“I understand if you want space when you get home. I’m not leaving, but I’ll give you space once we’re there.” Logan’s voice was low, soothing, as if he was afraid she’d break down.
Surprised, she turned to look at him. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.” And it wasn’t like he could go back to his place anyway. Sure, he could go to his brother’s, but she wanted him with her.
He shoved out a breath. “Good. If this happened because of me, then I’m sorry—”
“Logan, even if this has something to do with one of your jobs, it’s not your fault. Whoever shot at us? They’re at fault, and I hope like hell they get caught sooner than later.”
“Me too.” Reaching out with one hand, he linked his fingers through hers.
She didn’t think to stop him, just squeezed him back tightly as she laid her head against the headrest. Right now she could use some comfort.
And even though he seemed to be handling this so well, she figured he could use comfort too. Someone had tried to kill them right outside his home in broad daylight.
If the cops didn’t catch whoever had been behind it soon… She didn’t even want to think about what that meant.
Chapter 8
“Come here,” Logan murmured to Grace. Standing in the middle of her kitchen, she looked lost and out of sorts and he wanted to do everything possible to comfort her.
Thankfully she didn’t pause, just stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him as he did the same to her. They’d just gotten back to her place and she definitely wasn’t her normal self—which was understandable.
“It’ll get better,” he murmured.
He knew her mind was in a state of shock as it tried to reset itself to this new reality in which someone had just tried to kill them on a bright, seemingly calm day in a quiet neighborhood where she should have been safe. Safe was a relative concept, but Grace had never been to war, had never even fired a weapon, as far as he knew. Her world was not violence.
She kept her face buried against his chest, and even though the circumstances were less than ideal he still liked holding her. Liked having her soft body pressed up against his so trustingly.
“Is there anyone in your family you want to call? Maybe talk to them about what happened?” He would be there for her, but he didn’t want her to bottle anything up.
In response she made a snorting sound and simply shook her head. When her grip around him loosened, he finally released her, letting go of her soft, warm curves.
“You don’t even want to call your mom?” he asked.
Sighing, she sat at the center island and rubbed her hands over her face before looking at him. “No. Because it would eventually devolve into a conversation about her. Trust me.”
He started rummaging around in her pantry, looking for hot cocoa because he knew she liked it. “You don’t talk about her much.” And he was more than curious about her relationship with her family.
“We really only talk a couple times a year. She has a very good job out in DC. She was transferred there about five years ago and hasn’t left.”
“So why don’t you guys communicate much? I mean, only if you want to talk about it,” he added. He wanted to keep her talking right now but only if the conversation wouldn’t make things worse. She just been through a shock, a trauma really, and he wanted to help her get back to normal. He smiled when he found the box of hot cocoa packets.
“It’s not really one thing. She wasn’t a terrible mother, I guess. But she wasn’t a great one either. Her love was very conditional—it always came with strings. Her whole life she was looking for someone to fill a hole inside her and I was more or less an inconvenience. She was all loving and wonderful when she didn’t have a boyfriend. And when I was young, I loved those times. It was always the two of us and she loved doing stuff together. But the second she got a boyfriend, I basically ceased to exist. Around the time I hit twelve, I realized it had nothing to do with me and I stopped trying so hard to win her love back. The only reason I even recognized it is because my grandmother spelled it out for me, in words I would understand, that I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
“Jesus, Grace.” He’d never known. Never guessed it was anything like that. He knew her dad wasn’t in the picture because he’d split town before she’d been born.
She simply shrugged but he saw the flash of pain in her dark eyes as she continued. “If her current boyfriend had younger kids, which they often did, I became their babysitter. Which was fine for a while. But they filtered in and out of our lives so often that I hated getting attached to anyone because I always had to say goodbye. So I stopped trying to please her and she definitely noticed that.”
His heart ached for the little girl she’d been, who’d had a mother who couldn’t see how incredible she was. “I’m sorry.”
She lifted a shoulder. “She is who she is and she’s not responsible for my happiness. I accepted it and accepted that I’m definitely not going to get the positive relationship from her that I would have loved to have at one point. I tried well into college to keep a relationship going with her, but I’m done trying to fix something that can never be fixed… Something that never should have been broken in the first place.” Her words were so matter-of-fact.
He put her mug in the microwave and pressed start. “Is that why you got a degree in psychology?”
She grinned at him and he felt that smile like a sucker punch. “You’re very astute. I didn’t even realize it at the time but that’s exactly why I went into psychology. And then I discovered that I wanted to work with kids, and here I am.” Her smile faded a little bit but some of the edge of her tension seemed to have eased up.
Pulling the mug from the microwave, he stirred it a bit before passing it over to her. “How do you feel about watching a movie before you crash?” In the military he’d found that watching movies, being able to let his brain relax, had helped hugely after dealing with a shock of violence. That and exercise to the point he was beyond exhausted. Different things worked for different people.
“Thanks for this.” She blew on it gently. “And yes, mainly because I don’t want to close my eyes. Is that pathetic?”
“I think it’s pretty damn normal.” And she was an even more incredible woman than he’d already thought. “Do you want me to pop some popcorn?”
She grinned. “Sure. I’ll go pick out a movie. Superhero movies only.”
“I think I can live with that.” Yep, the circumstances were definitely less than ideal but he still loved being with Grace. And he was going to be her shadow until they figured out what was going on. He would never let anything happen to her. Not on his watch.
He wanted to push her a little on what kind of future they might have but knew tonight wasn’t right for that. She needed to feel safe, to have no pressure. But that didn’t mean he’d given up on making her his. After seeing her with his family last night he’d realized even more how real he wanted this fake relationship to be.
* * *
Grace stepped into her kitchen, surprised to find Logan there—shirtless—cooking breakfast for her. This was definitely a fantasy come to life, but she’d tossed and turned all night and was too tired to fully appreciate it.