Page 108 of The Sun & Her Burn

“I want to say something,” I said, not whispering.

He stared down into my face for a second, his eyes so green they seemed almost unnatural, a bright and clean colour like freshly cut and watered grass. For a man with so many demons, they were wonderfully pure.

“Okay,” he said, squeezing me closer.

I could tell he didn’t want me out there, that he would have had me secure myself in the house and, maybe, never even be seen by the paparazzi again. So it meant a lot that he gave way to my needs.

“I know most of you don’t think celebrities are real people with real feelings,” I started, taking strength from Adam at my side and Sebastian caring for my mother inside. “As if fame and money turn people into soulless automatons. Or maybe you think gossiping about them, raking them over the coals,lyingabout them is simply the tax they should pay for being more successful than you. I don’t know, and I don’t care. What I do care about is my family. Today, you’ve taken advantage of a woman with frontotemporal dementia, which is a serious andsometimes ignoble disease. What you witnessed today was the way it can rob a wonderful woman of her reason. What you’ve done by documenting it with the intention to sell it to the highest bidder is rob her of her dignity. That is on you. Everyone deserves to be treated with basic human decency, and today, you’ve failed in that. I hope you can live with yourselves.”

I rocked to my toes to kiss the square hinge of Adam’s locked jaw and then peeled myself off him with a slight nod of thanks to Boone before I turned my back on the paps and headed inside.

I had just closed the doors when the sirens came from a distance.

My eyes were closed as I leaned against the front door, struggling to breathe through the emotions clogging my throat. So much pain and sorrow and relief and hope all knotted like hair in a drain.

“I am sorry, Linnea,” Mrs. Ramirez said quietly.

I pried my eyes open to see she was sitting on the couch. It was a rag she had been holding to her nose, but it was curled in one loose fist, drying and bloody as was the skin under her inflamed nostrils.

“It’s me who should apologise,” I said, the words kind of slurred because I was coming down from the adrenaline. “She hurt you.”

Mrs. Ramirez was one of the best, steadiest women I knew. If it hadn’t been for her, I would have drowned a long time ago. She stood and came toward me. At five foot one, she was a good eight inches shorter than me, so she had to reach up to tap her palm to my cheek affectionately.

“You are a good girl,” she murmured. “She is lucky to have such a goodmija.”

“I am lucky to have such a good neighbor,” I admitted a little wetly.

She smiled and corrected me. “A goodamiga.”

A goodfriend.

“Yes,” I whispered through the mass in my throat. “Thank you for everything.”

“You have been alone in this too long,” she said with a click of her tongue against her teeth. “I am happy to see not one, but two strong men come to your aid. That Adam Meyers…” Her eyes went glassy with admiration for a moment before she shook herself out of it. “I have always wanted to meet him. I did not think it would be in circumstances such as these.”

A giddy, almost hysterical laugh escaped me, and Mrs. Ramirez laughed softly with me.

“I’ll introduce you properly when you don’t have a bloody nose. Both of them are good men,” I said, as if it was a secret.

What I meant to say wasthey’re the best men I’ve ever known, and I want to be with them both.

Mrs. Ramirez tapped my cheek again, consolingly, so maybe she read in my eyes what I couldn’t say aloud.

“A good girl,” she repeated before moving away to grab her purse by the entry table. “Miranda is getting worse, not better. You and I are not enough for her anymore.”

“No,” I agreed, chewing my lip until the skin broke. “I know. I’ll figure something out.”

She nodded brusquely, and without another word, she moved down the hall toward the back door so she could reach her own house without encountering the last of the mess in the yard.

I moved down the hall too, but took the jog in the floor plan that led to the big bedroom to the right. Miranda’s bedroom door was ajar, so I pushed it open silently to see Sebastian sitting on the edge of the bed with one of Miranda’s hands in his. My mom was tucked in neatly, the sheets tight around her body so the effect was almost a swaddle. She seemed more than content inthe tight comfort, her head lolled to the side of a stack of pillows, her eyes closed and mouth slack with sleep.

“Mrs. Ramirez gave her some medication, but Miranda wanted me to keep holding her hand,” Seb explained as he looked over his shoulder at me. “I have to admit, I am afraid to let go.”

My heart skipped a beat, then pounded out a rapid two-step.

God, he was lovely.

It seemed impossible that such a man could actually exist outside of film and fantasy. My dad and uncles had taught me that there were good men in the world, but their love lives left a lot to be desired, given that not one of them was in a long-term relationship. To know that there was a man—men—who could love the way Seb did, yearn and caretake the way Adam did, changed something in my worldview for the better after years of witnessing Miranda’s hopeless marriages and Dad’s endless bachelorhood.