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“It’s fine,” he says in a tone that I’m not completely sure is honest. “Verity’s having a spa day. I’m just tagging along. Keeping this one occupied.”
And safe. He’s keeping both Verity and the baby safe.
“If you’re here, JJ’s probably safer than anywhere else.”
“What do you mean?”
He smirks and nods out the window at the muscle car. “There’s probably more eyes on this house than at the Purple Palace.”
“Just Slade.”
His eyebrow lifts. “You think they only sent one of those weirdos? That’s the only one you can see.”
It strikes me that he’s probably right. Damon probably has an entire BRN army out there making sure I get through a salon visit safely.
With that knowledge, and Wicker seemingly less hostile than I imagined, I step farther into the room, my feet sinking into the antique rug. “He’s beautiful.”
Wicker glances down at his son, a small, almost private smile touching his mouth. “Yeah. He is.” He looks back up at me. “He’s also a total mama’s boy. Won’t take a bottle so he’s gotta be close.”
Silence hangs between us, not uncomfortable exactly, but careful. We don’t know each other well. Not really. But increasingly we have a history that is intertwined, one that started when we were children. A history I’m not fully sure I understand.
I move to the small table where a teapot and cups wait and pour myself some water just to have something to do with my hands. “So how is it?” I ask. “Fatherhood?”
“Awesome,” he says, “but also exhausting.”
I take a sip of water and study him for a moment. Whitaker Ashby is very handsome, so even the faint bags under his eyes do nothing to detract from his looks. I get a flash of him when he was younger. Before the sharp lines matured his face, or his shoulders filled out his suit jacket. The way he holds the baby reminds me of how he held his cello. Firm but gentle.
“I remember you,” I say softly. “From before. At the Mayfield events.”
His posture shifts almost imperceptibly. Not defensive. Just aware. “Yeah. I remember you too.”
Like so many other memories, these are also hazy for me–soft-edged and incomplete. I remember the parties. The music. The way adults watched from the edges of the rooms. And I remember a boy with a cello, white-blond hair, playing something that made the air feel different.
“I liked listening to you play,” I say.
He nods once. JJ makes a small sound, and Wicker adjusts him, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of the baby’s head.
“You taught me a word once,” I continue, the memory surfacing more clearly now. “When I got scared. You told me to say ‘periwinkle.’ That it would help take my mind off of whatever was bothering me. I could close my eyes and go somewhere else.” He doesn’t respond, and for a moment I think maybe I made it up, but when he drags his gaze from his baby I see the recognition in them. “It did help,” I tell him. “It still does sometimes.”
He looks at me, really looks, and I have the strange sense that he’s seeing both the girl I used to be and the woman standing in front of him now.
“Why did you do it?” I ask, then add, “Help me?”
“Those nights were a shitshow,” he says eventually. “And it was one thing for me to be there, but…” he swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing tight in his throat. “I just remember you standing in the wings, back behind the stage. You were so little, and you had those big brown eyes and a sparkly bow in your hair and those soft ballet shoes.” His eyes drop to my feet, then back up. “You were scared, and scared kids do stupid shit, like cry, or throw a tantrum or–”
“You didn’t want me to get in trouble.”
He runs his finger down JJ’s cheek, making the baby’s lips pucker. “I’ve thrown a few tantrums in my lifetime, Baroness. Big ass ones. Little, quiet, manipulative ones. Defiant and rebellious ones. All it ever did was make life worse.” He looks back at me. “Getting through it was the best option. Or so I thought at the time. I had to protect my brothers, but you? You didn’t have brothers or anyone else. You were alone.”
Just my uncle, who was part of whatever was going on there those nights. He doesn’t say what happened to the other children from Strong Manor. He doesn’t have to. The weight of it sits in the space between us–the different paths we were forced down, the ways we both survived things that should have broken us. I was kept for a purpose that was etched into paper from the very start. He and the others were not so lucky.
But we’re both here. Standing in a quiet waiting room with soft music and the smell of lavender, while a baby sleeps against his chest.
“Thank you for helping me,” I say quietly.
His mouth curves into something that isn’t quite a smile. “I’m not sure it was enough, but I’m also figuring out that it wasn’t our job to protect one another. It was the adults. They’re the ones that failed us.”
We fall into another stretch of silence, but it feels different now. Less careful. More like two people who understand something about each other that most never will. I have more questions. Like what happened to the children that my uncle swore didn’t exist? Or even to Mayfield. Did it stop after I burned down the Manor? After I killed Owen Hexley?
