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“Liam’s room,” Cormac called.
I slammed Liam’s door open. He was in bed, bare chested, his phone propped on his bedside table, with Ginevra’s pale face staring back at us. She looked like shit, drawn and exhausted, with deep shadows under her eyes.
“What the hell is going on here?” I snapped.
Ginevra blinked, as if registering my presence in the room for the first time. “You guys are such assholes,” she sighed. “Liam, call me back when you’re done.” And she fucking hung up.
“Call her back right now,” I shouted, desperate to see her face again.
“I will not,” Liam bit back.
Cormac wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pushed me onto the bed, until he and I sat knee to knee, our hips pressed against Liam’s warm body.
Liam pinched his nose. “She still has nightmares. Every fucking night.”
I waited, saying nothing.
“She calls me at ten, her time, and I stay on the line with her. When she wakes screaming, I calm her down. It’s the only way she gets any sleep.”
My heart dropped to the floor. I had been imagining Ginevra happy and carefree, back in California where she’d built her life, with none of the weight of our lives to drag her down.
“How long?” I asked, my voice hoarse with pent up emotion.
“Two weeks. Since she went back.”
I slumped on his bed, scrubbing my face with my hands. “Fuck.”
“Do you ever talk?” Cormac asked him quietly.
“Not really. She tells me if it was a good day or a bad day or just a long day, but that’s it. She’s not doing well.”
“How could you hide this from us?” I asked Liam, anguished.
Liam stared at me, his green eyes steady, one side of his mouth tilted up in a half-smile. He took my hand in his. “Ginevra would have asked me to share it if she’d wanted me to.”
I closed my eyes against the hurt that coursed through me.
“She looked like shit,” Cormac said. “One of us needs to go to her.” The three of us stared at each other, each of us desperate to be the one who went. When Liam would have spoken, I held up a hand.
“Cormac should go.” If there was anyone who could pick up the pieces of Ginevra and somehow glue them back together in a way that made room for us in her life, it was Cormac.
He slid off the bed and strode out the door. “I’ll pack a bag.”
Liam looked at me with sympathy in his eyes. “Go get changed and come back. You can spend the night here, with us.”
With us. With Ginevra.
Ten minutes later, I was curled up beside him in a pair of sweatpants, as he called Ginevra on the smartphone. God, she looked tired.
“How’re you doing, princess?” I asked, my voice gentle, holding back the rush of emotion as I got a good look at her for the first time since she’d left.
“I’m okay,” she answered, her voice cracking. A lone tear rolled down her face. “Tired,” she continued, trying to laugh.
“You never had to pretend for me, baby,” Liam interrupted, his voice commanding. “If you’re tired, you’re tired.” I looked at him in surprise. He was so rarely firm. She had wrought changes in all of us.
She nodded. “I’m tired.”
“Is it alright if Rian stays with us tonight?”
