Saint by Mazzy King

Author:Mazzy King [King, Mazzy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MZK Publishing
Published: 2019-12-03T18:30:00+00:00

7

Saint

I’ve just disconnected my call to Gunner when Lyra’s cry pierces the quiet. I whip around from where I paced toward her front door while she did some things on her computer—downloading the evidence she mentioned earlier, I’d guess.

She’s hunched over the couch, her head between her hands, and her shoulders shake with sobs.

It shocks me for an instant before I rush over to her. “Lyra,” I murmur, gathering her in my arms. “What’s wrong?”

My gaze catches sight of the image on her computer screen. It’s…her.

Her chest is bloody. There are bruises on her neck. Her left eye is puffed and dark. Her upper lip I could spend all day kissing is split.

It’s not my fault.

An overwhelming surge of emotion rises up in me, a combination of sorrow that someone as beautiful and special as her endured something so terrible at the hands of a piece of shit like Max Hendricks. It makes wet heat prick my eyes.

“No,” I say firmly around the lump in my throat. “No, it’s not your fault. Lyra, look at me.”

She won’t.

I gently place my fingers beneath her chin and tilt her head up. Tears stream from her eyes, and the look on her face shatters me.

“You are a strong woman,” I tell her. “You’re amazing. And you don’t need a jerk like me to mansplain that to you. But from one human being to another—from someone who cares for you so fucking much—I need you to hear me. This was not your fault. Ever. Do you hear me?”

Her beautiful lips quiver, but she gives me a nod.

“Say it for me.” I smooth a lock of hair behind her ear.

“It—it’s not—”

“Louder.”

She takes a deep breath and gulps. Then she looks me square in the eye. “It’s not my fucking fault.”

My pride in her threatens to make that heat pricking my eyes spill forth. “That’s fucking right,” I whisper, cupping her face in my hands. I kiss her lips gently, once, twice.

She leans her head against my shoulder. “I—I got it all.”

“Good.” I lean forward to close out of the photo. I don’t want her to have to look at it any longer than necessary—the memory of that occurrence is already too much, I’m certain.

Her computer background pops up. She keeps her desktop pretty sterile, unlike my work computer, which has tons of random photos of evidence, reports, and notes. Every time I sit down at my desk, I tell myself I’m going to organize all that stuff, and then the sight of it depresses the shit out of me, so I ignore it.

But my attention isn’t on how clean her desktop is, but the image itself. It’s a really cool design of what looks like some kind of futuristic night market. Tons of neon-colored signs and what looks like a train system, based on someone’s interpretation of what that might look like fifty years into the future.

“That’s cool,” I murmur, and she lifts her head.

“Oh, thanks.”

I stare at her. “Wait, you made that?”

Lyra lifts a shoulder.

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