Page 136 of Sweet Violence
I made a strangled sound. “Henry.”
“Baby.”
“Do I want to know?”
“Plausible deniability looks very pretty on you,” he said smoothly.
That was absolutely not an answer.
Which probably was answer enough.
Some things existed better in silence.
“You’re staring again,” Rhys said, pointing at me with his fork.
I blinked. “Hm?”
“At your boyfriend.” He leaned back in his stool. “It’s honestly getting weird at this point.”
My mother glanced over immediately, a smile pulling at her mouth. “Oh, leave him alone.”
“I would,” Rhys replied, “if he looked at literally anything else in this house with that amount of emotional devastation.”
“I am sitting right here,” Henry said dryly.
“That’s unfortunately the problem.”
Warmth spread through my chest before I could stop it.
Henry glanced toward me then, one hand resting against the counter beside him while sunlight caught against the silver at his watch and the faint scar near his wrist. His sleeves were rolledhalfway up his forearms, tie abandoned hours ago, expression softer around the edges than it used to be back when he still believed love was something temporary people eventually survived losing.
He looked at home here now.
My mother moved around him easily while finishing dinner, bumping his shoulder occasionally when he stood in the wrong place. Rhys had stopped acting intimidated by him weeks ago and now treated Henry’s existence like a personal challenge from God.
And Henry… hestayed.
Every terrible thing that happened in my life before this had taught me people disappeared eventually.
Not my Daddy.
He woke up beside me every morning—reached for my hand in parking lots and kissed my forehead while grading papers.
He filled the empty spaces in my life so naturally that sometimes I forgot they’d ever been empty at all.
“You’re doing it again,” Rhys informed me. “Totally glassy-eyed.”
“I hope that stool leg snaps and you fall hard enough to knock the sarcasm out of your body.”
Rhys looked down at the stool beneath him thoughtfully. “What sarcasm? Youareglassy-eyed. You’ve been staring at that man for the last five minutes like a Victorian woman dying of consumption.”
My mother laughed under her breath from the stove while heat crawled straight into my face.
“I hate everyone in this house.”
“Nope. You don’t.” Rhys grinned into his drink. “You’re obsessed with at least one of us.”
Henry finally crossed the kitchen toward me then, sliding one hand against the back of my neck as he passed behind my stool.
