And you needed to. It was a safety valve that prevented you from exploding.

“So here’s a thing, the police just arrested the man responsible for killing your mother when you were just fifteen years old. The same guy who let your dad go to prison. The one who tore your family apart. He’s why Quique is Shep now and why Mindy is with a dingus like Garret. And then he stalked you and hurt you and made you scared all the time. The man who did all that damage to you is finally known and in jail.”

“Yes.” She was aiming at bland, he could tell, but she missed that by a mile. “But I still have to go to work.”

“There’ll be work tomorrow and Sunday and Monday and beyond, now that the piece of human garbage who has terrorized you for sixteen years is finally f**king dealt with.”

“I can’t do this right now.”

“Just another week. Or another month. Just until we figure out who the guy is. Just until he’s arrested. Now it’s what? Just until trial? Just until he’s sentenced? Goes to prison? How long, Caroline, are you going to push fifty percent of what you should feel away, and when is it going to break through? Vernon Hicks killed your mother. She would have been scared and in pain. And alone on that floor as Hicks walked away like she was nothing. Your poor father. Walking in on that? Of course he was incoherent for a while. And then he got railroaded and sent off to death row. And your entire life continued to just plummet as you refused to believe your father was guilty, and your grandparents, grief laden and selfish, pushed you away for it instead of trying to deal with it head-on. And then, you had to leave here. Leave everything you ever knew, and while the Mendozas love you, you had this whole side of your life you needed so badly and it just wasn’t there.” He pushed her to the mattress where she watched him through exhausted, wary eyes.

He slid her shoes off. “You’re driven though. And they love you and support you, and you get yourself into UCLA and then off to law school because sure it’ll be a good career, you’ll have way more expertise to use to aid your father. It wasn’t until later that you discovered you loved the law, but at the start you just did it for him. And you went through appeals that didn’t go anywhere. Disappointment after disappointment made all the worse because there was evidence that no one even freaking looked at. And then your father, who should have been here with you all along but for Vernon Hicks, well, he gets cancer and dies and you can’t hug him again or hear his voice or walk with him out those prison gates, though you imagined that moment thousands of times.

“You alone get it in a way that estranges you. So you bottle it all up and pretend it doesn’t matter, all while carrying everyone else’s shit and then this f**ker turns up again and he stalks you, terrorizes you and hurts you. Your grandparents are ass**les. And yet you keep going.”

He pulled his shirt off, and when her attention was on his chest, he unbuttoned her blouse and exposed the pretty camisole she wore underneath.

“That guy is finally in jail. And he confessed. And there’s all sorts of evidence. It is okay to be proud of all you’ve done. And it’s okay to let yourself weep for the mother you lost. For her pain and her fear and for every day since that you’ve lost some new memory you should have made with her. And it’s okay to let yourself weep for the father who loved you so damned much and died in prison no matter how hard you tried to free him. It is bittersweet. It is sad and unfair and good and all those things. Don’t let feeling all those things about this continue to be taboo. Let it go. I’m here and I have you.”

Her eyes had widened, and her mouth trembled at the edges as they slid down. She made a gasping hiccupping sound and then a ragged sob tore through her as she crumpled. Royal got on the bed and pulled her close.

This was a person who had held in such deep sorrow for so long it seemed to rip from her with each exhale. He held her tight as she clung to him like he was the only thing keeping her from drowning.

Her sobs and the aftershock of hiccups and phantom gasps began to slow and then ease as she relaxed, her breathing going very deep.

He kissed her forehead. “Close your eyes, Caro, and let it all go. Sleep a bit and we’ll face the rest.”

Caroline snuffled, snuggling into his body as close as she could before she fell into sleep, and once he knew she’d made it safely, he closed his eyes and joined her, his heart aching for all the pain she had to suffer.

An hour or so later, Caroline and Royal woke up, and she shifted to look up at the ceiling.

“It’s so unfair. There is no way to make it better.” Her voice was scratchy from sleep and crying.

“Nope. All you can do is honor their memory, which you already do.”

Royal Watson was her one. She didn’t want to go back to what their relationship had been like before. It was nice dating him, but living with him had been wonderful. Not just safe, but she loved the house, the view, the kitchen, his kooky shoulder-riding cat. This place had become one that felt hers.

“I don’t want to move back to my apartment,” she said quietly.

He stilled. “You’re moving back to Seattle?”

“What? No! I’m not moving away from Petal. I just…I like it here. With you.”

He hugged her tight. “Oh. Well yes, of course. I want you here too. I was planning on always being busy when you wanted to go back to your apartment, and you’d just give up and stay. Or maybe I was going to come out and ask you to live with me.”