His chest hurt seeing Lucy in such pain. He sat next to her and held her tight. Her body shook, every muscle frozen, and she was icy to the touch. She crawled into his lap like a child and clung to him.
Guilt washed over him. He should have been here, in bed with her. She needed him, even if she hadn’t admitted it. His research into Mona Hill had told him why the woman had gotten to Lucy. But he’d been hurt and angry that she’d shut him out. He didn’t want to think that staying downstairs was his way of punishing Lucy. That he’d just been working when he decided to rest. It was his own damn insecurities that drove him to such pettiness.
“Lucy,” he whispered as he stroked her hair.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she repeated.
“Shh. There’s nothing for you to be sorry about.”
“I don’t want you to see.” Her face was buried in his chest. Her arms were so tight around his neck that he couldn’t move.
“Honey, it’s okay.”
“It’s not okay! Don’t say it’s okay, I never wanted you to see me like that.”
He didn’t know what she was talking about.
“It’s just a nightmare, princess. Just a nightmare.”
And then the flood of tears came with a guttural cry that tore Sean apart. He held Lucy tight, but he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to take away this pain. Had she been suppressing this anguish every night when she woke up, unable to sleep? Because she didn’t want him to see her suffer? How had she done it? What was inside her head? He would do anything to help her.
He pulled at a blanket until he freed it from the bed and wrapped it around Lucy, holding her close. He held her, rocking her in his arms, because he didn’t know what else to do. He held her because he loved her and her pain was his pain. There had been times when Lucy had been upset or woken from a bad dream when he wanted to hit someone. Beat senseless the people who’d hurt her. Anger helped him cope with her suffering.
Now, all he wanted was to make things better for Lucy. Forget those who hurt her—they were all dead anyway—and focus on the present. Something had happened to trigger these nightmares in Lucy after more than a year of peace.
The first step was for him to address what she was scared about. He had an idea about what it was. It pained him to talk about what happened eight years ago, so they never really talked about it. They talked around the events. Because he’d worked so closely with her brother Patrick, he knew the truth. He hadn’t been a part of her life then, so it was easy to avoid the conversation. They’d first met after one of her rapists had been murdered by a vigilante. They’d never had to talk about what had happened because she knew he knew. He’d thought it would be better that way. Was he wrong?
When he’d first met Lucy, she had a hard, icy exterior that not only prevented anyone from getting too close, but also kept her emotions buried. He’d recognized that she needed him from the very beginning, to ground her, to give her a wall of protection so that she could let down the shields and relax.
He didn’t remember when he’d realized that Lucy and his brother Kane were so much alike. They were driven to right wrongs, to protect innocents, and with everything they’d done and seen in their lives—and the cruelties that had been done to them—they kept the shell to protect them as much as to give them the ability to keep up the fight. Sean had made it his mission to give Lucy a home, a place of peace, a security that she would never doubt, not even for a second. And she had been happy.
Until the boys.
He’d known that the mission would be hard for her—not the mission itself, because like Kane, Lucy could compartmentalize and shut out emotion. But the aftermath. Because Lucy sometimes couldn’t pull her feelings back out of the box, as if she’d buried them too deep and she couldn’t find them.
That’s why the nightmares were back, Sean realized. Maybe the dreams represented emotions she’d buried so deep she couldn’t think about them, didn’t want to feel them, in the light of day. He had to shine a light on her fear, or she’d never sleep through the night. He had to know what she was scared of, or the nightmares would kill her. No one could survive this every night.
“Talk to me, princess,” he said. She’d stopped crying. His shirt was wet from her tears, but all that remained was her shaking.
“Hold me.” Her voice was so quiet he almost couldn’t hear her.
“Always.”