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Although peeved they cut my hair without permission, I’ll be more annoyed if they steal Lucy’s childhood from her like they stole my formative adult years from me.
“You…” That burned more than you can imagine.
“Can she have water?”
I sling my eyes to the side of the room when Brodie projects his question that way.
A nurse in scrubs jerks up her chin before moving to the bedside to fill a cup. “Slow slips.”
Pure. Heaven.
Once I have enough wetness in my throat to speak, I lock eyes with Brodie and say, “You can’t co-come with me. Lucy—”
“Is already angry at me,” he interrupts. “She wanted to come see you.” His eyes bounce around my face. “I didn’t think you would want her to see you like this, so I made her stay with Thane and Amelia.”
Knowing Amelia is here makes me smile, but it doesn’t alter the facts. He’s right. I don’t want Lucy to see me like this. The last image I have of her is her tear-stained face, but I’d pick it over the image reflecting in Brodie’s massively dilated eyes now.
I look wretched.
“Sh-she needs her family as much as th-they need her.” Since he can’t deny my claims, he remains quiet. “My father hid us away so well I didn’t have anyone to fall back on when he passed. They showed up at his funeral, then just left. I had no one.” A ghost-like grin spreads across my face. “Until I met Amelia and then eventually you.” My brows furrow as my confusion clears. “I always thought it was Lucy I was drawn to that day, but it wasn’t.” The remorse clouding his eyes clears away a smidge when I whisper, “It was you. But you wouldn’t be half the man you are without Lucy, and she wouldn’t be half who she is without Caroline’s family.” He grips my hand harder when I say, “She needs them in her life, Brodie, and I need to make this right.”
“It’s not your job.”
“It is,” I deny. “I should have fought harder. I should have kept shouting until someone listened to me.”
“You were a child.”
“Then,” I reply. “I’m not anymore. I am a grown woman who can make her own decisions.” The tension shifts from angsty to lusty when the remembrance of me saying that to him when he told me I was too young to fuck a thirty-seven-year-old man pops into my head. “And I’m choosing to do this. I’m choosing to use my voice as you have for the victims over the past sixteen years.” When he scoffs, I murmur, “Don’t let one batch of rotten apples ruin it for the rest of them. There are more good agents than bad.”
Brodie’s surprised eyes dance between mine. “You know he was an agent?”
I nod. It doesn’t hurt as much this time around. “Curtains offer as little privacy as a two-way bathroom.” When I laugh, everywhere hurts. “I’m sorry.”
“For laughing?” Brodie asks as he watches a doctor check that my pain medication is being adequately distributed through my IV drip.
His eyes snap back to mine when I murmur, “For lying. I-I—”
“It’s okay,” Brodie interrupts, uncaring of my reason. “We all make mistakes.”
“Is-is that what I was? A mistake?”
“No,” he answers immediately, taking my pain away better than the needle the doctor jabs into my IV. “Was I to you?”
Macy’s giggle fills the room when I say, “Maybe.”
I’m a liar, but sometimes lies are needed when you’re trying to ease a man’s guilt.
The past two weeks were some of the best of my life, but Brodie and I hardly know each other, so I refuse to let his guilt force him to accept the blame for something he didn’t do.
The pain relief the doctor inserts into my IV makes my words groggy, so I have no choice but to move quickly. “Will you do something for me?”
Brodie’s immediate answer exposes that my worry about guilt fueling his responses was accurate. “Anything.”
“Will you call Lucy for me?” His hand freezes halfway into his jeans pocket when I whisper, “I don’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”
EPILOGUE
BRODIE
Four months later…
When I peer at Lucy to gauge her response about our last candidate, she rolls her eyes. “Her breath smelled like tuna, and her feet were gross. Has she never heard of a pedicure?” She stumbles on her last word. “It’s a no from me.”
I look at Thane, who is just as invested as Lucy in finding Henley’s replacement. I’m hoping he will help me outvote Lucy two to one, but instead, he shakes his head.
While grumbling under my breath, I cross out the name of the nanny we had just interviewed. She was candidate number eight. “At this rate, we’re going to run out of candidates.”
Lucy smiles, pleased by my response.
I swipe her happiness out from beneath her. “If you want Henley to ever return, we need to do this. I thought we agreed on that?”
