Vance held her tighter and she wanted to turn around and yell at him to knock it off because if she didn’t feel so comfortable, so safe, she’d be able to float away and it would be easier. But his warmth and his strength were holding her down literally and figuratively and she couldn’t drift into the sky on her string if he was doing that now could she?
In a funny way, even the pain was comforting. Not because she was a masochist—which yeah, she was, but heart-wrenching emotional devastation wasn’t her kink—but because it told her she hadn’t forgotten her brother. He didn’t mean any less to her now than he had a quarter-century before. Damien was still as firmly carved into her heart as he’d ever been and maybe she should be grateful for that. Who ever got to love another human being that much?
“Carey and I woke up, our parents did too. We all went down to sleep in the basement since it was the driest room in the house. My mom was going to bring Damien down with us but he was a terrible sleeper, absolute nightmare to get to bed so my dad told her to leave him in his bed, not wake him up.”
Damien had mostly been the better behaved of the two of them, the sweeter one. He’d bring their mom flowers when Lilith brought her a chipmunk carcass. He’d eat his veggies while Lilith made her fork into a catapult and shot the mushy canned peas all over the place. But at night? It had been like her gentle brother was possessed. He hated going to bed, would resist it with every ounce of consciousness he had in his small body. She’d wondered sometimes if he had bad dreams he couldn’t remember or that he just wasn’t willing to burden anyone else with.
“Lightning hit the house. Started a fire in the attic. We were all asleep.”
She shrugged again, hating the way her voice shook, hating the fissure that had opened in her chest that felt so deep and dark it could swallow her whole. Hated the hot tears that slipped down her cheeks. She tried to scrub them away with the back of her hand but they were falling too fast now.
It had been years and years since she’d cried over Damien, and it didn’t seem fair that she was doing it now. And so violently too, like the flood of salt water rushing through her tear ducts was going to get bigger and bigger until it washed everything away, including her.
* * *
Vance felt like his heart was being fed through a meat grinder.Fuck. At first glance, his lil bit might seem tough. Shatterproof even. She was so strong and independent and sturdy that it was easy to think nothing ever hurt her.
Was that when she’d become interested in the dark and the macabre? It made sense when he thought about it that way. Her brother had died and she’d been so lonely in his absence that she’d befriended his replacement. Course it didn’t have to be that way—maybe she just liked black and skulls and crows. He wasn’t kinky for any reason, he just was.
But the why of her aesthetic choices didn’t matter. What mattered was that his poor little poppet felt like she was going to pieces, and so completely that he wasn’t sure how to put her together again.
This wasn’t like when he spanked women to tears, or when he lectured them, or made them write lines. This was outside of his control and it was maddening. He shouldn’t have made her dig all this up if he was going to be so fucking useless when she did.
“I’m sorry, Lil. So sorry. Sorry your brother died, that you have to go through life without your twin. Sorry I made you rip open this wound when you’re right, there’s not a goddamn thing I can do to fix it. It’s just really sad and awful and devastating.”
He felt what must only be echoes of her emotions pummeling his internal organs and fuck did that hurt. He’d borne quite a bit of anger and humiliation and frustration but he’d never experienced that kind of loss. His poor little girl.
“I can’t fix it but is there anything I can do to make you feel better? To make it hurt a little less? I’m real good at beating demons away but…”
Lil shook her head, rubbing her runny nose into his shirt, her ribcage jumping with every hitching sob.
“No, Daddy. I wish that would make it better, but I don’t think it will. But can I…”
She shook her head again and swiped at her nose with her sleeve, her sniffles making her shudder in his arms.
“What? You can tell Daddy. I want you to tell me. You can ask me for anything, Lil. Didn’t I give you everything you needed today?”
He wanted to beg her to tell him he’d done a good job, that he’d provided for her, met her every need and done it selflessly. But that wasn’t a generous impulse. No, that was really fucking selfish and even though he desperately wanted to know he’d done at least one goddamn thing right today he wouldn’t ask that of her.
“If whatever you need is in my power to give, it’s yours. I promise. Name it.”
It felt greedy to even ask that of her after what he’d done—put your trust in me after I took advantage of your faith and used it to reduce you to a keening, wounded mess, what could possibly go wrong?—but he couldn’t think of anything else to do in the face of her soul-sucking bereavement.
She sniffed again and looked up at him with her soft brown eyes since he’d made her leave out her contacts for the day. “Can I…can I just be sad? Please? I don’t… I never let myself be sad about him. My brother. I miss him so much and I can’t put that on Carey and I don’t have anyone else to… I…”
Vance was crap at a lot of things. So many, actually. He avoided all kinds of pain and unpleasantness and really did his utmost to occupy this comfortable world he’d built for himself and pretend nothing before it existed. But for Lil? He’d hold up the entire fucking sky for her. If all she was asking for was a witness to her soul-shredding grief? Fucking right he could do that no matter how uncomfortable it made him.
“You go ahead, little girl,” he told her, covering as much of her body as he could with his own. He’d keep out the world as best he could so all she had to struggle with were her own haunting emotions. “You be as sad as you want for as long as you need to be. Cry all your tears, scream if it makes you feel better. Daddy’s here. I’m right here for you, lil bit.”