Rome was curled around me when I woke. Awareness crawled through me in stages. The leaden weight of my eyelids. I didn’t want to open them even if I wanted to check the time. The warmth of his arm wrapped around my middle. Maybe it should have been confining, but the comfort vastly outweighed any unease.
It was Rome.
Safe.
Some distant part of my brain just recognized him. He had one leg tucked over mine. When I shifted, however, he adjusted. The arm around me tightened and pulled me more firmly against him, my back to his chest and his knee nudged between my thighs. Even half-awake, a smile pulled at my lips.
It was nice.
I’d fallen asleep next to Freddie. And Rome and Liam had both tucked me between them when we were at the hotel in New York. Later, in the car, I always had one of them with me. When I managed to sleep, they were right there when I opened my eyes.
The scratchy, burning sensation in my eyes had me closing them again. I still hadn’t managed to look at the clock. The room was lighter, though, I could tell that it was brighter against my closed eyelids.
Burrowing my face against the pillow, I sighed at the brush of Rome’s breath against my nape. I could curl up tight and I had the feeling he’d wrap all the way around me. Bit by bit, the weight of the last few days settled. The hum under my skin. The static. The weird dreams. The floating place. Freddie.
Oh, Freddie. I still couldn’t quite comprehend that he landed himself in Pinetree to get me. That he’d—the memories poured through me, like water through a filter. Some of it was hazy and distant. Others, too sharply focused and visceral.
“You’re safe,” Rome mumbled against my hair. It didn’t even sound like he was awake, but his arms tightened. Strapped down. I’d been strapped down for days. Being caged up against him was so very different.
Safe.
Shuddering, I pressed back against him. I didn’t think I could get closer, but he just tightened his arms again. As tired as I was and as bad as my eyes burned, I didn’t want to go back to sleep. Nightmares could be waiting.
“Tell me.” The softness in that command looped around me, sanding against the jagged edges. When I told him about my uncle the night before, Rome hadn’t said a word. He’d held my hand and locked his gaze on me. The laser focus grounded me when my footing seemed to slip beneath me. The grip on my fingers promised he wouldn’t let go.
I wouldn’t drown.
I hadn’t.
“I think I’m talked out,” I admitted in a hoarse rasp. The rawness in my throat ached. My eyes were sore. Even my chest just—hurt. Bruised and battered. Yet, there wasn’t a mark on me. My scars had never been on the outside… before.
Lifting my right arm, I stared at the scar that stretched from my wrist halfway up to my elbow. Ugly slashes against the skin. Not anymore…
Closing his hand around mine, Rome rolled us both over. He sat half up against the pillows tucking me against him. It was nice.
Really nice.
But he didn’t let go of my arm. Resting my head against his shoulder, I glanced up to find him looking at the marks. He lifted my other hand. The bandage across the back of it covered where the IV had been inserted. The way he cradled my wrists while he studied my arms peeled away the self-consciousness about the scars.
“I didn’t try to kill myself.” It seemed important that he understood that.
“I know.”
He lifted my right wrist and pressed a kiss to the angriest of the pink lines. The place where the glass had probably gone in first. It was weird. Flashes of the attack popped through my mind like a slide show being played out. The fear and the pain were present, but behind a wall of thickened glass. I could see it, but it didn’t quite touch me.
The soft caress of his lips along the scar trailed all the way from my wrist to where it broke off just before the crook in my elbow. Then he repeated the process with my other arm. That line didn’t stretch as far, but it was far more uneven. The whisper of a touch, barely there, and yet I felt it everywhere.
“Never again.”
“I won’t go back again,” I promised. Those five words had been impossible to articulate the night before. After the whole ugly story lay torn open between us, I’d exhausted my vocabulary. Or at least, it was how it felt.
Still holding my wrists, Rome brought them up to my chest, hugging me and holding them there as he rubbed his cheek to my hair. The rasp of his stubble filled the silence. “If you do,” he said slowly, startling me out of the quiet. “You won’t be alone.”
No if. I couldn’t go back. If I hadn’t— “Rome, if I hadn’t done what Liam taught me, I don’t know that I’d have been in Pinetree or that I could have gotten away.” Mr. Cole. The electrified fence. The other man—a flash of his indifferent expression which clashed so soundly with the way he’d put that chokehold on Mr. Cole.
Walking willingly into that trap had been my choice.
“I had to protect you guys.” I swallowed. “You didn’t know about my uncle. You don’t know the things he’s done…”
So many terrible things.
“Not alone,” he repeated, then pressed a kiss to my temple. “We would have found you.”
A little laugh escaped me. It was hardly funny, but he sounded so damn certain. Tilting my head back, I gazed up at him. “You mean that.”
“Yes.”
No posturing. No bragging. No raging declarations. Just—the conviction of inevitability.
That—helped.
I stared around the room. We were back at Liam’s apartment and in Rome’s room. It seemed both familiar and alien in equal measure. The room itself had been a wreck when we got here. Then I saw the folder, the photos, my IDs and the cash. It had all been heaped together on the dresser.
Without a word, Rome had just dumped it all in a drawer and went to work straightening. I would have helped but he kept shuttling me back to the bed, so I finally just sat there while he put the room back in order. Liam hadn’t followed us inside and the door was closed to the rest of the apartment. Freddie and Liam were out there, but not in here.
After being in such tight quarters, it seemed weird. Weirder still that we were here. Exactly where my uncle had found me. At my shiver, Rome squeezed me again.
“What do you need?” The question surprised me, not because he asked it, but because I literally had no idea what the answer was. I was afraid of being here, but I didn’t want to be afraid. Liam said it would be safe. So did Rome. But did that mean it was safe because they were here? Or did it mean it was safe because my uncle wouldn’t come looking for me?
What did safe even mean when he’d known where I was all these months?
“I wish I could forget,” I said, but those words just tasted wrong. “Then if I forgot, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
He frowned. Yeah, maybe it didn’t make sense to him, but I understood it.
“I hate that you know.” Even if I’d been the one to tell him.
“I don’t. I needed to know. I can’t protect you if I don’t know.”
That was sweet. “But now you know how ugly it is inside of me—how—broken I am. I can’t…” With Freddie, I could still pretend because he let me. When I told him, I hadn’t been looking in his eyes. Not once had I looked away while telling Rome.