To all of us.
Chapter Thirteen
Please Come Home
Lake stood against the wall, watching as I paced across the floor in the reading parlor. “You should sleep.”
“I can’t,” I said, voice fragile like glass. “Not until I know they’re safe.”
It was late, probably well past midnight. The café had long since closed, and Miles, Peter, and Alice had already left. The three of them had kept the café running while I’d been a total mess upstairs. I had woken sometime in the early evening and had been pacing and fretting ever since.
“You should at least eat something,” Lake said softly. “You never had supper.”
“I’m not hungry.” I was too nervous to think about food.
“Maddox will be all right.”
“Do you really believe that?”
His purple-eyed gaze lowered.
“Briar isn’t here either.” My breaths hitched. I felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack; tightness at the base of my throat and electric tingles in the tips of my fingers. “Why isn’t he here? I should go look for him.”
Lake stepped in my way before I reached the door. “With bandits on the rise, it’s not safe to be wandering through the kingdom at nighttime.”
“But what if Briar needs my help in the clinic? I’ve helped him in the past when the knights were attacked in the dark wood. When Maddox was…”
Images flitted through my head of my captain lying in a cot, covered in bruises and his torso wrapped, concealing the deep gashes along his ribs from the demon attack. He had been so weak and close to death.
What if he…
My knees wobbled.
“Evan?” Lake threw his arms around me as I lost the strength to stand. He held me as close as possible, a small whimper escaping his lips. “I don’t like seeing you this way. I don’t know how to make it better.”
“You being here helps,” I rasped, turning my face into his silver hair. The soft strands smelled like evergreen trees mixed with peaches. A scent unique to him. All three of my men had one and each soothed my soul in different ways. The peach scent from him was new though. I’d first noticed it after we’d had sex for the first time. “I’d be even more of a mess without you.”
“I’ll be here as long as you want me to be.” Lake smoothed a hand up and down my back. “Until you send me away.”
My fingers tangled in the back of his shirt. “That won’t happen, so I guess you’re stuck with me forever.”
He smiled against my cheek. “Forever is a long time.”
“Too long?”
Lake nuzzled my neck. “Not long enough.”
If I hadn’t been so damn worried about Maddox and Briar, I would’ve melted at his words and turned into Evan goo. Which would’ve probably been a puddle of coffee—my life blood.
In the week or so since he’d officially become part of our family—or joined my harem as a certain butthole wizard would say—Lake had gone to his cottage some mornings while I worked, but he’d always returned at nightfall. And some days, he hadn’t left at all.
“Thank you for earlier,” I whispered. “For singing to me.”
“Did it help?”
I nodded.
“Your captain will be all right. Have faith in his abilities. He’s strong.”
