Today was going to be a long day. Blake pressed her hands against her lower back and stretched backwards, trying to get out all the kinks. She hadn’t been working that long today in the chair, but she’d been up most of the night stressing over what had happened with Graham.
And what hadn’t happened with Graham.
Her heart hurt for him, simply ached. She couldn’t imagine what he must be feeling right now or how he’d felt since his daughter had died. Bile filled her throat at the thought of losing Rowan at that age, at any age. She didn’t know how Graham had survived, knowing he would never see his daughter again, never hold her in his arms and tell her he loved her.
He’d lost his wife soon after, but he didn’t seem as messed up about that. After all, Candace still breathed, still moved, still lived. And Cynthia had been too sick for the medicine to ravage her body in its attempt to heal.
Since Blake was alone in her piercing room, she let the tears fall once more, her shoulders shaking. Now she knew a little bit of why Graham was the way he was, why he growled and grumbled and always seemed a bit dark, a bit secretive. He’d had to become that way when he’d lost his light. She wondered what kind of person he’d been before the tragedy, what kind of father he’d been. Of course, even daring to think that, she knew it would be too much. He’d been put through hell, and had made it through the other side, but what kind of man had come out of the ashes?
She was with him now, even if she didn’t know the precise label to put on them. With him enough to remember his taste and know that one day soon, she’d know the feel of him, learn every inch of him. Yet she was afraid of what would happen if they went too far. She wasn’t in a position to give herself to a man in any way other than bodily. She had to protect her daughter, and couldn’t do that with her mind in the clouds and her life split in two.
And she wasn’t sure Graham wanted more than just a quick lay anyway. She might have been okay with that; might have even desired that, but now it was all a little sticky. She knew too much about him and his past, yet it didn’t seem enough. That scared her more than she thought it would. As for her? He didn’t really know anything about her, and that was something she’d worked hard to accomplish. It was second nature by now to hide her past, to hide the fact that she had a child. But as Maya had warned her, she needed to tell Graham before it was too late.
Blake just needed to be sure it would be safe, would be worth it, to reveal her secrets. The danger that lurked from what would happen if the wrong people knew where she was, where her daughter was, would never fade.
But she hadn’t told Graham the night before about her daughter as Maya had warned. She honestly hadn’t felt like it was the right time, though now she knew why Maya had been so adamant. How could she tell the man who had lost his daughter that she had a daughter the same age as Cynthia would have been? What would that have done to him right then? Yes, it was going to hurt regardless, going to burn no matter what, but telling him when he was most vulnerable hadn’t been the right time.
Yet she wasn’t sure there would ever be a right time.
And that was why she was such a freaking idiot.
Blake wiped her tears and washed her hands, splashing cold water on her face afterward to try and hide the fact that she’d been crying. Maya had taken one look at her that morning and asked what had happened after Blake had left Maya’s house, but Blake hadn’t answered. Her eyes might be puffy, her cheeks still a bit pink, but she’d get through the rest of the day and figure out how to tell Graham about Rowan.
When had her life gotten so complicated?
It didn’t make any sense. One minute, she was in love with her high school sweetheart, breaking the rules, and trying to further ruin her already-not-so-perfect life; the next, she was pregnant and dealing with a man who hated her. Take another breath, and she was enabling a drug addict because she hadn’t known what else to do, hadn’t known how to fix him, though she’d tried.
And when her daughter came, she’d become the woman she should have been at the start. And the man she’d thought she loved had died because he hadn’t been able to hold on.
Now she had to hide her daughter from those who wanted to pin that death on her, and was falling for another man who harbored a pain in his soul she knew she would never be able to balm.