Page 89 of Take My Hand

“It’s no problem at all,” Jane says without looking up. Once she finishes chopping the nuts and tossing them in the bowl, she spins around and opens a cupboard behind her to grab a large bottle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

She moves around the kitchen like it’s her own.

The three of us chat as Nikolai gets everyone a refill. Jane fills us in on her latest work drama, which mostly consists of her disdain for her co-workers at the new law firm she was recently hired at. Scar raves about a new nightclub that opened in Vegas that she DJ’d at last week and the three of us all vow to go check it out soon.

The idea of a girls’ trip sends a thrill through me. I’ve never been on one before, never had enough girlfriends to go with and it’s definitely not something Daniel would’ve let me do on my own.

But I can just picture the look on Hayden’s face as I send him video after video of the three of us running around the streets of Vegas with a smile on his face and texting Walker to lament over our time away.

Reid stands off to the side of the kitchen, leaning against the end of the counter, silently sipping on his beer.

Hayden didn’t go over and say anything to him when we arrived besides giving a nod of acknowledgment that Reid surprisingly returned.

Scar and Jane had exchanged a look at seeing it, a spark of hope between them.

A timer goes off and Jane turns toward the stove, running face-first into Nikolai who was walking through to grab a fresh bottle of wine.

He steadies her as she wobbles slightly, but drops his hand from her back quickly as if it burned him.

They exchange a look I can’t quite decipher and I peer out of the corner of my eye toward Scar to see if she just saw what I did, but her face is buried in her phone.

I turn my head slightly to see if Hayden was paying attention, but he and Walker are too wrapped up in their own conversation.

Grabbing my glass of cabernet, I slide out of Hayden’s lap, leaving him with a quick kiss as I walk over to the large, open doors looking out over the view.

A soft breeze kisses my skin, a floral note in the air from the flowers Nikolai has around his landscaping. The low music floating through the built-in speakers is barely audible among the chatter of everyone’s conversations. But I take this moment for myself, enjoying the taste of the wine on my tongue and the air on my face.

That is until a shadow steps into my periphery and I look out of the corner of my eye to see Reid standing next to me. He looks out at the same view I’m taking in, but with less appreciation in his eye and more jadedness.

We haven’t spoken to each other yet tonight. Not that I really ever have had much to say to Reid. Even back on tour, our paths didn’t cross much and besides the occasional ‘thumbs up’ to my texts when I send photos to the guys for their socials, we don’t have much interaction.

But I take his coming over here as a sign that he has something to say to me and doesn’t know how to be the first one to open the conversation.

“Thank you,” I say, breaking the ice.

“For what?” He doesn’t look my way as he asks, so I follow his lead and continue to stare out at the setting sun.

“For what you did. For punching Daniel.” It sounds strange to thank someone for punching another human being, but I don’t care about proprieties. It felt good to see those photos of Reid cocking his arm back and connecting with Daniel’s jaw.

“Fucker deserved it,” Reid says, lip curled in distaste.

“Not going to argue with you on that.”

Reid shoots me a humorous look, and I smile at him in return. He doesn’t offer me kind words, or a hug like the others, but there’s so much behind the small look he gives me that sends assurance through me in a wave, giving air back into my lungs that I didn’t realize I was missing. There’s something to be said about these people around me, closest to me, to the man I love, all knowing about my past choices and accepting me.

They’re a family, dysfunctional and broken as they may be at the moment, but they’ve all accepted me as one of their own and were willing to go to bat for me.

This feels like an olive branch, not so much between him and I but hopefully between him and Hayden.

Which speaking of…

“I know you didn’t just do it for me, so yeah”—I take a sip of my wine to clear the lump in my throat—“thank you. Again.”

Hayden told me about his conversation with Reid. How he told Hayden he didn’t want him to feel guilty in the aftermath of everything that he had physically harmed someone. And while Hayden maintained that he wouldn’t have felt guilty, I could see in his face that he was trying to assure himself as much as he was me.

From the photos I saw of the fight, the same sense of peace that I see on Hayden’s face when he’s edging me, wringing out my body for everything it’s worth and fully in control of the situation, is exactly what I saw on Reid’s face as he held Daniel’s shirt in one hand and drew back his other to deliver another blow.

Reid gives the slightest shrug of his shoulders in response before taking a long swig of his beer.

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