Chapter 11: Glass

He came home at eleven-twenty and found me on the study floor.

I heard the front door and Marlo's sleepy hello, then his boots on the stairs.

He stopped in the doorway.

His eyes went from me to the lamp, to the safe, to the corner of the ceiling where the red light blinked.

His phone was in his hand, with the study camera's feed on the screen.

I knew exactly what that footage showed.

I waited for him to say my name.

"Bad dream?" Cade said.

I stared at him.

"What?"

"You're on the floor in the dark," he said. "I figured nightmare."

He set the phone face down on the desk.

He sat on the carpet in front of me, long legs folded, and his tired brown eyes didn't leave my face.

"You're going to ask me," I said.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because if I ask, you'll lie, and if you lie, I'll have to hear it."

My throat burned.

"I don't want to hear it tonight," he said. "I just want to hold my wife."

I made a sound that wasn't a word.

He pulled me into his lap, and I hid my face in his shirt and shook.

He smelled like turf and soap, and his arms went around me hard.

"I'm so tired of being afraid," I said into his chest.

"I know."

"You don't."

"I know, Sorcha."

He tilted my face up and kissed me, slow and deep, and I kissed him back with everything I couldn't say.

His hands slid under my robe.

His palms were hot against my bare back, and my skin woke up under them.

"Here?" I whispered.

"Here."

He stood with me in his arms and set me on the edge of the oak desk.

Keep reading free with an account. Start QB! Look what you made me do! from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.