Page 64 of Master of Chaos

Suddenly she was in my arms, sobbing. She smelled just like I remembered. Her hair was warm and silky against my nose.

“It’s really you?” she asked.

I let out a short laugh, the one that sounded like a rusty cough. “More or less. Such as I am. You’re as beautiful as ever, sweetheart. You got so big. Look at you.”

“Yeah. I’m growing like a weed, Auntie Frey says.” She hid her face against my shoulder, then lifted her gaze to the bandages around my neck. She brushed her fingertips over them. “Was this from that awful collar?”

I was startled. “What do you know about the collar?”

“I know a lot,” she said, but her voice wobbled. Now clearly wasn’t the time to talk about the bad stuff.

I grabbed her again, holding her small, shaking body as tightly as I dared.

We swayed there together for some time, and after a while, the others started to converge around us, talking softly. I looked up, my eyes blurred and hot. Frey stood there waiting her turn, eyes wet, clutching Jed’s hand.

I rose to my feet, never relinquishing my hold on Holly, and held out an arm to her. Frey wrapped herself around us both, and then I was holding two sobbing females.

It took a while to get the nerve to lift my head, but I finally looked up at Jed, who also looked glassy-eyed and tight-lipped.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What the hell is this I hear about you hooking up with my little sister?” I said. “The hell, dude? Who told you that was okay?”

He grinned. “Nobody. I saw my chance, and I took it. Can you blame me?”

“Maybe later,” I said, and held my arm out to him, too. Now Holly was trapped between all three of us. She started to squawk and wiggle in protest.

Somehow, it went on from there. Holly began to talk a mile a minute, and all my energy and attention was spent on trying to follow what she said. I’d gotten through the wall. I hadn’t crushed anybody’s heart by not being enough. Not feeling enough.

Damn. I’d felt plenty. I was still feeling it.

I walked along awkwardly, Holly clutching my waist, Frey’s arm above hers, hugging them both and trying to match steps to both of them, which was impossible. We shuffled and lurched down the breezeway, through the crowd. Holly stopped when she saw Red, who stood there holding Reggie’s hand, wiping tears from her own eyes and trying not to show it. Holly and Reggie exchanged swift, curious glances and smiles, and then Holly looked up at Red.

“Are you the one who helped my daddy get away?” she asked.

Red gave Holly a misty smile. “It was a mutual thing. We helped each other. I wouldn’t have made it here without him.”

Holly let go of me and lunged for her, hugging her fiercely. “Thank you.”

“Oh, honey.” Red’s arms circled her shoulders. “My pleasure.”

“I second that,” Freya said. Then she descended upon Red as well, and Holly was once again squeezed into a sandwich until she started giggling.

Eventually we made it inside. The period that followed was a blur, Holly on my lap, Freya next to me, telling me incoherent, outrageous stories about hers and Jed’s and Holly and Kat and Ethan’s wild, dangerous adventures in their attempts to find me.

God. It was a miracle that any of them were alive to tell the tale.

At some point, Angela came in and told Holly and Reggie that she needed them both to help her make dessert. Holly looked at me and gave me another fierce hug.

“Don’t disappear,” she said sternly. “Don’t you dare. Ever again.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

And all at once, her eyes were swimming again. I pulled her into another hug, feeling my own eyes tingle and burn. Murmuring senseless promises about how I wasn’t ever leaving her again. Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.

Finally, she let out a soggy giggle at my nonsense, sniffed loudly and accepted a tissue from Angela to blow her nose before heading to the kitchen with Angela and Reggie.

When the girls were gone, Ethan closed the door. “So how much downtime do you need before we start working on taking that sonofabitch down?” he asked.

“None,” I said. “I can save the downtime for later.”

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