Page 106 of Brutal Knight

I turn the knob just a little more to the heat and let the steam fog up the glass.

Once she’s in the shower, I start to pull my shirt off. I move slowly, all too aware of the injury that’s making me ache. I know I should have gone back to the hospital, should have had it checked out again. But I don’t want to leave her alone, and I don’t want to take her back there after what happened.

We both need to be home right now.

Once I’m finally undressed, I join her in the shower. The heat feels good, although it doesn’t completely wash away the pain.

As I step up behind her in the shower, Willow leans back into me. I hold her to my chest and stand there as the water rushes over us both, cleaning away the dirt and blood from the warehouse.

She’s looking down when she shifts in my arms, moving slowly like she’s afraid to fall. When she finally turns, her tongue darts out to sweep across her lower lip.

She looks up slowly, her gaze moving across my body. I know what I must look like. My stitches are seeping a little from the fight. There’s fresh and dry blood around the wiry black knots of the thread. My shoulder is bruised, colored splotches painting my skin. There are thin scratches on my left cheek from when I fell to the sidewalk after being shot, gravel tearing at me.

Willow raises a hand to my shoulder, shaky. Her eyes are too bright. I know she’s trying not to cry.

When she finally touches my shoulder, it’s like breaking a spell. Whatever was holding her in silence is gone and she breaks down, her entire body curling into itself as sobs wrack her body. It happens so suddenly that I almost don’t catch her.

I pull her to my body as she clings to me, fingers slipping on wet skin. I press my face against her head and shut my eyes. I can hear the pain in her sobs, the deep, all-encompassing grief.

It’s more than just guilt about what her father did to me. I know she’s mourning the loss, even if it’s not about him. It’s more about what she could never have, what she had instead.

I hate that she had to suffer through this. I hate that any of this had to happen to her after she fought so hard to be free.

But I know I’ll be there to help her through this, and I know our love is stronger than anything that’s tried to pull us apart. So I let the water pour down and hold her in my arms, letting her cry, letting her pour out all her heartbreak into the water circling the drain.

We have each other, and that’s the only thing that matters right now.

CHAPTER40

Willow

I didn’t want to break down. I told myself I wouldn’t give my father that.

But as Connor holds me underneath the pouring water, I give in and let myself cry.

It feels like all the tears I’ve held in since my husband was shot are pouring out. I was so terrified he might be dead, I half believed I was imagining things when he showed up at the warehouse. Now that we’re both home again, it’s like everything is finally real. Everything is true.

And it makes me sob.

All the fear for his life comes pouring out of me, my lungs emptying and then filling up again as I cry with my entire body. I almost lost Connor.

I cry for the family I wish I’d had. The one that would have loved me and not sold me like a piece of meat. A mother, a father, smiles on my birthday. Nurturing. All the things my friends had that I was never allowed to have.

I cry for the family I’ll never have too. I know I can’t bear children, can’t have that magic. It hurts to think that after all the pain, I can’t have that, either. I can’t have the one thing I’d want to use my body for.

He holds me through all of it, never rushing me, never interrupting.

Eventually, I let out enough tears. I empty what’s in me, spent of energy, and then I’m left with him. I’m left with the need to say something, my heavy tongue moving to explain what I never could before.

“I never had a real family,” I tell him. “Maybe that’s why I wanted my own so badly.”

Connor is quiet when he replies. “You deserve one. You’ll have one.”

“I was afraid to tell you,” I whisper. “I didn’t say anything at first because I guess—I guess I expected you to hate me.”

I think about how Dmitri reacted when he found out. It wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t even predictable. When he found out, I thought he’d kill me. I thought he’d fly into a rage, accuse me of tricking him.

But that wasn’t it at all. He looked at me like I was nothing, like I was one of his failed plans. Like I was something disgusting, something worthless to him. And then he said something that killed me inside.

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