“I don’t know that I can do this.” I bit my lip as twin rivers dripped from my chin.
“You don’t have to do anything anymore, Clare. You already did the impossible. You kept yourself and that little girl alive. I swear on my life, from here on out, I’ll keep you that way. You just let go and trust me to get Tessa. I’ll handle the rest.”
I was genuinely confused when I first felt the warmth. His hands remained at his sides, so I knew he wasn’t touching me. But, as I stared into his promising, blue eyes, a blanket of security wrapped around me.
“Luke,” I breathed, dropping my forehead to his chest.
“Heath,” he corrected.
“Heath,” I repeated.
“Jesus,” he whispered, inching even closer so his front became flush with mine, forcing me to move my head to the crook of his neck. He didn’t embrace me as he stood there, allowing me to desperately cling to his shirt—to hope. However, his promise meant more than anything he could have ever physically offered me.
I didn’t need a man to coddle me.
I needed help.
And, somehow, someway, after what felt like an eternity of living in Satan’s lair, God had finally heard my prayers.
I felt his cheek on the top of my head, but it was the warmth of his skin against my battered face that offered the most comfort. I’d been cold for too long.
A man’s voice interrupted my breakdown. “Can we at least move her out of the hallway?”
Heath’s hand flew out to the side, snapping him to silence. “When she’s ready,” he declared gruffly.
The fact of the matter was I was never going to be ready.
But I needed my baby girl.
And I needed Heath’s blanket of security wrapped around us both.
Drawing in a ragged breath, I released him and settled back on the gurney. When I finally took in my surroundings, there were at least three doctors and nurses waiting against the wall. We were in the middle of a hallway, barely inside the doors of what I imagined was the emergency room, two uniformed police officers hovering nearby and another guarding the door.
The sense of alarm hung heavily in the air around us.
They, too, were waiting for Walt to show up to reclaim his family.
He would.
Absolutely.
I only prayed that Heath’s blanket would be thick enough to hide us all.
“Right back,” he assured.
A cold chill slid up my spine as I watched him walk away.
Tessa was quietly crying when I made it to the room. Roman was doing his best to console her as he held her on his lap. Back at the house, I’d promised her that Roman was a good guy. But reassurances only lasted so long for a terrified little girl in the arms of a stranger.
“Luke!” she shrieked when she caught sight of me.
Over the past three months, I’d worked my ass off to gain that little girl’s trust. In the beginning, I had done it hoping Clare’s would follow as a result. But, as the days had turned into weeks, I had done it because…well, somewhere along the line, being with them stopped being about an investigation and became everything to do with showing a little girl and her mother that there was a world that didn’t involve beatings and tears.
Whether it was tickling her as Clare fought a breakdown or tossing her in the air while Clare battled for the ability to breathe, I did my best to distract them both from the madness that was their lives. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I’d loved every fucking minute of watching them emerge from their cocoons of fear.
Before I had been assigned to go undercover as Clare’s personal trainer, I’d seen at least a dozen images of her. Not once had she ever been smiling. After I’d met her, I realized that her smile was one of the world’s best-kept secrets, because if any man experienced one, they would wage wars to hold on to it. It was life changing.
And my federally issued badge did not make me immune.
As a man—and a decent fucking human being—I’d ached to help her from the start. She was beautiful; no one could deny that. But she had this glimmer in her defeated eyes that spoke to my soul in ways others could never understand. It was a subtle flicker that danced even during the day as the flames of abuse consumed her from the inside. The bruises didn’t have to be present physically. It was as obvious as a beacon shining from her ocean-blue eyes. Not even the greatest actress could hide that unmistakable inferno.
The DEA hadn’t known much about Clare Noir at first. Walter had kept her under lock and key for years. It wasn’t until after Tessa had turned one that he’d started allowing her out of the house to go to the gym. Surveillance on her had started immediately, but it had taken years for us to develop enough of a case to send an agent in. And, even then, all we had known was that she was married to Atlanta’s enemy number one. My job had been to find out if she was enemy number two or, hopefully, bring her in as the final nail in the coffin in our case against Walter Noir.
But, within weeks, I’d found myself with a different objective altogether.