I pushed ahead as Aoife grated out, “Lena, I’d like you to leave my home.”
I could almost imagine Lena’s bewilderment, and I shook off that ridiculous need that had been inbuilt in me from adolescence.
We protected our women.
Always.
But in this instance, that was what I was doing. With the woman whom I’d chosen to make my own. Whom I’d always fucking choose.
“Aoife? What is it?”
Hearing my wife suck in a shaky breath, I stepped forward, unsure if she had the strength to go through with whatever she had in mind, and I placed myself at her back.
Lena looked at me in confusion, but I kept my glance straight ahead, pinned above her so that we couldn’t make eye contact.
I was not and never would be her life raft in troubled waters again.
If only I’d made that decision years ago.
“I-I…” When I placed my hand on Aoife’s waist, she sucked in a breath and intoned, “I know what you did. I know you killed my mom.” Her head tipped up. “I want you to get the hell away from us.” Her chin wobbled. “Now.”
That was a lot calmer than I’d anticipated. I’d half imagined her throwing shit at Lena and chasing her out of the apartment.
Gently squeezing her waist, I backed her up silently as Lena whispered, “I’m so sorry, Aoife.”
I didn’t have to look at her expression to hear her devastation.
“Sorry isn’t enough.” She sucked in a breath, and then it came. She screamed loud enough for Jake to start wailing, “You killed my mom!”
Lena began backing away down the hall.
She’d been good lately, taking her meds, but I could sense that she was feeling hunted. Throw in her PTSD and this wasn’t going to end well.
My gaze dropped and I watched her without making eye contact as she scrambled toward the elevator, her hand fumbling for the button.
“How could you keep that from me?” Aoife shrieked, the demand punctuated by the elevator doors whirring open. “Why would you befriend me?”
Only when Lena was standing inside it did she answer, and it was simple and not the right thing to say at all, “Because I had to atone.”
With Jake wailing, I darted over to his side to pick him up.
Comforting him, I watched as Aoife grabbed an ornament from a console table and hurled it at the elevator.
