Hold Me (Love The Way #2) - W. Winters Page 0,14

mine and I have the impression he’s looking right through me as though he’ll refuse any evidence. Like the truth doesn’t matter.

“And what about you, Zander? Do you need it?”

Something balls up in my throat, and I can’t answer him. He must see the reality in my eyes, though, because he lets out a heavy sigh. Like I’ve disappointed him.

Cade raises his eyes from his coffee. He’s not only disapproving now, not only disappointed. He’s worried about me. The instinct grows to brush it off. No one needs to worry about me. But that’s not true. I wouldn’t have survived after Quincy if it weren’t for Damon. Fuck, I don’t want to be brought back to that moment. To a place that only offers emptiness or regret. There’s nothing else but that.

In some ways, I feel like that now. Everything is fucked. The ground isn’t steady, and I need things. It feels unreasonable to want reassurance. I’m the one who’s supposed to reassure other people, not the other way around.

It’s one simple fact that gives me doubt: they could take her at any moment. There’s not a damn thing I could do. The heaviness of that reality is bitter and palpable. I have to be careful, not because of her, but because of them.

I don’t say this to my brother. I don’t say a word because I’m too damn afraid that if I say the wrong thing, he’ll convince me I shouldn’t be with Ella. He’s right, I do need her. I need her more than I’d like to admit.

He pushes his coffee cup aside and stands. “I have paperwork to do.”

My pulse flares in my neck as I flex my hands back into fists. “And Ella?”

He looks down at me, shrugging his suit jacket back into place, and he’s hovering somewhere between Cade, owner of The Firm, and Cade, my brother. There’s no way to know which version will win out. “If you want to see Ella, go to her. It will not be as an employee of this company. I can’t risk it.”

My next breath comes easy and the change in my brother’s expression tells me he knows how much relief I must feel. My hands are a breath away from shaking. I curl one into a fist on the table, and hold my coffee cup in the other. “Understandable, and I respect that decision.”

“That means you’ll no longer have the motel paid for.”

I don’t give a damn about the motel or money. “Also understandable.”

“Consider yourself on unpaid leave.”

All I can do is nod. For the first time in a long time, I want to stand up and crush him in a quick embrace. He doesn’t know what he’s given me with this. Or maybe he does. I can’t say.

Cade shifts his weight from one foot to the other, about to leave, but then he hesitates. He lets out a breath. “You need to be careful, Zander. You and Ella—you’re both in positions to be hurt badly in this. Her more than you. I don’t want this to end badly. So if you can walk away, I think you should.”

I don’t want to hug him anymore. My gratefulness shrinks until it’s a more appropriate size. “That’s your opinion.”

“It is.” He’s insistent now. Like he knew that it would piss me off to make the comment, but he had to make it anyway. Cade has never shied away from having hard conversations. Sometimes he’s taken it too far. I didn’t expect him to become a different person over this, and he hasn’t. “It is my opinion. But it’s because I don’t want to see anyone else hurt.” He turns to go. “I’ll be in contact,” he says over his shoulder.

“Anyone else” is another reference to Quincy. With his back to me, he walks out of the shop, the bell above the door chiming as he goes. Leave it to Cade to get that shot in at the last moment. It all starts with her, doesn’t it?

But no—no. I take a four-count breath, then another, and sit with the pain in my chest and the surge of guilt. Quincy didn’t die because of me. She died because some desperate bastard with a cruel streak mugged her and killed her. What’s arguable is whether I should have insisted on walking her home. I should have insisted on seeing her to a safe place, and I didn’t. I allowed her to walk away.

I’m not doing that with Ella. I didn’t drive back