My heart hammers, knowing this is something important, something he looked at often. Because it’s with the rest of her military accolades, I’m not surprised when her dog tags lay on the cotton in the box. The last time I saw them, they were clenched in my dad’s fists after he’d passed out.
I pick them up, reading the hammered out lettering, my thumb running along the length.
Sanders
Abigail M
134 50 8920
O Positive
Catholic
He’s ready to let her go and leave all her memories, all of our family memories to me? How could he do that? How can he forget her? Is Fae that great of a lay that’s she stripped the deep love my father had for my mother? The love that made him lay in that bed day after day? The love that paralyzed him from being the father he was for the first ten years of my life?
One tear tumbles down, catching another tear until streaks form down both cheeks. I pound my fist on the floor, clutching her dog tags and falling forward as I hold them as close as I can to my chest.
“Help me remember her. Don’t ever let me forget her. Don’t ever let me do what my dad is doing and let her rot in a box,” I murmur, hoping the universe or God is listening.
My breath is labored as reality sets in like it did when I was ten and realized she was never returning. Somehow, the fact that my dad is stripping her from his life makes me feel as though I’m losing her all over again.
As if someone is listening to me, two strong arms pick me up off the floor and carry me to the bed.
A memory floats up from the back of my mind of a time I was in a different set of arms. There was a storm and I sneaked into my parents’ room, but my mom walked me back, saying Daddy had an early morning. I was terrified she was going to tuck me in and say it was just a storm and I’d be fine, but after she laid me down, she slid into my twin-size bed and held me until dawn.
I feel as safe in these arms as I did then.
Chapter Eighteen
Adrian
I’m partly responsible for the fact that Sierra’s tears are staining my shirt. I forced her to talk to me, to get everything out in the open. Never did I think we’d uncover all this.
I tried to let her sort through her things upstairs. I tried to concentrate on some reality show drama where people were arguing about stupid shit and forget that whatever she was doing, she was hurting. But I couldn’t. She needed to know I’m here for her.
As night went on, she fell into a deeper sleep, nestled into my side with her arm draped over my stomach. I can’t remember the last time I slept with a woman. Clothed, that is.
Being a prince, I never tried to have a long-term relationship, mostly because I never knew what a woman’s intentions were. It’s hard to trust anyone when people view you as a means to an end. The title of queen being the ultimate end.
Now that dawn sneaks in through her open curtains and lights her childhood bedroom, the aftermath of her tears and her heartbreak are more visible on her sleeping face.
An overwhelming sense of admiration hits me square in the heart. She’s so fierce and feisty, but under all that hides a little girl who lost her mom. Those wounds aren’t healed. The fact her father told her nothing of the sale of the house says her relationship with him is strained at best.
Earlier, I picked up the piece of paper that says her father is in Tahiti until next week sometime. I didn’t get the impression Sierra knew anything about that either.
She stirs, stopping all my rambling thoughts. I brush back her beautiful red hair, and she tries to slyly wipe the drool that fell from her mouth. I laugh and she looks at me, her cheeks turning my favorite shade of pink. I love to make that blush appear. If she was ever mine, I’d have fun making her blush all the time and discovering new ways to do so.
“I’m sorry.” She sits up and my hand lazily runs circles on her back.
“Why?”
“Because. Look at me. You had to lie in bed with me all night. I swear this isn’t me.” She pulls the blankets off herself, but I lock my arm around her waist and force her back down. “What are you doing?”
“I’m enjoying this. It’s okay to be vulnerable with me.”
“What are you talking about? This all just took me by surprise.” She looks off in the distance instead of at me.
I use my finger along her chin to bring her eyes back to me. “I understand how you feel.”
She scoffs.
Her reaction takes me by surprise.
“I hate when people say that. People who have both parents still.”
I nod. “True. You’re right. Maybe I don’t understand exactly how you feel, but hiding your grief isn’t going to make it disappear.”
She gnaws at her cheek, pulling her legs up to her chest and locking her arms around them. “I’m not hiding it. It was seventeen years ago.”
“But yet, you’re mad at your dad for moving on with his life.”
Her head whips in my direction. “You don’t know anything about it.” She unhooks her arms from her legs and stands from the bed. “I’ll pack these things and come back later before he returns.”
“You gotta stop running. You have to face this.” I sit up in her bed, leaning forward and resting my forearms on my thighs.
She turns and looks at me over her shoulder from the floor of her closet, tucking her mom’s dog tags in a box as though they weren’t what broke her last night. How many layers of denial are packed over that raw open wound of hers?
“Why do you care?”
She has the right to ask the question. I laid up most of the night asking myself the same thing. Most of the time, the minute things get more than fun with a woman, I remove myself from the situation. I have no idea if it’s what’s going on with my own family or the fact that she let me move in with her, but I do care.
“How come you let me move into your apartment? Was it because you were infatuated with me?”
Small wrinkles form on her forehead. “I wasn’t and I’m not currently infatuated with you.”
I shrug. “I saw the magazines, and you were able to answer all those questions to win the dating contest.”
Her scowl increases for a second, but she forces it down. “Infatuated is not the same as intrigued.”
I shrug. “Okay, however you want to describe it, but how come?”
“I wanted the interview.”
I stare at her long and hard, hoping my glare is enough to crack her.
“The sex then.”
I raise my eyebrows. “And yet you played the friends card immediately?”
She huffs, her attention shifting to the box, putting the jewelry box back in the cardboard box and crisscrossing the edges to close it.
“What do you want from me?” Her voice is strained and tired and angry.
I wish I could figure out why I’m forcing this. Why I want to make sure that when I leave here in five weeks, she’s whole so she can find someone to love her. As much as the thought of another man’s hands on her spurs a bout of Hulk-like anger, I want her to be happy.
“I want you to admit that you’re hurting. It’s only the two of us here. No one else will witness it. Just be straight with me.”