“Was it the same dream, baby?” he whispered.

I nodded against his neck, the spasms lessening.

He rocked me in his lap, his hand stroking over my hair, as I cried out the rest of my tears. When the storm subsided, he lifted me up and laid me gently on the bed.

He disappeared into the bathroom while I blew my nose and mopped the last of the tears from my cheeks. A few seconds later he returned with a cool, damp cloth, a glass of water, and three pills.

I took the pills, looking at them suspiciously. “What are these?”

“Ibuprofen.”

“And?”

He sighed and sat on the bed next to my hip. “Something to help you sleep.” When I started to shake my head, he leaned forward and laid his lips on mine. “Please, darlin’. You need some uninterrupted sleep. You can’t heal like this.”

Deliberately, I misunderstood him. “My arm is fine, King. The doctor took the stitches out weeks ago.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it,” he stated firmly, calling me on my denial.

“I hate the way they make me feel,” I muttered.

His hands cupped my face, tilting it up so our eyes met. “And I hate the way hearing you scream in the middle of the night makes me feel. Please just compromise for tonight, baby. It hurts me to listen to you cry like that.”

Without another word of argument, I tossed the pills back and washed them down with water. I could clearly see in his eyes that King was sincere. He hurt for me, and I didn’t want to cause him the same kind of pain I was feeling.

*     *     *

The last few weeks had been a revelation.

I’d been too distraught in the days following the shooting to talk to anyone. A doctor hired by Wick had come to King’s house and sedated me. They’d had to keep me sedated for more than forty-eight hours.

When I’d finally calmed down enough to talk, I told King everything, breaking down several times during the story. At the time I hadn’t thought to ask if the police needed to speak to me. I’d been little more than a zombie by this time.

It wasn’t until over a week later that I found out that they’d never called the cops. Instead, Katie had just disappeared. I had no idea what they did with her body. King wouldn’t tell me.

I hadn’t spoken to anyone for days after that. It had taken Tia to snap me out of it.

I’d been holed up in the guest room, keeping everyone locked out. Tia picked the lock and came to sit by me on the bed. We sat together in silence for a few moments.

“You realize I agreed with King, don’t you?” she asked.

“What?”

“About what should be done. I agreed with Wick and King. They couldn’t call the cops into this.”

I sat straight up on the mattress. “Yeah, but what happens when they find the body? I’ll be brought up on murder charges when they figure out what happened.”

“They’ll never find her,” Tia promised.

Katie didn’t have any family left. She’d bounced around in foster homes the last two years of high school because she hadn’t had anyone to take care of her. No one would miss her but her friends and coworkers.

“It was wrong,” I whispered harshly. “They should have told the police.”

Tia grabbed my good arm and shook me roughly. “If they had called the cops, they would be in jail right now and Renaldo would have an opportunity to establish his foothold in Dallas. He would come after you on principal, Jena. Just because you’re King’s woman, you’d be dead.”

“You don’t know that,” I argued.

She sighed. “Jena, you’ve been in your own little world the last two weeks. King and Wick brought me in, explained what’s going on. I understand men like Renaldo and they were right to put your safety, and their own, above doing what was legal.”

I stared up at her with wide eyes. “They brought you in?” I whispered. “Oh God, what have I done? I got you tangled up in this mess.”

“Shut up, Jena. You have no idea what I’ve been doing the last few years. This is better by far.”

My mouth fell open then. “Maybe you should tell me what you’ve been up to the last five years.”

Tia shook her head. “Not right now,” she stated. “You’ve had enough shocks and hits lately. Once you’re better, we’ll talk again.”

“Promise?” I asked.

“I promise.”

Two weeks later, we still hadn’t had the conversation, but I knew I wasn’t ready yet. I still felt fragile, ready to break at any moment.

The most difficult thing had been quitting my job. Because I couldn’t tell Marilyn exactly what happened, I lied. I told her my mother was very sick and I needed to take care of her.

Like the wonderful woman she was, Marilyn offered to put me on leave for the rest of the year, but I’d had to refuse. She needed to replace me, not hold my job open for me when I wasn’t even sure I’d be returning.

I’d cried when we spoke on the phone and Marilyn sounded as though she’d been near tears as well.

Here I was, four weeks after the worst day of my life, jobless and with no idea what my next move would be.

The only constant I had in my life was King. After my conversation with Tia, I’d let go of my anger with him and I’d clung to him hard. I’d forgiven him completely and utterly. There was no more resentment about the past, no more fear that I couldn’t trust him. King came running when I needed him, prepared to protect me in whatever ways were necessary. He wasn’t just a pillar of strength; he was gentle when I needed it. He was also the one who suggested I talk to a psychiatrist.

At first I balked, not because I didn’t think it would help, but because I didn’t know if they would call the cops. I still wasn’t comfortable with the decisions King, Tia, and Wick had made, but I believed them when they said that the consequences of involving law enforcement could be deadly for all of us.

It was actually Wick who solved the dilemma. He found someone for me to talk to and insisted on bringing the doctor to King’s house. Apparently the doctor owed him a favor, one he was more than happy to pay.

Concerned he was there under duress, when I asked Dr. Smith (which was obviously a fake name) if he was being forced to do sessions with me, he’d insisted that he was pleased to do it.

“I’ve owed Wick for too long. Every time I’ve tried to repay him, he refused. As soon as he told me what he needed, I came. He’s a complex man, with his own moral code, but he isn’t altogether bad either. He has his own standards for right and wrong and they’re actually much stricter than society’s.”

When I pressed for more information, Dr. Smith clammed up. Finally, I gave up the ghost and we started our first session.

I’d seen the older man three times a week for the last two weeks and he’d suggested I get a prescription for sleeping pills to help with the nightmares. When I took them, I slept too deeply to remember my dreams if I had any.

I only hoped that Dr. Smith was right when he said I would eventually feel better. I might never be the same, but I wouldn’t always be this…breakable.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

‡

My eyes opened slowly against the bright morning light. I winced and squeezed my lids shut. When I opened them again, I realized that I’d actually slept through the night.

It was the first time in two months I’d gone to bed without taking a sleeping pill and not woken up because of a nightmare.

I rolled over to find King sprawled half on his side and half on his stomach, his head turned away from me. He seemed to prefer this position and I liked stretching out on top of him at night, cuddling up to his back. I could tell by the boneless spread of his limbs that he was sleeping soundly.

Pressing a light kiss to his shoulder, I rolled out of bed and padded down the hall to the kitchen. I was still staying with King two months after that horrific day. Tia was living in my apartment and working at the bar, so we were now alone in King’s house.