House Of Gods 9 - Samantha Snow Page 0,17

answered. The guilt for having upset Brenna hurt, but not as much as the overwhelming pit in his stomach that caused him a feeling of unbearable and indiscernible loss. He would have chopped his own arm off at this point, just to make that feeling stop. “Come on,” he said to the girls as he turned with them on his arms and headed back to his room.

Jerrik laid Brenna onto the bed and sat with her. She was in too much pain and too exhausted to even cry. Instead, she just let her body shut down and sleep. She slept for hours and then for days. Erik and Colby took turns watching over her at times to give Jerrik a break. She would have been fine by herself, but occasionally, she would wake from a nightmare and sit and cry without saying a word. He didn’t want her to be alone, so the three men made sure one of them was always with her. After the third day, they had to give her some hard love and argue with her about eating and drinking. She was content to lay in the bed and waste away, but they were not. Colby would poke and prod her until she sat up in the bed, and Jerrik would argue with her until she took a few bites of food. Erik even laced her tea with whiskey so it would help her sleep without the bad dreams. After a while, she started eating and drinking and sitting up more and sleeping less.

When Jerrik came back into the room after his shower, she was dressed in actual street clothes for the first time in days. Up until then, she had just been wearing Jerrik’s T-shirts, which, even though he was muscular but svelte, still hung on her thin frame, which was now even thinner due to her lack of eating. He walked into the room as he rubbed a towel over his wet hair. He had jeans on but no shirt and was truly a handsome and perfectly formed man.

“Hey,” he said as he saw her sitting up in bed with clothes on that looked as if she might want to go somewhere besides the bedroom for a change. “You look well.” He smiled when he saw her and came to sit on the edge of the mattress. “You want to go out for a coffee or something today? Get you out of the apartment for a bit? I think it would be good for you, and I could definitely use a better-tasting latte than the crap Colby has been trying to make with the espresso machine.”

Brenna managed a small snicker. She loved the guys, all three of them. Sure, they all had their flaws, but they had become her best friends. She also knew how much they had been looking after her the past several days, and she appreciated it more than she had let them know.

“I agree. I think it would be best for me to get out of the apartment but not for coffee.”

“Thai food then? I could totally go for some peanut sauce noodles.”

“Jerrik, I need to leave here.”

“What do you mean leave?” he asked. He could already tell that he didn’t like where this conversation was headed.

“I need to get out of NYC, out of this apartment; hell, I need to get off this planet.”

“I think we should start with coffee over on the next block,” he said.

“You know I can’t stay here, not like this. Not with him being, like this.”

“Brenna, if it’s about those girls, for what it’s worth, there haven’t been any other girls over since that night. I told him it wasn’t right and that he couldn’t do it. And, he also told me something else.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He told me that nothing happened with those girls. I was out having coffee in the kitchen the next morning, and he came out of his room looking like crap and sat next to me. He said the girls stayed for a little while, and even though a part of him wanted to, he just couldn’t do anything intimate with them, so he sent them home.”

“And you believe him?”

“Yes, I do. Look, I know he’s being a complete shit right now, but he’s honest. He always has been. He’s suffering as much as you are; he just doesn’t know why or what to do to fix it. The two of you are connected in a way that