Page 95 of Creep

She sucked in a sharp breath.

“This is upsetting you,” I said. “We shouldn’t talk about things that upset you.”

And the last thing I ever wanted to happen was for Briggs to play any role in upsetting Lia.

A ridiculous notion. Things were going to get shittier before they got better. Lia would be hurt over the fucker’s actions, and there was fuck all I could do about it. I pulled her in closer to me and pressed a kiss on the top of her head at the thought.

“That’s just silly. Lots of things in this world are upsetting to me. Are we just going to avoid it all?”

“Yes,” I answered seriously. She laughed, and I shook my head. “Tell me what these things are, and I’ll make sure they never touch you.”

She leaned back and looked at me. I let my eyes take in every feature of her face, taking in the light in her eyes that I never wanted to see diminished.

“It’s sweet that you want to do that. We both know it’s not possible.”

“I can try.”

She laughed softly.

“Hmm.”

I felt her hand move then, her palm pressing on my abs over the butterfly tattoo.

“If you ever want to talk about your dad, I’m a pretty good listener.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I answered. “Not now. I don’t think I’m ready to tell you all the messed-up shit just yet.”

“I understand,” she said, but I could hear the disappointment in her voice. I closed my eyes, wishing this shit didn’t affect me still.

But everything that had been done to me, to Theo… that stayed with you. It made me into this man Lia didn’t know—not fully, anyway—and for the first time, I questioned whether I was good for her or not.

I felt her trace along the tattoo. I grabbed her hand, halting her. “Why don’t you like butterflies?”

She stilled. “I told you, I think they’re creepy.”

“Yeah?”

She didn’t answer right away. Then, “My mom died when I was eleven. My brother and I were in the car with her when it happened. The driver’s side was hit, and she took most of the impact. She died at the scene of the accident before help could arrive. And my brother was sitting behind her, so he got most of the injuries. I was lucky.”

She didn’t sound like she thought she was lucky when she said it.

I ran my hands up and down her arms soothingly.

“I don’t remember much about that night, only that my brother was crying, and my mom wasn’t moving, and there wasn’t anything I was able to do. I was stuck in the car, and it felt like forever before help came. But there was one thing in my memory.” She moved her hand down my abs, covering the monarch butterfly tattoo. I wished I had never gotten it in the first place.

The reason why I did was fucked-up, anyway, and perhaps I would have been better off without the reminder.

“I saw a monarch butterfly. Which doesn’t really make sense now that I think about it, because it was dead in the middle of the night, and it was raining. So why did I see that?”

“Perhaps you didn’t really see a butterfly. Maybe you saw something that looked like it,” I said, having an inkling of what she might have seen that night.

“Maybe,” she conceded.

I also knew her mom’s accident wasn’t really an accident, but would Lia want that ugly truth? My thoughts went back to wanting to shield her from all the ugly shit in this world.

Or would she rather have this lie?

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