Page 59 of Z For Butterfly Man
Mason’s eyes meet mine across the room. They’re filled with anger but also sadness, pity and resignation.
He knows what I’m about to do. He knows why.
“It’s okay, baby,” Shane says. His gaze speaks volumes.I love you. Please. Please do this for us.
In this moment, I realize love isn’t always beautiful. Sometimes it’s a choice between two kinds of pain. Sometimes it’s a betrayal dressed up as devotion. Sometimes it’s the person you’d die for asking you to become someone you’ll hate.
My tulip falls from my hand as my mouth opens. Shane’s entire body goes rigid. The room holds its breath.
The purple petals crush under my shoe as the words that come out destroy everything.
CHAPTER 28
Brandon
“Have you sent someone to clean since we left here?” I pour myself a glass of water from the kitchen sink. Pain shoots up my shoulder as I run my fingers over the spotless counter. As far as I know, no one has been using this safehouse for weeks, not since we left to go to Florida. “This place is immaculate.”
“No, I did it. I kinda…stress clean.” Tristan clears the table and sets up a mini infirmary on it. “Yesterday morning, I spent some time here after she…” Sadness clips his words.
After she broke up with him and sent us packing. I didn’t hear it straight from Tristan, but Marcus was very vocal about it when Tristan wasn’t around. Marcus really didn’t like Mrs. Abel at all.
“Sit. Let me stitch you up before you lose any more blood.” Tristan turns on the heater and helps me out of my clothes. I wince as he takes off the bandage. He applies more disinfectant. It burns like hell.
“I’ll spray some Lidocaine and wait for it to kick in before the stitches, okay?”
Cold sweat covers my face and chest. My head starts to swim. “No, sir, go on with it. I think if I wait any longer, I’ll pass out.”
The needle pierces my skin back and forth. I bite on a groan, fighting the wave of vertigo threatening to take me out. I must have really lost a lot of blood. I need a distraction. “Sir… It’s really not my place to ask, but isn’t it unethical to get involved with a client?”
He continues to stitch me as if I’ve said nothing.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“You’re right. It is unethical. But you can’t help who you fall in love with.”
“Love? You’ve only known her for a couple of months.”
He glances up at me like I’m the dumbest person on earth. “Have you ever been in love, Brandon?”
“No, sir. I…didn’t have time. I joined the army very young and then started working for you. Our job doesn’t allow much freedom or room for something of that caliber.”
His fingers return to work on me. “When you do, you’ll understand that love doesn’t measure time or wait for the right moment. It invents it. It crashes through your plans uninvited, and, suddenly, a few stolen seconds are enough to recognize the person your soul has been rehearsing for all your life.”
“That’s…” I can’t find the right thing to say. I’ve never taken my boss for a hopeless romantic.
“Birdie’s words fromThe Nightingale’s Whisper. For you it may sound like bullshit, nonsense she writes in her books for desperate people looking for an escape. For me, it’s everything I’ve ever learned about love.”
“Wow. You read her stuff a lot?”
“She taught me how to read, so I’ve read every single one of her books since the first one came out.” He frowns as if he shouldn’t have said that. “I mean… I was dyslexic, and I found her first book in one of those Little Free Libraries near my house. It was the only one I could read because it was printed in a dyslexia-friendly font. She’s an amazing writer, so…”
“Wow,” I repeat. “I didn’t know that you were so… This whole thing with her, it wasn’t just…”
“Sex?” He finishes the last suture and presses a clean patch on my shoulder. “I wish.”
Tristan Morra might be the epitome of a grumpy boss with a permanent frown that makes you think he has a chronicstomachache, but this is the first time I hear real pain in his voice. “If you don’t mind me asking, how do you feel about the whole situation, her breaking up with you only to choose someone like the detective who ends up kidnapping her?”
“How do you think I feel?” He jumps to his feet, collecting the kit and bandage wrappers and throwing them on a tray with more force than needed. “She made a stupid mistake trusting that piece of shit, and now he’s got her locked up, pinning nails in her flesh, doing whatever sick shit he…” He hurls the tray against the wall. “Fuck.”
