Sadly, all too soon, he breaks the contact and moves to the cabinet by the sink, taking a face cloth off the top. He soaks the cloth, wrings it out, and then returns to me.
“Close your eyes, Hadley,” he murmurs.
I do as he asks, because I take it to mean it’s for a good reason. As I feel the first swipe of the cloth against my collarbone, my mind slowly begins piecing together all that happened.
Screams echo off the walls in the den, and the horror of it all, I realize, is that the screams are coming from my mouth. I press my head against my father’s chest, desperate to feel some movement, a little lifting of his chest with a slight breath or a heartbeat. I can’t be certain that I feel anything, but I also can’t feel a pulse either and there’s no way I’m going to let my father die, not like this. Not in our family home. Not covered in blood.
“Daddy! Wake up,” I beg him.
My eyes snap open and it’s then I see why Ryder didn’t want me to look. When he wrings out the rag, crimson water runs down the drain. My stomach heaves and I close my eyes again, trying to fly away to some other reality.
But I don’t.
My heartbeat pounds in my ears as I reach for my father’s shirt and lift it up, seeing an open wound in his chest. A stab wound? A bullet wound? I don’t know. But regardless, I use the skirt of my gown and bundle it into a ball, pressing it hard against his chest. My arms begin to shake against the pressure but nothing will break my hold.
“Please, Daddy. Please don’t die.”
Then there’s silence and it’s long and painful with each passing second, devastating me over and over again.
Until suddenly I’m not alone.
There’s a flurry of activity in front of me and the only thing I can make out is a Blackwood Security T-shirt.
“Get EMS here. Now! The senator’s been shot.”
Then that same man I heard speaking is moving in next to me, lifting my father off the chair and examining his back. “There’s no exit wound,” he says.
To me? To someone else? I don’t know.
“Hadley, keep pressing tight,” he instructs, his fingers moving to my father’s wrist. “I feel a pulse.”
I’m pulled back into the present as Ryder drags the cloth over a nipple, and the bud puckers beneath his touch. He says nothing and continues cleaning me over the next several minutes, until there’s a knock at the door.
When he moves away, I look down at my hands, seeing the blood is now gone. And one look in the mirror shows no trace of my father’s injury. My eyes shut again as I hear him take my mother’s clothes from Shawna, but that’s all I hear. My father…
My chest begins heaving, my throat squeezing. It’s then I feel the moisture sliding down my cheeks, and that’s when I’m tugged into strong arms.
“I’m here,” Ryder whispers.
And apparently that’s all I need to hear.
I drop my face into his chest, grip his T-shirt tightly in my hands, and the floodgates open. There is nothing I can do to stop my tears from rolling down my face. Because it’s the fear that my father might die. It’s the sadness th
at I had to see him like that. It’s the worry and strain of all that I’ve been dealing with lately. And it’s years of repressed emotions that are now safe in the arms of a man I know will catch me if I fall.
Many minutes tick by, and I don’t recall when I stopped sobbing and could catch my breath again. I don’t even recall when I lifted my head to look at him, the strength I needed to lean on. Nor do I recall when my vision cleared enough so I could see him. But then all I see is the affection in his eyes, the warmth and longtime friendship between us.
“And that’s how you properly deal with emotions,” he tells me softly. “You don’t run from them. You feel them. And then you do whatever the hell you can to make yourself feel better.” His warm touch slides across my cheeks as his hands bracket my face. “You need me, Hadley. Take me.”
Working on total instincts and pure desperation to gain control of my life, I slide my hands across his buzz-cut hair and seal my mouth across his, kissing him roughly. I push against him, until I’m no longer sitting on the closed toilet seat, but he is. He doesn’t stop me when I reach for his buckle, and in fact, he helps me get his pants down to his knees, freeing his cock for me. I climb onto his lap, and I’m lost in the intense way he’s watching me, as I take him in so very deep. His hands sprawl over my back, sliding up and down until they move up my neck and slide over my face, cupping my cheeks.
He takes my mouth, softly kissing me, and then he leans away. “Come here.”
There’s something passing between us, something magical, as he tucks my head into his neck, holding on to my nape, while the other arm wraps tightly around my back. I grind against him, back and forth, slowly turning all the anguish into something different, something pleasurable.
His arms are safe. His hold is strong. For right now, I don’t think about all the things I should think about. For now, I feel better in a world that’s crumbling around me. I feel affection in a life that’s been filled with death. I feel realness from a man who touches me not out of lust but out of something so much deeper.
There’s nothing sexy about touching him now. It’s not hot; it’s raw. It’s not desire; it’s emotions. For once in maybe ever, I feel like I’m not alone in this messy thing we call life.