Page 71 of Don't Let Go

“I’ve got you,” he said, and it gradually sank in that he was saying it over and over. When he sat down, he parked me in his lap. Not even his coaxing could get me to lift my head from where I cried against his throat. “I’ve got you.”

Bit by bit, he let me cry and just rubbed slow circles against my back. My eyes were swollen and sore, my nose kept running. I had the hiccups and I was all snotty. I hated this. Trying to wipe at my face with my sleeve, I couldn’t seem to get any of it to dry.

“Here,” he said, grasping my chin gently when I would have tried to look away. With care, he dabbed at my eyes and my nose. The fabric was much softer than the scratchier edge of my sweatshirt. “Sugar Bear…”

The long sigh had me swallowing another set of sobs. The handkerchief he had was cotton and the more he dabbed at my face, the clearer my vision grew. I almost laughed when he wiped my nose.

There was something so deeply moving about how he stared at me. This giant of a man was so big, and he filled every space hewas in. Yet, in this moment, he wrapped all that size around me and it didn’t make me feel small at all.

It made me feelsafe.

“You going to look at me again?” The quiet question pulled my gaze up to meet his. My eyes really hurt. “There she is…”

He seemed to be searching for something, but I really had no idea what. The release of so much emotion left me—aching and empty. Like I’d lanced some wound and now it needed to heal.

Concern tightened his expression.

“I hate crying,” I admitted in a voice better suited to a croaking frog. “I always get swollen eyes and a shiny nose, I lookterrible.”

“No, you don’t,” he said, lying at me with a straight face. “I mean, the nose might be a little shiny, but it’s not like Rudolph shiny.”

I blinked at him.

“And the eyes? Well…maybe if you were really into the makeup thing, you’d have these black smudges, but right now they just look a little red and puffy. The stormy gray there makes me think we just got caught in a thunderstorm.”

Now I just stared.

He raised his eyebrows. “Too much?”

“I have no idea what to do with you,” I admitted.

“Anything you want, Sugar Bear. Especially if it will make you feel better and not cry anymore.”

I snorted, which was damn hard with my sinuses all stuffed up and he offered up that handkerchief all nice and polite.

“You maybe want to tell me what’s going on in there?” He touched two fingers to my temple then pushed some of the hair back and tucked it behind my ear.

“I don’t know,” I said, being as honest as I could be. “I didn’t even expect this until it happened.”

“Okay, well let’s try it this way. What happened?”

The bruises on his face were darkening from the red marks to something more blackish-purple. They just added to his fierceness. The longish hair that he’d had pulled back from his face earlier, spilled around him now, kind of like a Viking, and his beard had felt soft whenever he rubbed his cheek against my temple.

Nothing about this man said gentle, caring, or kind. Nothing. Not his voice. His physical presence or the brutal, sheer violence I knew he was capable of, and yet… he was also the man who came in to hold me when I had bad dreams and would stay awake to chase them off when they came.

He was also sitting here with me in his lap. While I didn’t think it was possible to make himself small, he was doing something.

“You went—you went off comms. You didn’t give me any time, you just shut it off and you were in a no camera zone. I couldn’t see you. I couldn’t back you up.” Every word was like pulling out a piece of my own soul and slapping it down. “I’m compromised on every level. I can’t do my job if you don’t let me, and I can’t watch out for you when you go off book.”

I licked at the salt on my lips. A tear escaped from the corner of my eye and slid down my cheek. I could barely feel it but his gaze traced the path.

“I hate this—it’s not like you haven’t done it before. In the field, in far more violent situations, you go in alone all the time but you were out there…” I swallowed that hard lump in my throat. “You were out there without Locke or Remy or me… and you gothurt.”

“It’s just a few bruises,” he said, dismissing it and I punched his shoulder. Fuck he was so damn dense. The blow hurt my hand and I had to shake it off. “Sugar Bear… don’t…”

“Don’t what?” I demanded as he caught my hand. He pressed a kiss to my protesting knuckles. His beard teased my skin. “Don’t freak out?”

He winced. “Clearly,” he said slowly. “I could have handled that better. But really, I’m fine… It’s not like I got shot or anything.” The chuckle was there, just beneath the words. Faint, but present.

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