No one knew that. Well, except Marcus. He didn’t sleep much either. When he and Thomas were at the North Carolina house, he sometimes followed her, at a distance, giving her privacy, but watching out for her.
She saw deer when she walked, bobcats and coyotes hunting, foxes slinking through the brush. In the country, there was a whole world at night most people never saw. She moved through it, unnoticed and unbothered, because she wasn’t their prey, and she was nothing for the prey to fear. She stood between both worlds, a presence like a tree or a pond. She liked that feeling. Nothing demanding.
“Daralyn.” Rory maneuvered decisively in front of her, brought her to a stop. She stared at one wheel, and he put his hand out, gripped her wrist above her bracelet.
Her heart cried out in actual pain, though no one could hear it except her. She couldn’t feel his touch the way she normally did. Her skin was aware something was against it, but she felt no reaction. It was a loss she couldn’t bear.
She wondered if that was what it was like when someone touched his legs.
She wanted Rory. So much. She’d relied on him to understand what she wanted and needed, and he did. She hadn’t really realized until this moment that it wouldn’t be enough to let her love him the way he deserved. It didn’t matter what she wanted when she was in darkness, her voice taken away. How could she find her way through that darkness? How did she find a light in herself that might have been extinguished long ago?
“You are not walking home by yourself,” he said firmly. “I’ll take you home.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to stay with you.”
She kept her eyes on his wheel. “I’m going to call Dr. Taylor and talk to her.”
“That’s good.” He sounded slightly relieved. “Sounds great. I’ll hang out at Marcus and Thomas’s, if you need privacy while you do that.”
She didn’t say anything, but if her silence ended up convincing him that was the thing to do, that would work.
Because by morning, she knew she’d be gone.
Chapter Twenty-One
Rory sat at Thomas and Marcus’s living room window, watching Daralyn. From this vantage point, he could see through her picture window in front. She’d dialed Dr. Taylor while in her kitchen, sat straight in her chair as she held the phone to her ear. She was on it for a while. Sometimes talking, sometimes listening. She didn’t give much away, her body and manner rigid, as if she held something in a tight grip, all her focus on not letting it go.
He was aware of Thomas and Marcus moving around, keeping an eye on him. But he had eyes only for her.
Eventually, she put down her phone, took a breath. She looked toward him. He was sitting in a darkened room, because he hadn’t wanted her to feel like he was spying on her. But he hoped she was looking toward the house because she was looking for him. Before he could back up and head for the door, his phone rang.
He wanted it to be her, but she wasn’t holding a phone. It was Dr. Taylor.
“You’ve had an eventful evening.” The doc’s voice had its usual professional tone, but there was a thicker softness to it, maybe because she was at home, not in her office. People used different voices depending on where they were. Home, work, in the grocery store. Daytime, nighttime.
Right now, the place and time he was at in his head, he was sure his voice was all kinds of rough and on the edge of some not-stable things.
When he’d watched Hayworth talk to Owen, so many things had gone through his mind. If Rory could have reached him, he would have hit him, and kept hitting, until the man was nothing but bloody meat. Fortunately, his brother and Marcus had kept him from that course of action. Brick had taken Hayworth back to his hotel and would get him sobered up.
“He’ll probably want to call you tomorrow and apologize,” Brick had said in parting. “You know how he is after he comes down.”
“Don’t let him. Not this time. I don’t want to talk to him. Not now, and possibly not for the rest of our lives.”
He’d pushed past that. It was still true, but whatever happened with his tragically fucked up teammate wasn’t even on his radar. It was in the past, except for how it