Blind Warrior (The Weavers Circle #3) - Jocelynn Drake Page 0,29
if he were trying to talk down a spooked horse. There was a shuffle of feet on the floor, and Cort’s hand came to rest on his shoulder, squeezing lightly. “Honestly, I don’t think they’d do that, but I have to make sure. Like I said, your welfare is my first concern. They might be the best friends in the world, but I don’t give a damn about them right now. Just you.”
It was like those words sank deep into his soul. Grey argued that Cort was doing his job, that it wasn’t personal, but there was no denying how badly some wounded part of him needed to hear them.
“Talk to me, Grey. Help me understand.”
Grey stood listening to his pounding heart. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Cort about the random guy who came to their house asking for help and then opened fire. But it wasn’t about the guy at all. He might have snapped at Lucien, but the fact was, he did the right thing. If their roles were reversed, Grey would have pinned him down, protecting him.
No, this was about failing the Circle. About not being able to do his one fucking job.
“Shit happened last night. Some guy attacked us at home.” Cort gasped, and Grey hurried on. “We got him, and the cops took him away.”
“But you couldn’t do anything about it,” Cort guessed.
“It’s more than that. My friends, we’re…we’re all sort of this team. We each have a specific job to do. No one else can do that person’s job. And right now, I can’t do my job because of this,” he grumbled, waving a hand at his eyes. “If I don’t do my job, people could get hurt. My family could be hurt.”
“And after your home was attacked last night, all those feelings came bubbling up in the form of you trashing your apartment.”
“Yeah,” Grey sighed.
“Come here. Come sit on the couch with me.” Grey let Cort lead him through the rubble in the living room to the couch. The cushions shifted on his right as Cort sat next to him. He was close enough that he could feel the brush of Cort’s arm against his. “Can I put Therapist Cort on hold for a second? Talk to you as Friend Cort?”
A half smile formed on Grey’s lips as he answered, “Sure.”
Cort immediately wrapped an arm around Grey’s shoulders and pulled him even closer so that Grey was leaning heavily on Cort, his head resting on his shoulder. “Oh, good. I always wanted to be some guy’s gay BFF,” Cort started, his voice full of playful sarcasm. Grey snorted a laugh and tried to sit up, but Cort wouldn’t let him. “First off, I’m disappointed. If it were me, I would have trashed the shit out of this place, blind or not. Grey, you’ve got every right to be angry, hurt, scared, and frustrated right now. It takes less than a minute with your family to see that you mean the world to them and they mean the world to you. Not being able to protect your family has got to hurt.”
“Yeah, but what do I do?”
“Let it hurt. Don’t run and hide from it. And don’t freaking hurt yourself. Talk to me about it. Shout at me about it. Shout at your family about it. You got to let it out. Deal with it.”
“Then what?”
“Then we get a broom, and we clean up this mess. We get you in some clean clothes, and we walk over to raid your kitchen.”
Grey shook his head, his cheek rubbing against Cort’s shoulder. “No, about my job. About not being able to keep my family safe.”
“We’ll figure that out in time. The other thing you’ve got to face is that you were badly injured. You need time to heal inside and out. You need time to figure out what you can do, and what you’ll have to learn to do a little differently, but it doesn’t all come at once.”
“Two steps forward, one step back,” Grey muttered.
“And last night was a big step back. Yeah, it sucked, but it doesn’t look like anyone got hurt in the attack, right?”
“No.”
“So you be grateful for that. And be grateful that you’ve learned enough to pick yourself up and clean your own wounds. You did good. You just forgot one thing.”
“What’s that?”
Cort’s fingers threaded through Grey’s hair and tightened, giving his head a little shake. “You should have called me. Whatever the hour. Doesn’t matter.