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I shook my head. “Not going to get caught,” I assured him. “I just need to check on her.” I’d waited long damn enough. Everyone in that house should be asleep by now, and I was itching to get to Lillian.
He chuckled, shaking his head before he closed his eyes. “I knew you were going to get attached,” he teased.
I rolled my eyes at him. “I didn’t want to—not to a woman part of this fucking shit we’re in—but I am, so I’m dealing with it.” I opened his window before turning to look at him. “You’ll text Solomon and check on him later?” I asked. I knew we’d already discussed it, but he’d assured me he would. I would have my phone on me just in case, but I trusted Ezra to make sure my little brother was okay. I trusted the family Solomon was with, which was hard to say about a family tied to our church, but that didn’t mean I let my guard down. Trust could easily be broken.
Ezra nodded. “I’ll check on him. I promise.” He waved me off. “Now go.”
I slid out of his window, silently landing on my feet in the grass right outside. His parents were still awake, so I couldn’t go out the front door, not if I wanted to avoid them and their fucking nitpicking. They were almost as bad as my father.
Ezra got out of bed a moment later and lowered the window so it was only opened just a crack, that way I could still get back in later. I pulled my hood up over my head and quickly made my way through the connected backyards, all of the houses dark, until I reached the back of Lillian’s place.
All of the lights were out, not even a back porch light on like most of the other houses on the street. I scanned the area just to be sure there weren’t any motion-sensor lights outside, and once I was sure I wouldn’t be spotted, I made my way around the side of the house to Lillian’s room.
Her window was shut, her curtains drawn. I muttered a quiet curse and gently knocked on it, hoping it was loud enough to wake her while not disturbing her parents. Dealing with her father wasn’t something I was keen on. Disturbing him meant putting her at risk.
I waited for a minute, and when I didn’t hear anything, I knocked again, this time just a tad bit louder. I heard a squeak and smiled to myself. She was awake, and if that squeak was anything to go by, I’d just accidentally scared the piss out of her.
A moment later, she pulled back her curtain just a tiny bit, peaking out at me. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw it was just me and not some weirdo before she unlocked her window and quietly slid it up. Thankfully, it didn’t squeak, keeping my presence concealed.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed. Her eyes were puffy and swollen from crying, and her hair was a mess. She definitely looked like she’d seen better days, though she was still fucking stunning. I didn’t know any other person who could go through what she did on a daily basis and still look as gorgeous as she managed to.
I climbed through the window, and when the light hit her face just right, I saw the bruising there, and her eye was swollen, a bruise lingering around it, too. My muscles bunched, my breaths coming heavier as I stared at her.
“I’ll kill him,” I quietly snarled, no longer giving a fuck about the consequences. I prowled to the door, murder on my mind, my hands shaking with rage. She quickly gripped my arm, pulling on me. Growling, I turned to face her, and some of the rage left my body when I saw the tears welling in her eyes. Along with the relief that I’d come for her.
I gently cupped her unbruised cheek and turned her head, trying to rein in my temper enough to take care of her.
“Please let it go,” she begged me, her voice barely a whisper. “I fought against him, and I knew I shouldn’t have. This was the result.” She drew in a slow breath. “If it makes you feel any better, he’s terrified of you seeing it.”
“As he should be,” I ground out. I pulled the sub from my hoodie pocket and handed it to her. She took it in her shaking hands, a look so heartbreaking passing over her face, it almost brought me to my knees. She’d known such little kindness in her life. “I know it’s cold, but eat it.”
A small, trembling smile tilted her lips. She leaned up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to my cheek before settling on the floor. I frowned at her, wondering why in the hell she hadn’t sat on the bed.
“It creaks,” she whispered, basically reading my mind. “Very loudly.”
I nodded in understanding and headed into her bathroom. I rummaged through her medicine cabinet before finding Arnicare. I grabbed it out and some pain-relief tablets. After filling a small Dixie cup with water, I headed back into her room. She was halfway done with the sub already, no doubt hungrier than she would have ever let on.
“When’s the last time you ate?” I quietly asked her, making sure to keep my voice pitched low.
“Sunday when you took me for breakfast,” she softly responded. My muscles tensed, but I swallowed back the hate choking me. “Thank you—really. I was so hungry.”
I pressed my lips to the top of her head and then handed her two pain-relief tablets. She swallowed them down, and without a word, I got up to refill her dixie cup so she’d have a little something to drink while she ate the rest of her sub, silently cursing myself for not thinking of getting her a bottle of water or a soda.
“I’m going to rub this on your bruises,” I told her, kneeling in front of her and holding up the tube of Arnicare.
She nodded. While she continued eating, I gently applied the Arnicare to her face, being extra careful not to get any in her eye. She finished her sub just as soon as I finished putting the gel on her face. I grabbed the wrapping from her and stuffed it in my hoodie before peeling the black fabric over my head.
If she didn’t want me to go strangle her father in his sleep, then I was staying right here until daylight. She wasn’t getting rid of me.
“You’re staying?” she quietly asked me, her wide, blue eyes lighting up with hope.
I nodded. “I’m staying, little blondie.” I grabbed her comforter off the bed and pulled it down to the rug beneath us before laying back, propping my head up on my arm. I opened up my other arm to her. “Come here.”
She laid down beside me and rested her unbruised cheek on my chest, curling into my side. Her lips tentatively pressed to my throat, and I swallowed down a groan at the feel of her lips on my skin.
“Little blondie, what are you doing?” I rasped, my cock twitching in my jeans. She was playing a dangerous fucking game with her parents only right down the hall.
“I want to thank you,” she whispered.
