Page 15 of His Custody

“You want to tell me about it?” He wasn’t eager for her to say yes, but he wanted to at least offer if that’s what she needed. She rubbed her face against him and though it should’ve grossed him out, it didn’t. He loved the unself-conscious way she wiped her nose and dried her tears on his shirt. No hesitation. Such perfect trust. It eased some of his fear he’d been fucking this whole thing up, and her entire family getting killed would be the least of her problems.

“They left me.”

He could barely hear her from where her face was burrowed, but it was enough.

“We were on the boat and they left. They left me alone, Jas. In the middle of the ocean. I looked everywhere but they weren’t there. They took all the lifeboats, and they left me.”

Her voice was shaky with tears and it wore at his heart as surely as a stream of water wore at a stone.

“Oh, sweetheart.” He held her tighter and she started to cry hard again. “No one left you. They wouldn’t have left you. Gavin would’ve walked across hot coals for you. There’s no way he would’ve left you.”

“But they did, they did.”

How could he argue with that? They did leave. And they wouldn’t be coming back. They never would’ve left her on purpose, but they were gone nonetheless. So he offered a pathetic consolation prize. “I’ll never leave you. I will always be here for you. I swear.”

That seemed to soothe her, her keening dropped off to muffled whimpers. “I’m scared to go back to sleep.”

Something inside of him twisted up and wrung out. She struggled during the day and if she couldn’t have the hours at night without suffering, what was the point? It would get better—at least that’s what he’d been trying to convince himself—but it was so fucking hard for her. He could understand why she might give up.

He was already hiding the medications in the house. Not because she’d ever said or done anything that would lead him to believe she’d try to kill herself, but the possibility was enough to send him into spirals of paranoia. And not a little panic—what if she left him, too?

The idea tightened his stomach and he fought off the gag because she didn’t need to catch even a whiff of that thought. His own panic, his own heartache couldn’t leak through. If he let his flood out along with hers, they’d both drown.

It must’ve been the fear talking, the fear of what she might do if she couldn’t escape the misery ever, that made him say yes when she asked if she could sleep in his bed.

In the morning he woke up spooning her, his hard-on digging into her back. He didn’t come up from unconsciousness quickly and instead of letting go like he should have, he held her tighter, dug his nose into her hair and pushed his hips into her ass before he broke the surface. And when he did, he wished he hadn’t. Jesus. Judge Pollard would have his balls for this, and rightly. He was a fucking pervert.

Well, sure, he was a pervert, but the most honorable kind of pervert. The ones who call themselves perverts in the most mocking, affectionate way because what kind of pervert was he with the talking and the negotiating and the processing and the aftercare? There was a goddamndistinctionbetween the kind of pervert he was and the kind of pervert who would wake up with a hard-on pressed against the back of his dead kid brother’s girlfriend who was half his age.

Right now, he was the bad kind of pervert. The worst. And theveryworst part was he wasn’t disgusted. His conscious brain was still waking up, but the lizard, pleasure-seeking part of him told it to hit the snooze button, shut the fuck up, and go back to sleep.

She was a warm body next to his, and it was okay to find comfort in being close to another human. It was okay that he liked how her hair smelled, how her ribcage rose and fell under his arm, how her soft breath was even in his ears. Most of all, he liked how when he was with her, she could sleep. She wasn’t afraid. And yeah, he liked it when she stirred and nestled closer to him.

Which was why he needed to get up right the fuck now.

He snaked his arm out from around her and rolled away, careful not to jostle her even though every last sane ounce of him was screaming to get away. He edged toward the side of the bed and snuck off, making sure his footfalls were soft in the carpet as he made a break for the bathroom through the pass-through closet. Nothing less than a freezing cold shower would do. Send that fucking idiot lizard brain into hibernation where it belonged.

Easing the door of the bathroom shut so thesnickof the catch wouldn’t wake her, he stripped off his shorts and T-shirt, tossing them on the floor before he flicked on the water and stepped under the stream. He swore under the cold drops plastering his skin, but thankfully it accomplished what he’d hoped. A few minutes later, traitorous dick deflated, mind clear, he wrapped a towel around his hips just in time to hear her.

“Jasper?”

“Yeah. I’ll be right out.”

***

The dream was always the same. It had been a week since she’d stopped taking her sleeping pill, and still the dream came. It started with her and Gavin lounging on the deck at the front of the boat, having pushed the cushy lounge chairs together and facing them out to sea. Out here, without the city lights to spoil the view, the stars were bright and there were so many of them.

Gavin would tell her over and over the constellations. No matter how many times he told her, she could never remember. They’d joke it was because she was storing that information with him. She didn’t need to know, because he did and they’d never be apart. They were two halves of a whole, responsible for each other in a way no one else seemed to get. But it made sense to them; it was the only way they knew how to live. So when she rolled closer and tapped Gavin on his chest, he looked down at her and read her mind. “Popcorn?”

“Yeah.”

“Be right back, Tiki.”

He’d lope off to the galley to get their snack and she’d lie there, staring at the stars. She waited and waited. Gavin never took so long. Knew she hated cold popcorn. Maybe he’d run into someone on his way? But they wouldn’t keep him, not if they knew he was trying to get to her. He’d fidget, blue eyes darting in her direction until they let him go. It must have been twenty minutes before she looked for him. Maybe if she’d looked sooner she would’ve been able to find him.

But there was no one on the bridge, no one on the decks, no one in the galley, no one in the cabins. She called out. “Gavin? Mom? Dad? Aunt Emily? Uncle Arvid?” She didn’t bother calling for Jasper. Yet. She called for the crew. They’d known her, doted on her, since she was a little girl. They didn’t answer either.

She went down to the engine room but there was no one there and it was dark. The motor had stopped, there weren’t any sounds. That’s when fear tightened its grip on her stomach. If they were teasing her, playing some awful hide-and-seek trick, they wouldn’t have turned the engines off. She started to run, bare feet pounding across the changing surfaces. As she skidded to a stop on the deck, she noticed the lifeboats were gone. If they had to get off the boat, why hadn’t they told her? Shouldn’t there be alarms?

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