Page 112 of Winning Brynn

“Was it Indiana Jones again? Or another homicidal Celine with more deadly vegetables?” I keep my tone light in the hope that I can make her laugh enough to stop crying. It doesn’t work.

Her head shakes against me.

“No? The fish bowl, then?”

Another shake of her head.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Tears splash onto my arm, followed by yet another head shake.

“Come on, baby, you’re killing me here.”

Helplessness pierces through me as I hold her, my heart shattering a little more with every soft cry and sniffle. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help. It’s unusual that she doesn’t want to talk about her dream, unusual that she doesn’t want to talk at all, actually, considering she usually never stops, and it all adds to the growing wave of desperation I’m feeling to end whatever it is that is making her so sad.

I want to hit something.

Hell, I kind of want to kill something, which wouldn’t be at all productive right now, but the feeling is there all the same.

Something is hurting my girl, and whatever it is, dream or not, it deserves to die a slow and painful death.

Shifting away from her, I reach for my bedside table. “Just gonna turn on the light. I need to see you.”

“No.” Her hand strangles my arm until I move back in beside her. “No, please don’t.”

“Okay.” Whatever she wants, she can have it, even if it’s killing me not to see her face right now. “How can I make this better? Tell me what to do.”

She sighs, nuzzling her cheek against my arm. “Just hold me for a while.”

“I’ll hold you forever, if that’s what you need.”

More tears spill onto my skin, but I don’t care. I really will stay here forever if only she stops breaking my fucking heart.

“You can’t.” She sniffles. “But for now is enough.”

“I wish you’d tell me what’s going on,” I whisper, tracing love hearts on the back of her hand with the pad of my index finger.

“I’ll be okay, Leo. Don’t worry about me.”

As if I would ever not worry about her. Somehow in the space of just a few months, she has become the second most important thing in my life. Second, of course, only to my daughter. But Brynn wouldn’t be offended by that. She would never demand to be my number one priority when Salem exists in the world. In fact, she’d be outraged if I even suggested it as a possibility.

And the thing that makes her perfect is that I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that Salem is, and always will be, her top priority too.

She loves my daughter possibly as much as I do.

For a long while, I hold her in silence, listening to the sound of her breathing as it begins to slow down then eventually even out, until I’m sure she’s fallen back to sleep.

Even then, I don’t allow myself to fall asleep too. I’m too scared she’ll have a nightmare again, and I won’t wake up in time to stop it from happening. I just stare into the darkness, cradling my girl in my arms, knowing she’s right where she belongs.

An hour must have passed when I hear her whisper into the thick sheath of darkness.

“I’ll miss you when I have to go.”

She must be dreaming again, because as far as I know, she’s not going fucking anywhere.

Brynn is quiet over the next few days. I try a thousand different ways to make her laugh, including—and I’m not proud of this—performing an extremely exaggerated and incredibly off-key impression of Dolly Parton singing "Islands in the Stream."

It earned me a strained chuckle at most.

By the fourth night, I’m in full-blown panic mode.

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