I almost didn’t the first time.
Thinking this way makes me feel like a bastard, though.
Especially with how incredibly destroyed my sweets is.
The death of her father was bad enough on its own but knowing what she went through while she was with his murderer, seeing Luck cradling her in his arms, covered in blood and unconscious? Running up to that after he called Peteactually did make me sick, and the feeling hasn’t changed much since that night.
I don’t anticipate it will for quite some time, either.
Not with everything turned upside down right now.
Justine is in France.
She’s been staying with what little family Pierre had left over there, trying to heal herself in any way she can because broken isn’t a strong enough word to describe how she was the last time we saw her. She almost took Leo with her, too, but the only reason Justine didn’t make her daughter get on that plane with her—aside from the fact that she hasn’t gotten out of bed in weeks—was us.
Justine knows we’ll take care of her.
Leonor will continue to see her doctors and stay healthy, we’ll do all the things we’ve been doing, and we won’t ever let her out of our sight because the guilt we have is too strong and the depth of our love for her is too deep to ever risk her life again.
So, Justine felt comfortable enough to go heal her shattered heart the way she needed to while we try to keep our girl here with us in more than one way.
But no one wanted to go back to Justine’s house.
We will eventually, it holds way too many good memories not to, but stepping through that door without Pierre’s cheery greeting or the sound of him singing from the kitchen, it was too hard. And since our building is a complete construction zone with work currently put on hold while we all go through the enormous amount of shit we’re going through, that wasn’t an option either.
Which means we’ve been staying at a hotel.
A nice ass hotel that Mark managed to convince to close off an entire floor for us, and we have the biggest suite so it’s basically like staying in an apartment that can almost house the five of us. It’s a lot like the early days actually, except we aren’tbroke and doing drugs, and we aren’t crammed in some shithole like sardines and forced to cook ramen on a broken radiator.
I’d take that in a heartbeat right now, though.
Having no less than two security guards outside our door, a few beat cops patrolling the floor on a regular rotation, and an unknown amount of undercover officers staying at the hotel as well isn’t really great. My anxiety has been at an all time high from that alone but taking care of Leonor has me seconds from launching into space.
We take turns staying up at night to make sure she doesn’t need anything, to try to get her to sleep, to watch her chest rise and fall. None of us are sleeping much anyway but exhaustion isn’t a thing right now because worrying about our girl has each of us wired for sound.
Sure, her body is mostly healed.
A lot of her wounds were superficial, cuts and scrapes from being fucking dragged through the property, bruises and bumps from fighting with her attacker and falling from the top floor of the mansion. Shockingly, Leo only broke two fingers and dislocated her shoulder from that.
She has new scars, though.
The words that sick fuck carved into her stomach, he made sure they were deep enough to scar and I knew they were going to as soon as I saw her.
But she’s alive.
Leonor is alive and breathing, she’s here with us still, and as soon as she’s ready, we’re going to help her through this the same way we have with everything else.
I’m just worried loving her won’t be enough to bring her back this time.
With a sigh, I tip my head back against the wall.
It’s almost impossible to put myself in her shoes but I’ve been trying to.
Some of it I can relate to, and I hate that we’ve both been through it, but the rest is lost on me.
I’ve never had a stalker, definitely not two, and I’ve never had anyone try to kill me or succeed in doing so, so I can’t imagine what that’s doing to her mind right now. I still have both of my parents, I’ve never known anyone who was murdered. There honestly has to be so much fucked up shit running through Leonor’s head right now I have no idea how she isn’t trying to take a bath with a toaster.
I shake my head at that terrible thought.
