“You can fall apart. Because I’m here. And I will always put you back together.”
She slumped against him. “That’s so sweet.”
“I don’t ever want to hear you call yourself stupid again, understand me?”
She huffed out a sigh. “There’s the grump again.”
“Why were you staying in such a crappy motel if you had money?”
“I chose a motel close to where she was found. I thought it was a good idea to pay a week upfront, it was definitely cheaper. It wasn’t until I got here that I saw why it was so cheap. But I couldn’t get my money back so I figured I’d stay for the week. It really wasn’t so bad.”
He grunted in disagreement. His mind turned everything over. Sister murdered. Staying close to where she was found. The Fox.
“Baby doll, what’s her real name? Your sister?”
“Daria. Daria Marshall.”
He tensed. Daria Marshall. The girl from the photos that they’d been forced to use to blackmail that sick fuck, Senator Jonathan Robins. “Shit. Fuck. Christ. So that’s the connection. But why would he do that?”
“What is it? What’s going on?” she asked.
“I think I might know who gave you the money. I just don’t know why he did it.”
“Who? What? How would you know?”
He shook his head. “It’s so far-fetched. But it fits.”
“Spike,” she said. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
He blew out a breath. She rubbed at her forehead.
“You’re getting a migraine. This is stressing you out.”
“What? Getting shot? Learning that you know something about the money I suddenly won? Or you acting all strange and cold when you told me you loved me and always would.”
Fuck. He’d fucked this up hugely.
“Baby doll,” he started to say. He didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t want to hurt her and he knew what he had to say would do that.
“I’m fine, Spike. Just tell me.”
“You’d tell me you were fine if you were bleeding out on the sidewalk.”
Christ. That imagery was a bit too close to what had happened to be comfortable.
“I just . . . there’s no use dwelling on problems, right? I mean, growing up as I did, I was just always so grateful that Grandma and Granddad took me in. That I didn’t go to a foster home. That I had so many friends to help me when Grandma got ill. There’s no point in thinking too hard about the bad things.”
He studied her, piecing together what she was telling him. “Is that what you do? When bad things happen you push them aside and think only about the good?”
“Sort of. If something is really painful then I just push it deep. I imagine this box and it holds all the bad thoughts and memories and things that have happened to me and then I lock the box. Sometimes it feels like it’s going to explode from being overloaded. But yeah . . . that’s how I deal with it.”
“Baby doll, that’s really not healthy.”
“Says the man who has blamed himself for his wife’s death for the last ten years,” she replied dryly.
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea to tell you this.”
“If it’s about my sister then I deserve to know.”