Take the Chance (Top Shelf Romance #9) - Brittainy Cherry Page 0,47

out of his face. “I just wanted to say Happy New Year. I wanted to stop by earlier, but I had to clean up a bit.”

Graham’s eyes filled with tears as he stared at Rebecca’s eyes, which were heavy with exhaustion. She used to smile more.

“What is it, Graham? What’s wrong?”

“Please don’t…” he whispered. As the tears began to roll down his cheeks and his body began to shake in the bed, he tried his hardest to be a man, but it wasn’t working. His heart was still the heart of a young boy, a child who was terrified of what would happen if his father didn’t ease up on Rebecca.

“Please don’t what, sweetie?”

“Please don’t leave,” he said, his voice strained with fear. He sat up in his bed and placed his hands in Rebecca’s. “Please don’t leave, Rebecca. I know he’s mean and he makes you cry, but I promise you’re good. You’re good and he’s mean. He pushes people away, he does, and I can tell he makes you so sad. I know he tells you you’re not good enough, but you are. You are good enough, and you’re pretty, and your dress was beautiful, and your dinner was perfect, and please, please don’t leave us. Please don’t leave me.” He was now crying full-blown tears, his body shaking from the idea that Rebecca was two suitcases away from leaving him forever. He couldn’t imagine what his life would be like if she was gone. He couldn’t even begin to envision how dark his life would become if she walked away.

When he was only with his father, he was so, so very much alone.

But when Rebecca came, he remembered how it felt to be loved again.

And he couldn’t lose that feeling.

He couldn’t lose his light.

“Graham.” Rebecca smiled, tears falling from her own eyes as she tried to wipe his away. “You’re okay, please, it’s okay. Calm down.”

“You’re going to leave me, I know you are.” He sobbed, covering his face with his hands. That was what people did—they left. “He’s so mean to you. He’s too mean to you, and you’re going to leave.”

“Graham Michael Russell, you stop it right now, okay?” she ordered, holding his hands tightly in hers. She placed his hands against her cheeks and nodded once. “I’m here, all right? I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’re not leaving?” he asked, hiccupping as he tried to catch his next breath.

She shook her head. “No. I’m not leaving. You’re just overthinking everything. It’s late, and you need rest, okay?”

“Okay.”

She laid him back down and tucked him in, kissing his forehead. As she stood up to leave, he called after her one last time. “And you’ll be here tomorrow?”

“Of course, honey.”

“Promise?” he whispered, his voice still a bit shaky, but Rebecca’s remained strong and sure.

“Promise.”

Chapter 13

Graham

Lucy and I fell back into our normal routine. In the mornings, she’d show up with her yoga mat and do her morning meditation in the sunroom, and whenever she wasn’t working a special event, she’d come over to my house at night to help take care of Talon while I worked on my novel. We ate dinner together at the dining room table almost every night, but didn’t have much to talk about other than the cold that had found its way into both Talon’s body and mine.

“Drink it,” Lucy told me, bringing me a mug of tea.

“I don’t drink tea.” I coughed into my hands. My desk was still scattered with tissues and cough syrup bottles.

“You will drink this twice a day for three days, and it will make you one hundred percent better. I have no clue how you’re even functioning with that nasty cough. So, drink,” she ordered. I smelled the tea and made a face. She laughed. “Cinnamon, ginger, fresh lemons, hot red peppers, sugar, black pepper, and peppermint extract—plus a secret ingredient I can’t tell you about.”

“It smells like hell.”

She nodded with a small smirk. “A perfect drink for the devil himself.”

For the following three days, I drank her tea. She pretty much had to force-feed it to me, but by day four, the coughing had disappeared.

I was almost positive Lucy was a witch, but at least with her tea I was able to clear my head for the first time in weeks.

The following Saturday evening, dinner sat on the table, and when I went to get Lucy to eat, I noticed her in the sunroom on her cell phone.

Instead of interrupting, I waited patiently,