Page 86 of Solanum

She slipped into them and I hoisted her up immediately. Her legs wrapped around my middle and she buried her face against my shoulder. "I forgot my gun."

"I grabbed it for you. It's in your bag." I kissed her cheek. "I have something else for you, too." I toted her over to the sofa and sat with her in my lap.

She swiped at her eyes, drawing in slow breaths to calm herself down. I cupped her face in my hands and stroked her cheeks with my thumbs.

"Will you have to go to work?" she croaked, gripping the center of her chest as her panic seemed to escalate.

"No, honey. I was going to tell you. I took my paid time off for a month. I have hundreds of hours saved up so I'm staying home with you. Okay?"

She cried harder but nodded and grabbed me in a relieved hug. I squeezed her to me, cupping the back of her head to my shoulder. My heart couldn't fracture any more than it already had at that point, and so I just held her.

Eventually, she settled to gentle sniffles and her hand pressed against my neck where she brushed her thumb over the curve of my collarbone. I kissed her forehead, and she closed her eyes, nodding as if I asked her if she was okay.

"I have something for you," I said, digging into my pocket to pull out her bracelet. "Found it in the pocket of your robe in the bathroom at your condo."

A tearful smile cracked her face, and she took it when I held it out to her, hugging it to her chest. "You found it."

"I did. Want me to put it on you?"

She nodded, leaning up and holding her left wrist out to me. I fastened the bracelet around her, brushing my thumb over it a few times before kissing the back of her hand.

"There we go. Back where it belongs."

"Back where I belong," she whispered, smiling down at the way it looked on her. "In your lap."

I chuckled and nodded. "Right where you belong, Kitten."

Her whole body melted under the affection of her pet name and she met my gaze then, tilting her head while she watched me. "Does everyone at work think I'm a fool?"

"What?" My brow furrowed at the oddly timed question. "Of course not, Nor. Not at all."

"I was sleeping with a murderer. A rapist. I'm a forensic psychologist who couldn't identify that her own boyfriend was a sociopath—"

"But you did, Nor. You did which is why he went after you. Sali told me everything. Your notebooks that he found. All of it. From the ruse in the woods, to Bridget describing the dropped identification badge. No one thinks you're a fool."

"Then they'll think I'm a victim." She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "Which I am."

"Maybe so, but only because you figured it out first. Not because you didn't figure it out."

"I should've known sooner." She drew in a deep breath before everything tumbled out of her mouth. "We went away together in August to the beach house. The way he treated me… I should've known."

"What did he do?" I held her hands in mine, keeping them close to my heart. Talking about Perkins hurting her killed me inside, but I knew she needed to talk about it when she was ready and I would listen to every word.

"I thought I would like some…bondage things with him. I told him I might. But when he tied me up, he wanted to roleplay rape fantasies." She sniffled, blinking away her tears. "Of course, we got in a fight about it because that's horrible. It's a horrible thing to ask of me. Of anyone."

"It is." Sali told me some of this information, but I let her continue, encouraging her to tell me anything she felt she needed to. "I'm so sorry you had to suffer through that alone."

"I was going to break up with him, Car. I was. Then Wilkinson sent me to Grays Harbor on this case and I just let it slide. I just let it happen. He hacked my computers, bugged my car. Listened to private conversations." She shook her head before a darkness clouded her features suddenly. "But the most satisfying thing was seeing Sali shoot him. Seeing him fall to the floor. And then knowing she snapped his neck." She drew in a deep breath. "Makes me feel like I did it. Like I can channel myself into the satisfaction of his death."

"You know, I was thinking something like that myself. I didn't know Sali before this very well, but what I've learned from her in the past few weeks is that I also take comfort in knowing she killed the man who hurt people that she and I care about very much." I stroked her arms in soothing rotations, more for myself at present. "She said it was almost like she channeled all of our power, all of our pain, not just her own, and took him out. I believe that. It's not easy to snap the neck of a human without some sort of extreme adrenaline. Maybe we all funneled that energy into her."

"I'm glad of it. It comforts me knowing that her hands did it." She squeezed my hands to her chest that time. "It just does."

"Me too."

Finally, she slowly blossomed into Nora again, and I did everything I could to keep her talking.

"Wilkinson waited to tell me what happened to you. You were gone an entire day and I didn't know," I disclosed. "It was Anita who called me on the sly. I would've been there, Nor. I would've been there when Sali and Stiles busted in that place to find you." Silent tears tumbled down my cheeks despite my desire to hold on to them. "I would've been there. I'm sorry I wasn't. I'm sorry the last thing I said to you was horrible."

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