“Don’ need you here. I’m not the grr fuh you. Can’t protect anyone.”

He paused at the raw grief and guilt in her voice. With a bracing breath, he rinsed the last of the soap from their bodies before getting out to towel them both dry.”

“Brush your teeth, you’ll feel better.” He pointed her in the direction of the sink. “And then we’ll talk. Where do you keep the sheets? Clean ones.”

“Why?” she asked, trying to get toothpaste on her toothbrush but getting it on her hand instead.

He sighed, taking the toothbrush and paste from her to do it himself. He wiped her hand off and gave her the brush back.

“Because your bed smells like puke and vodka. Not a nice combination.”

She groaned and he left the room. He looked through several drawers and found spare bedding in a closet in the hall. Quickly he stripped the bed and remade it with clean, cool sheets and blankets. While he was at it, he put a pair of boxers on. Even with her so upset, his c**k responded every time she came near him.

When he’d finished, he looked up to see her standing in her bathroom doorway, staring at him, looking lost.

He went to her, gathering her to his body, and guided her into bed, snuggling down after her.

“Do you want to sleep?”

“Ever’ time I close my eyes I see it.”

“The day when you lost Adele?”

She flinched, but he wanted her to get it all out. She nodded. “I didn’t do my job. I didn’t protect her.” Her slurring had cleared a bit after the shower, but tears had made her words thick.

“Do you have super powers? You had a f**king bodyguard, Erin. You had a bodyguard and you never went anywhere without him. It was Adele’s well-baby visit at the pediatrician. Were you supposed to stop living altogether?”

Erin wanted so badly to just sleep and not think on it anymore. She wanted a day where the mere thought of her child didn’t make her want to sink to her knees and howl.

“I see you did your homework,” she said, feeling sullen, annoyed and yet comforted by his presence all at once.

“I asked you to share, you told me to use my imagination. My imagination had you dying in the street and I hated that vision, so I used the Internet instead. And f**k, you nearly did die in the street.” His body radiated tension and for a moment she was able to focus on his distress instead of her own.

She felt a wave of something—safety, yes, that was it. Against his body like an anchor to keep her from drifting off into oblivion.

He must have sensed that, because he stroked a hand over her hair gently. “Sleep. I’m here to catch you.”

When she woke up, she had a horrible headache from crying and from booze. She smelled coffee and Todd.

“Hey there,” he said, nuzzling her neck and kissing her. “Feeling pretty shitty? I made coffee. You’ll need to eat. Then, you’ll need to tell me.”

She looked at him and the world shifted because she loved him, and there was no going back to not loving him. Maybe there’d never been.

“I’ve got to brush my teeth. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

He watched her go; she felt his eyes on her, not as a weight but as a cloak, protective.

She took in her reflection in the bathroom as she brushed her hair. She wasn’t twenty-two anymore, that was for sure. She’d gone past the age where she could binge drink for an entire day and a half and not look it.

Pink tufts of hair stuck up every which way from going back to sleep with it wet. She ran a brush through it and used a headband to keep it out of her eyes. He’d seen her puke; she may not have looked like a magazine ad right then, but if he’d stayed after puking, he must have been telling the truth about loving her.

She came out and he looked so good it hurt. Closing her eyes against it didn’t help. He was there, in her mind’s eye, his scent layered on her skin, letting her know he’d slept against her.

When she opened her eyes, he smiled and indicated for her to sit at the table. “Toast, coffee and fruit. Let’s start there and see how it goes. Once you’ve eaten you can take something for that headache you must have.”

“Why?” she asked, sitting down and sipping the coffee.

“Why do you have a headache? I’d take a guess and say hours of crying interspersed with that giant bottle of vodka I found next to your bed.”

She picked up the sunglasses on the table and shoved them over her eyes, and the broken glass in her eyes seemed to stop hurting so much. “You know what I mean.”

He took her hand and kissed it. “You know why.”

“You love me.” She said it but left a bit of question in the words.

“I do. I think, to be honest with you, that I’ve loved you since the first day I saw you. And I ran because I was afraid of you. Of how fearless you were in embracing who you were. It only made me cowardly by comparison. I didn’t see that it simply would have given me the freedom to be as fearless.” He snorted a derisive laugh. “I love you and I’m not leaving. I love that you see me, all of me, and you embrace it. I’m free to be what I am. You get me, Erin. In a way no one ever has. I love you, all of you. I want you to share with me because you trust me to protect you, to take the pain and bear part of it. Not because I can possibly know what it’s like to have endured what you have. How could I? But because in telling, you lighten your load just a small bit. I’d like to . . .” He hesitated. “I’d like to hear about Adele. I saw the pictures you left out. She was beautiful.”