Until the World Stops - L.A. Witt Page 0,71

to hear her voice, but she needed to rest. And I couldn’t be there with her. No one could. Because she had…

Holy shit.

“Casey?” Tristan asked softly. “You okay?”

My composure was dangerously close to collapsing even as I nodded. “Yeah, I…” My vision blurred, but I blinked my eyes into focus and sniffed sharply. “I’ll be okay.”

Damn it, I knew his don’t bullshit me face from a mile away.

“Your mom?” he whispered. “Is she…?”

“Yeah,” I whispered hollowly. “They don’t have results yet, but she’s…” I had to swallow twice and then clear my throat. “They’re considering her a presumptive positive.”

“Jesus. I’m sorry.” His expression had softened, his eyes full of nothing but sympathy.

“She’s, um… She’ll be okay. She just needs to…” Who the hell was I trying to convince? Because I sure as shit didn’t believe it. Maybe I’d read too much of the scary descriptions of what this virus did to people. Maybe I’d read that Stephen King book a few too many times. Or maybe it was just too much to comprehend that something like this was hurting my family. My mom.

“Casey.” Tristan put his hands on my shoulders and looked right in my eyes. “We’re in the middle of a pandemic that just hit way too close to home.” He squeezed my shoulder gently, and his voice was soft as he added, “You don’t have to be strong right now.”

And just like that, I lost it.

Tristan didn’t miss a beat. He pulled me into a tight hug, and I buried my face against his neck, and I didn’t hold back anymore. Pride and stoicism were distant memories, and I just let myself be scared for my mom and pissed off that this was all happening and helpless because there wasn’t a damn thing I could do.

For all the resentment there’d been between us before everything went to shit, I was so glad Tristan was here now. I couldn’t imagine trying to weather this whole thing alone, but more and more, I couldn’t imagine weathering it without him.

I’d cried on a buddy’s shoulder in Iraq after one of our friends had been Medevaced out. That had been a mix of grief—we knew he wasn’t going to make it—and the adrenaline crash after exchanging fire with insurgents. I hadn’t been scared that day. I’d just been destroyed and exhausted and fucking powerless, and I’d been grieving my friend because I’d seen in the corpsman’s eyes that it was only a matter of time. By the time we got word that he’d died in-flight, I hadn’t had any grief left.

There was some of that right now. The helplessness. The feeling like there was no way in hell I could process any of this, never mind get through it.

But there was also fear. The kind of fear that made me feel like a little kid instead of a grown man with a war under his belt.

And somehow, when all that fear and helplessness came crashing in, Tristan was right here, ready and willing to let me lean.

Slowly, I pulled myself back together, and I let him go. My hands shook as I wiped my eyes. “Goddamn. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He kept a hand on my shoulder. “You don’t think I’d be a mess if my mom was positive?”

I sniffed. “Yeah, I guess. I just…” I had no idea how to finish the thought, so I just shook my head.

And Tristan must have known—or I must have been wearing it on my sleeve—how badly I needed him right then, because he wrapped me up in another tight hug. With a sigh, I buried my face against his neck. I didn’t break down this time. I just held on and God help me, in that moment, I felt closer to Tristan than I ever had. Given how close we’d been lately, that said a lot.

I’d dated guys who would’ve told me to man up, or they’d have tried to make a joke or distract me or find some way to avoid the uncomfortable subject and its accompanying emotions.

Tristan… He’d just told me I didn’t have to be strong anymore, and he’d quietly been strong for me.

I’d resented him for a long time because once the rubber had met the road and we’d really been doing this marriage thing, it had turned out to be a lot more one-sided than I’d thought it would. I should’ve known, and I suppose I had known, but I’d been too caught up in needing to assuage my own