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Her brows pinch together and her arms fall to her sides. Her fingers pick at the thick, oversized black sweats covering every inch of her skin. Her toes curl like she’s trying to shrink away from me one inch at a time and the pink socks hiding her feet piss me off even more.
She shrugs, glancing away. “I’m cold.”
“You’re lying.”
Her head jerks back, causing her soaked hair to leave drips down her cheek. They look like tears and the sight burns my throat. She bats them away and shoves past me.
“Fuck off, Roman,” she spits, but I hear it. The way her voice breaks when she freezes in the center of her room.
It’s all the confirmation I need.
Before I can question her, before I can yell at her, demand answers, she whirls on me, digging her tiny finger into my chest. Her face is red, her anger palpable, as she unloads all the hurt writhing inside her.
“How dare you!” she shouts, dropping her finger and replacing it with her palms. She pushes me backward, and I let her. She needs a place to put her pain, and I need to be the one to take it. “This is all your fault! You brought them all here. You made the mess, and I had to be the one to clean it up. Me, Roman. I had to fix what you broke. Again!”
My fingers are begging to thread through her hair, to grip her sweet face, to bring her into the very chest she’s battering as she releases the ugly demons burning in the pits of her soul.
But I can’t.
I can’t touch her or hold her. I can’t comfort her. Not when she’s right.
So damn right, it makes me sick.
So instead, I nod, agreeing with her as I continue to take her pain.
“I know, Goldie,” I grunt, my back hitting the wall. “Give it to me.”
Her face contorts and her eyes gloss over, but she doesn’t let the tears fall. She won’t give herself that freedom, not when she’s so close to breaking.
Maybe that’s why I lie when she finally asks me the question that’s no doubt been burning a hole in her chest since last night.
“Where the hell were you? Why didn’t you come back?” I swear the words for me are sitting on her tongue, but she chokes those back, too.
I can see how much she’s aching. How much guilt she’s holding—for what, I don’t know. Maybe the party, people drinking and making a mess. Destroying property carelessly. Guilt she carries because she’s such a pure, innocent soul who loves so much, so deeply, it hurts her to see the world hurt.
That’s why I don’t tell her the real reason I couldn’t get to her the way I desperately wanted to.
I don’t tell her about the tiny girl that Chase cradled in his chest and begged me to help. The small girl who had no business being at the party in the first place. The one who definitely had no business getting drunk with a group of random guys far too old to even look her way.
The girl Eve loves so much, looks after like a little sister.
Clover.
She was completely wasted when Chase found her, curled up in the laundry room by the back door. I’m so thankful he had the sense to do a final sweep of the house before corralling Oli into the back of his car.
Otherwise, no one would have found Clover in the darkness.
Chase and Oli were too drunk to drive, and I wasn’t going to send them away in an Uber. Not with Clover’s whimpers filling the stuffy Georgia air. Not with Chase’s frantic eyes pleading with me to help her. A girl so small, so fragile, like Oli once was. I saw it there, the flashbacks, the pain of the past encroaching on his mind. It was written all over his face.
That’s why I didn’t think twice about rushing them to the hospital in Mammoth. I called Kon on the way and he took Oli home, got her bundled safely in her room at the loft, tucked away from the unexpected party none of us wanted to attend.
Chase and I stayed at the hospital while they pumped Clover’s stomach and kept her comfortable with IV fluids until her foster mom showed up. I had to drag him from her side as he struggled with the unnecessary guilt sitting deep in his chest. I drove him and his car home, then came straight back to Divinity, thankful my bike was still at the loft.
Now, here I stand, in front of the one woman who, throughout it all, never once left my mind. And it’s the guilt and devastation on her face that has me choking back the words, knowing it will only add more pain to her consciousness.
Instead, I shrug it off like nothing matters. “Chase moved the party to our house. I couldn’t leave him to deal with it alone.” Not a lie, not really. But it’s not the truth and I hate it.
Eve shakes her head and steps back. My body turns to ice the second she’s no longer in my space, but I let it happen.
