Page 45 of Crush's Fall

He wanted to go to her. He wanted to be the person she turned to, the person she gave her anguish and the weight of her emotions. He wanted to help her through the tragedy. In order for that to be a possibility, though, she’d have to accept him ashers, but she had yet to do that. Instead, he shoved down the urge to support her and turned away. With a heavy sigh, he headed down the hallway to go to his room in the apartment building.

Crush

After the town hall the next day, they had a memorial in the clubhouse for their dead. It was what you would expect a memorial to be, but it had a biker twist. After the crying and ceremony, they partied like it was their last night on earth.

Through it all, Crush kept looking for Lucifer to check in on her, but he didn’t. She saw him a few times, but it was as if she didn’t exist. It had been two days since she caught him looking in her direction. She hated that things were that way between them, but she just told herself it was probably for the best. With Lucifer’s ability to break through her walls, he would hold the cards, and she was afraid of handing over that power to him.

The first time she felt her tiger again since they injected her with that fucking drug, it was because her tiger was just as pissed at her as Lucifer was. Prowling and hissing inside of her, the cat let her know just how much of an idiot she was, but fear kept Crush from throwing caution to the wind.

Feeling her tiger again, even if it felt muted and lost in a fog, filled her with relief. Her tiger had been a major part of her for her entire life. Living without it was like living without her soul. Her full physical strength had returned relatively quickly, but it had taken her tiger a few days to make her presence known. It started with jolts of strong emotion, slowly building to glimpses of her tiger snarling at her or pacing.

Her emotions were out of control, and she couldn’t stop thinking of Lucifer. Every time a new feeling overwhelmed her, she had the urge to give it to him, lay it out, and let her mate carry the weight, but then panic would pull her back and remind her why that wasn’t a good idea, even if she wanted it to be with her whole heart.

But when she climbed the stairs to her apartment every night, Crush was bombarded with an ache in her chest, a longing to feel his arms around her, a need to hear his voice. In those moments, she knew it was only a matter of time before she would give in and give herself to Lucifer to destroy or cherish at his whim.

Lucifer

The morning after the memorial, Lucifer decided to go for a ride to clear his head. He had spent the night tossing and turning after drinking with the men for a few hours. He drank more than he usually would have with the intention of it making him pass out and help him get some sleep. It didn’t.

Lucifer gave up trying at around five in the morning, and took a shower, got dressed, and headed out of the building. When he stepped outside, he turned to head to where his bike was parked in the lot next to the clubhouse, but he stopped when he heard some noise coming from behind the strip mall. Curious, he reversed course and headed that way.

When he stepped around the back corner, Lucifer didn’t understand what he was seeing at first. Crush was outside the door that led to her apartment stairs. Around her were stacks of boxes and bags of all different colors and sizes. She was just standing there with her arms crossed over her chest, staring down at the mess.

His ego told him she didn’t want him or his help, and he should leave her alone. Hell, he hadn’t even caught her looking at him in days. Either she hadn’t made a decision, or the decision she made wasn’t one he was going to like. Lucifer wasn’t ready to hear her tell him to fuck off for good.

His heart told him she was his, that she needed help, and that he should be the one giving it to her. Physically or emotionally, there had to be something he could do to make her load lighter. Knowing she was hurting, she had to be after everything the clubs had been faced with in the previous days and the loss of loved ones, he couldn’t stand by and not at leasttryto do something. It was that thought that pushed him forward.

He took slow steps toward her, but he didn’t try to hide his presence. Since Crush was a shifter, her advanced hearing and sense of smell would make that attempt pointless. Instead, Lucifer just remained quiet and strolled toward her, keeping his eyes on her.

He was halfway down to her when Crush lifted her head and looked down at him. There was a scowl on her face, but somehow, he knew it wasn’t for him. It was for whatever was running through her mind.

Sliding his hands into his front pockets, he came to a stop a few yards from her. “Hey,” he said, low.

“Hey,” she replied, her voice missing the snarkiness he had fallen for. It didn’t even hold her usual bland annoyance. It was lifeless. That only made his chest feel tighter and had his heart ache more.

“What are you doing? What’s all this?”

Crush shrugged. “Ivy’s parents… They can’t afford to come up here to retrieve her belongings, and they refuse to accept money from us.” She swallowed hard and looked away from him. “I couldn’t sleep, so I packed up her room. I figured I’d bring all of her stuff up to the church room, where I could pack it properly, before I shipped it to them.”

“Sounds like a good plan.”

Crush was quiet for a long moment. He was just about to ask her why she wasn’t doing that when, in a voice he could barely hear, she said, “I didn’t realize how hard it would be… to see her things and… not have her here.”

Fuck. Lucifer fully understood that. Grief was a monster that repeatedly took potshots at you over time, randomly bitchslapped you, stabbed you, punched you when you least expected it. The smallest things packed the biggest punch, causing the most pain. Seeing Ivy’s belongings piled up with no one to use them anymore probably felt like a knife to the heart.

“Would you like me to bring them up for you?”

Immediately, she replied, “I don’t need you to carry anything for me. I’m not a helpless fucking twat.”

Lucifer swallowed down the chuckle that threatened to come out and calmly said, “I know you don’tneedme. You’ve made that perfectly clear. And I wasn’t trying to say you aren’t capable. Hell, without your shifter strength, by sheer stubbornness, I’m positive you could do anything… except maybe let me in. I was simply offering to do something for you that is obviously causing you sorrow.”

Her eyes lifted again. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn he saw tears twinkling in the lidline of her fucking beautiful eyes, but hedidknow better. Crush didn’t cry.

“If you wouldn’t mind helping, that’d be great,” she mumbled.

In response, Lucifer reached down and grabbed the biggest box. Shifting it to one arm, he grabbed the handle to the door and yanked it open. After she grabbed a few things, she stepped through the open doorway and headed up the stairs with Lucifer on her heels.

As he helped her, he considered bringing up their talk and asking if she made a decision, but he decided against it. He didn’t want to add more pressure to her already heavy load of grief, responsibility, and stress. There would be time for that soon.

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