Page 31 of Broken Skulls

And that alone silences the voice in my head.

He has me.

My legs crumble beneath me, and I fall forward … into his open arms.

“Shh,” he calms me, settling me firmly on his lap.

I tuck my face into the safety of his neck. “No one can ever know,” I whisper harshly.

“I understand,” he says, pressing his mouth to the top of my head.

Chapter Fourteen

Jacob

My mom told only one person where we were going when we left. One. That’s all it took for my dad to find us. So, trust me. I know the significance of what just passed between the two of us. She gave up her life to protect what was hers, and now she’s asking for the same level of devotion from me.

Elizabeth is giving herself to me … everything she is and everything she holds close to her.

I’m not going to fuck up this time.

She cried until she fell asleep in my arms, then I took her back to her room in the basement.

I tuck her in, running my fingers through her hair. It’s so soft.

She’s soft.

She’s quiet.

She’s everything they said she wasn’t.

“JD!” Lily yells down the stairs.

Fuck.

I rush out of the room and jog upstairs, finding her in the living room.

“Oh, there you are,” she says, placing her hand over her heart.

I wipe my hands down the front of my jeans. “Yeah, I was just doing some laundry in the basement.”

Her brows furrow, and she tips her head as if she’s listening for something. She walks over to the window, peering through the gap in my curtains.

“What’s up?”

She bounces nervously on her toes, keeping her eye on my driveway. “The room in your basement. You know, the one you use when you go into the dark. Um, you don’t have someone down there, do you?”

Lily is the only one who knows about that room.

I drop my head and laugh. “Is this about my joke? It was just that … a joke.”

“Was it?”

“Lily, who would I have down there?”

She looks at me. “I saw the way you were looking at her in Iowa.”

“Who?”

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