Page 87 of Protector

Mistakenly, I’d thought the high would last, but the world was full of reminders, each one of them just waiting to knock me back down to the ground.

Jamie’s body went rigid, and his grip tightened. “They suggested exposure therapy, but it’s obvious you ain’t ready, princess.”

I took a shaky breath and turned to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. It was time to face the demons head-on. “I’m ready. How does this work?”

Chapter Seventeen

Celia: 2006

Ijerked my head up off the pillow at the sound of raised voices coming from the living room and blinked at the clock.

It was just after eleven.

I’d hoped for another few hours of sleep before going to pick the girls up from school, but it sounded as if Angel had decided to hang out and catch up on his daytime television at the only volume he seemed to know—loud.

After driving me home, Jamie had retired to the hammock in the backyard. By the time I got up to get the girls out the door, he was already gone again.

Kicking the blankets off with a groan, I padded into the bathroom and studied my bloodshot and still-swollen eyes in the mirror before splashing cold water onto my face. Jamie ran on little to no sleep and looked like a million bucks. I did it and looked like the undead.

With rocks weighing heavily on my chest, I’d pushed myself past the panic and anxiety, as I relived the events of that night, over and over, into the early hours of the morning.

When I started slipping away, Jamie would turn it back to blackjack, rapidly firing questions to pull me toward reality.

After back to back panic attacks and another fainting spell, he’d been prepared to call it off, apologizing and insisting again that I wasn’t ready.

It only made me want to fight harder.

My body screamed for me to run, but I stayed; inhaling the smoke from the cigar… tracing my fingers over a diamond thirteen ring and remembering how the hot metal had felt like a thousand bees stinging my skin.

The worst part was putting myself through the emotionally and physically draining exercises without fully knowing if they’d worked.

Voices reached a fever pitch as I left the bedroom, and I pushed my exhaustion to the side, ready to lay into Angel until I happened to glance toward the front door and realized it wasn’t the television.

“Mother? What are you doing here?” I’d managed to avoid her for the better part of five years, dealing only with my father when necessary.

She pushed past Angel. “Why are you still in bed in the middle of the day—why do your eyes look like that? Are you high, Celia?”

I pressed the pads of my fingers under my eyes and shook my head. “No, I’m just tired—”

“Where are the girls?” She forced her chin up, jerkily turning her head as if Kate and Dakota might pop up from behind the furniture at any second.

Leaving his post by the front door, Angel came over to stand at my side. My mother looked him up and down with a sneer. “I thought Dakota was joking when she said you had a vagrant living here—”

“A vagrant?” My voice shot up several octaves, and while Angel stayed silent, I could feel the rage coming off of him in waves. “First of all, as usual, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Second, when were you around my daughter?”

She waved her manicured nails flippantly. “Your father and I have lunch with her once a week at school, and thank the saints for that because otherwise, I’m afraid we’d never see her.”

Angel’s hand on my shoulder was the only thing that kept me from launching myself at her. “There was a reason for that,” I bit out.

“Apparently.” The judgment in her eyes made it evident that she thought it had something to do with Angel. “She admitted that you’d been leaving her and Mary Katherine alone with a perfect stranger for quite some time now. I told your father that we’ve ignored your poor choices, but I can’t sit back and watch you ruin their lives too.”

“Get out,” I growled, stabbing my finger toward the door. “Get out and never come back here again. You are not welcome around me, and you are not welcome around my girls. What we do is none of your goddamn business!”

Instead of cowering, my mother brought her hand up to her mouth with a soft laugh. “Oh, but it is my goddamn business. You see, I hired someone to look into it, and this man…” she pointed at Angel. “Has quite the record. Let’s see… there was drug possession—”

“It was weed,” he interjected. “My arthritis gets bad and—”

She nodded condescendingly, and I brought my arm around his waist, each of us keeping the other from losing control.

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