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“Cass. Sweetheart, look at me. You’re okay, you’re safe.”
No. No, I wasn't going to go there yet. I locked away my feelings to be examined later. I didn't want to look at them. I wanted to be here, I wanted to be happy, because…
“I'm pregnant. We're pregnant.” I huffed a laugh, “A baby. Eight weeks.”
Connor smiled again, but this time it was genuine. It was incandescent. It chased away the darkness, and my heart so full I felt like it would burst. My hand reverently pressed against my belly. A protective, maternal gesture.
“Is everything okay with it? Did they make sure?”
Connor reached down and interlaced his fingers with mine. “They said everything was just fine. You…and our baby…are going to be just fine.”
He spoke slowly, as if he were trying out the feel of those words.Our baby.I murmured them back to him, lips tugging up into a slow smile. A secret smile, one that was just for the both of us.
Slowly, softly, as if I were a porcelain doll he was afraid to break, Connor leaned down and kissed me, murmuring his love and adoration against my lips. I melted, basking in the warmth of his touch.
Finally, I started to tire. Connor convinced me to let him call for the nurse, and I convinced him to climb into bed and hold me while we waited.
Yes, I was broken, and both of us were far from okay. There was a long road ahead, but right there, right then, it didn't matter. All that mattered was the two—no, three—of us nestled together.
Safe.
33
Connor
Itwasstillearlymorning when I woke and found the other side of the bed already vacated and cold.
Again.
I rolled on my back and scrubbed my face in frustration. This had been going on for three weeks now, ever since we had gotten home from the hospital, and to be honest, I was starting to get really worried about Cass.
Cassidy’s abduction had taken several years off my life. They kept her admitted for another week after she had woken up for good. Most of it was just routine monitoring after severe head trauma, but I suspected another reason was to force Cass to rest.
She had tried to get up out of bed almost immediately, seemingly embarrassed about the amount of attention and the concern from those around her.I’m fine, I’m fine—it seemed every other word out of her mouth was some sort of reassurance, and nearly every one of them was a lie.
It had taken almost a week before she could even open her right eye. Another week before her damaged vocal cords had healed enough to allow her to speak normally. Her arm was still in a cast, and I could tell by the way she moved that she was in pain, but every time I tried to ask about it, she just shrugged me off.
I knew Cassidy feared her own vulnerability more than anything. She hated a fuss being made over her, but it had gotten to the point that it was starting to scare me.
The cuts and bruises were beginning to fade, although it still made me physically sick to look at the damage that had been done. Nothing I did ever felt like it was enough and seeing her in even the slightest bit of pain made me want to carve out my own heart.
Yes, her body was healing. But mentally…I had no idea what was going on in her head. Cassidy still hadn’t talked about what had happened. Not to me, and not to Dr. Long. The therapist had visited while she was still in the hospital, a tentative meeting where they felt one another out, but it hadn’t progressed much farther than that.
We had made a few appointments with Dr. Long since then, but Cassidy had always found excuses not to keep them. Which was really saying something, because with Moretti underground, a pile of bodies north of the river, and Cassidy unable to work, we had all but been confined to the penthouse.
And I was losing my goddamn mind.
Cassidy was locked up tighter than a scallop shell. Michael was useless to everyone in his grief. Nobody had heard from Tommy in days, and Sloane and Alfie were doing their best to hold the fort down at Lady D’s. I continued to butt heads with Callum over Cassidy’s abduction and the dust-up in Cambridge, but the one thing that we unanimously agreed upon was the need for Cassidy to lay low. Moretti would be out for blood, and the fact that he hadn’t made a move yet was troubling.
Anger still burned in my heart over what had been done to her. I would go after Moretti himself, just to put an end to it all, if I wasn’t so worried about leaving Cass right now. Not when she was like this.
Instead, I learned to recognize her tells. When she was stressed, when she was getting lost in her own head. When she was in pain and trying to tough it out instead of telling me. I felt like I was walking a tightrope with her, and one wrong step, one push at the wrong time, and it would send us both plunging down into the depths.
It was a strange kind of hell.
I stretched and shuffled into the kitchen, already sure what I would find—Cassidy at the kitchen island, case files spread out in front of her and her laptop powered up.
Working. At six in the morning.
