Page 95 of Avery's Hero

I shove the blanket off and sit up. My back to him. “Did he tell you about… Dillon?—”

A shudder works its way through me. I don’t even know what to say, how to describe everything that happened.

“The bastard.” The two words are low and venomous.

“Yes.”

“He did. I’m sorry as fuck that happened to you.”

A familiar numbness rises through my body, slowly taking all sensation away from my toes to my ankles, then my knees, then my chest, all the way to the top of my head. It’s a protective mechanism that saved me when I was just an innocent teen girl.

A girl who’d never even seen a boy naked before.

I flinch when his hand touches me even though I feel safe with him. Brock’s truly the only man I’ve trusted with all the parts of me. Even the broken parts.

He settles his broad hand on my low back. It’s warm against my cold skin. Part of me wants to curl into it, to bury my face against his chest and pretend that tonight didn’t happen.

But I’m too coherent for that.

Maybe I should get drunk. I’m not sure there’s enough alcohol in the house to take away this terrible feeling. Not that it would last. Sooner or later, I’d have to come down. Back to reality. The one where the man I love and the brother I just got back hate each other.

Like we haven’t endured enough already. It seems like this relationship is doomed and we’re just fighting to swim upstream when the torrent just keeps coming in waves.

“I know you’re hurting,” Brock says softly into the darkness. His voice is thick and rough. “I want to take the pain away.”

Sighing, I bring my knees to my face and curl my arms around them. “I don’t know what can be done.”

Flexing his fingers against me, he murmurs, “I won’t give you up.”

My heart, my poor battered heart unfurls inside of my chest. “You’re a stubborn man, aren’t you?”

“I’m a fixer. I won’t stop until something’s right.”

I sigh again, my chest feeling heavy as lead. “I still can’t believe you quit your job, just like that, for me.”

“I don’t regret it.”

“But Lincoln depends on you.”

He rolls on his side. I know because the mattress dips and moves, then he places a second hand on my shoulder, warm and strong. “I always land on my feet. I have plenty of resources. This is just a course change.”

“I wish I were so brave.”

“You are, sweetheart. Gunnar, I’ll always know him as G.S., told me about how you tried to protect him from knowing what was happening to you.”

A cold sweat prickles at the skin along my hairline. The pain from that time in my life lurks there, thinly veiled. Sometimes, it’s closer to the surface than others. Now it’s barely contained.

Brock gently rubs my tight muscles, letting his warmth sink into me. “Gunnar’s a good man. I think he and I have more in common than he’s aware of.”

“Does he know you quit the department?”

“No.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I mutter, “Fools. Bloody fools. Both of you for throwing your lives away for me.”

I sputter as Brock scoops me up in his arms and plants me between his legs, caging me in. “I didn’t throw away anything.”

I grumble, “You worked so hard to reach the level you did in your career.”