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“Abi?”
I pretend to be asleep.
“Red?” He moves closer to the bed, his fingers ghosting over my arm.
A shiver goes through me, but I still don’t acknowledge him.
Because what would I even say?
I shouldn’t be here. In his bed. In the Heirs’ inner sanctuary.
All to appease his guilt. The strange sense of obligation he feels to me and the girls.
Elliot moves around the room, and I think he’s stripping out of his clothes. Then the bathroom door clicks shut, and I can breathe again.
It feels like this morning all over again.
Him showering. Me lying here pretending to be asleep.
Minutes pass, each one more painful than the last. Hopefully he’ll come out and leave. I don’t want to deal with the awkward tension that exists between us now.
But when the bathroom door finally opens again, Elliot doesn’t leave. Instead, the bed dips and he moves in behind me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, tucking his arm around my waist, sending my heart into a free fall.
He pulls me closer, tucking my body into the hard lines of his, and I don’t know what to do.
Because this… this isn’t right.
He isn’t right.
I need to move. I need to shove his arm away and ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing.
But I don’t do any of those things.
Because for the first time in what feels like forever, I can breathe.
14
ELLIOT
The moment his name lit up my screen, I knew my day was about to turn to shit.
And it was already shaping up to be a shitshow.
Abigail was pissed at me. That much was obvious. I just had no idea why.
Surely, she wasn’t pissed because I held her while she cried; that I allowed her to fall asleep in my arms.
Or maybe she was.
She doesn’t want to be here. She wants to be alone without having eyes on her.
I get it. Her need to slink into the darkness unnoticed, to do whatever it takes to lessen the empty hole that’s been left in her chest. But I refuse to allow that to happen, even if she hates me for it.
As much as I didn’t want to leave her here, I knew I couldn’t turn down the demand from my brother.
Life with him gone has been almost bearable.I can just about handle one of them at a time.
