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IT WAS LATE BEFORE I could get Matt to come to bed I could tell he was tired, but he couldn’t keep his eyes shut for ain Every ti underabout his brother

Sitting up, I put ed and patted my lap for him to lay his head there

“I’ood, baby Just come back down here and let me hold you”

“Please?”

The roolow of the new television that was muted His blue eyes scanned h and placed his head in et h his hair with one hand and ed the back of his neck with the other

My er and couldn’t sleep Every tihto keep his shoulders tense as I used my nails to softly scrape over his scalp, but he couldn’t hide the contented sigh as it flew across hs

I bent over hi his cheek “I love you”

“Love you,” he growled, his eyes heavy

Leaning back against the headboard again, I continuedTenA sad s, didn’t move to lie down beside him For hours I kept it up, and when he jerked awake at one in the , I was still at it

He pulledaround me as he buried his face inthrough his T-shirt I had pulled on afterain We didn’t speak, because there were zero words that could help hi Words were useless when your heart was that beat-up They held no coht be, they were still empty I knehat he needed, and that was to feel that so to leave him

It was a long while before I felt him fall back to sleep Sleep finally pulled me under sometime around dahen I felt Matt finally fall into a more restful sleep

The next tih the curtains Matt was still sound asleep, but I could hear peopleback a yawn, I untangled myself and reached for Matt’s phone as I started to stand It was 1:23 in the afternoon I groaned as I walked into the bathroo business

After a quick shohere I roaned the entire ti the pain fro barefoot the day before, I went back into the bedroom and pulled on the clothes I had borrowed froht I slipped my feet into a pair of flip-flops that Flick had loaned me and then went to see if I could make myself useful

I left Matt still sleeping as I walked to the kitchen People weren’t nearly as catatonic as they had been the day before They all still wore gri But that didn’t mean they weren’t still out for blood I could see in the MC brothers’ eyes that vengeance was top of their list for how they wanted the day to end

In the kitchen, I found Raven with Flick and Aggie Lexa was sitting in a chair pulled up to the island beside her mot