Chapter 04

ODETTE

"What are we doing here?" I asked just as the elevator doors parted.

It took two weeks for the doctors to finally give me the okay to be discharged and, as I expected, Jericho was there to bring me home. Only, instead of pulling into the basement parking of my apartment building, we had pulled into his. This shouldn't have perplexed me and yet, it did.

"Your dad is busy at work and your..." He paused, the only sound meeting my ears was the muffled squeaky turns of the wheels of the wheelchair against the carpeted floor. When he stopped outside his apartment door, he said, "your boyfriend made a quick recovery and will be back on the job soon. So, you're staying with me."

"No way," I began shaking my head and instantly regretted it when a spike of pain jarred my body, "I'll be fine on my own."

"Like hell you will," Jericho unlocked the door and threw it open with too much force, allowing it to bang and bounce off the wall, "you're staying with me and that's that. I work from home and I barely ever leave the apartment which is perfect. If you need anything, I'll be with you," he stated and wheeled me into the bare room.

I always felt it was too plain and that it needed some sort of character. There was simple and then there was Jericho. After moving into his own place his view on things changed. He only kept what he deemed necessary and it led to a dull and almost depressing living space.

My heart skipped when the sound of paws tapping against the hardwood met my ears. I held my breath as a smile captured my face. Slash's gold and black fury body came into view as he barreled toward me. One look at my injuries had him slowing his pace, though, a whine leaving the back of his throat. He sat on his hind legs beside me, head dropping to my lap so he could stare up at me with those puppy dog eyes I had missed so much.

"Hey buddy," I cooed, my smile wavering when he nuzzled into me for comfort, "hey, I'm fine," I tried to reassure but he could tell it was a lie. They said dogs could feel the pain of their owners, maybe that was why he growled when Jericho rounded the chair and reached out to tuck my unruly locks behind my ear.

"Hey bud," Jericho grimaced, pinching his jeans and dropping to a crouch to talk to Slash, "I'm not going to hurt her. You can trust me. Okay?"

Slash looked reluctant but he knew Jericho as well as I knew him. He would never hurt me. The thought had my heart twisting with a different kind of pain. Sometimes, in the deepest hours of the night, while alone and cold, I would wonder what it would be like to love someone who wouldn't hurt me. To love someone like Jericho who put me first even when I went off half-cocked in pursuit of finding love. Sometimes I concluded that I was, in fact, insane.

But it was never the good ones I was attracted to. Take this situation for instance. One would say that dating someone in my precinct would be a sane choice because he was a cop. He was good. At least, he was supposed to be. Reality was a brutal truth hard to swallow.

"Where did you go?" Jericho asked softly, knuckles caressing the healing bruise over my cheek.

There was minimal pain so I didn't flinch, "Trying to figure out how to change your mind about this. You're crazy if you think this living arrangement will work."

"Why wouldn't it?" His brow cocked in a clear challenge but I could give just as well as him.

"Sweety," I drawled the way I always did—the way that had his pools of green becoming tender, "I snore."

"I know, it's terrible. You can give trains a run for their money," he agreed with so much seriousness that I actually felt offended.

My eyes widened and I pouted my lower lip, "Hey, that's not nice."

"What, you said it. I agreed and there's this thing called AirPods. I'll leave them in and listen to anything I can as long as it drowns out your snores. It's not a problem," came his response with a nonchalant shrug.

"You suck," I begrudgingly muttered with an eye roll. Honestly, arguing with him reminded me of the fruitless battles we had in high school. Back then he never backed down and now...now it had become his personality trait that I knew better than to push the subject.

"Just want to see you getting better," he responded, his lips twitching into a sad frown.

Images of our younger moments together came flooding back. We were eight when we met, the night of our first meeting being something that stuck with the both of us. We each remembered it for different reasons. The one thing that stuck with me that night were his sad eyes. They turned from shimmering emerald to dull moss in front of me as my father ushered the short, skinny kid into the back of the cruiser beside me. It was the day his mother had died. His two brothers were running shitless giving statements. It was Ace that found her. The major question of the night was what would happen to the two boys since Gunnar was already eighteen. Luck worked in their favor when it came to that. Somehow, he managed to get custody of both brothers and I never understood how.

He did one heck of a job raising them.

The closer I got to Jericho after that night I decided to promise myself something. I never wanted to see those eyes dim with blood-chilling sadness again. And here we were now.

I reached out with a shaky hand, barely able to control my fingers and joints as numbness captured me in its suffocating embrace. My hands weren't bandaged anymore and all the stitches holding my skin together were removed. Striking red slashes now remained on the once unmarked surface of flesh which had the burn of tears pricking my eyes.

Once one fell, the rest followed as I used whatever sliver of strength I could find to lift my hand. It was a struggle, a battle that I would have to fight alone and know that I'd never come out a winner. In the end, I would never get back what I lost. Part of me wondered what the point of trying to get better was anymore. Jericho should have just left me. He should have cut his losses.

A sob I hadn't realized I was holding back burst from my lips when my curled fingers finally made contact with his bearded cheek. I could barely feel the stubble poking at my skin, barely feel the heat of his flesh against the pads of my fingers or the roughness in texture. I couldn't feel pain, I couldn't feel warmth, I couldn't feel. The revelation had my soul withering.

In a desperate attempt to be proven wrong, I raised my other hand which was equally difficult, only to be met with the same outcome. Painful sobs racked my body, tearing the life out of me from within. I moved my hands haphazardly over his face and he let me with glassy eyes and flared nostrils, letting me know that he was trying to keep it together for me.

"Enough," Jericho deeply croaked, emotion thickening his tone, "that's enough," he demanded, gripping my hands in his—and I couldn't feel it.

I knew I couldn't feel but it hadn't hit home because not once had I tried touching him. And now, now the reality bulldozed its way through the ignorance I had hid behind.

"Stop it," Jericho almost chided, pulling me into him. He carried me from the wheelchair—bridal style—and tucked my head into the crook of his neck, allowing me to soak his tee with my tears, "you're stronger than this. You're not going to let this bring you down, are you?"

"I-I..." I choked on a sob and then hiccuped just as I felt him lower us into something soft—a bed, "I can't feel you."

"I know," Jericho whispered, tucking me into him as he covered us with a sheet, "but it's just your hands that can't feel me," he uttered those words as if it weren't a big deal.

I needed my hands, didn't he see that? Couldn't he see what a fucking disaster this was?

Jericho brushed his soft lips over my forehead and whispered into the heated flesh, "Shh, please," his plea had me rolling my bottom lip between my teeth and holding back my sob, "it's going to be okay. I'm here. We'll figure this out but it will take time. Just stay calm and breathe. Okay. Where's that badass woman that faced off against my brothers because they hated her for being a cop?"

"She's dead," I wheezed, inhaling a shaky breath and a lung full of his musky scent, "she died. Clearly, I can't be her anymore."

"Oh yes. you can," Jericho said adamantly, "it was never physical strength that made you strong. It was everything else. It was who you were as a person. Who you aspired to be. You're strong. It's built into your personality. This shouldn't be getting you down."

"That's easy for you to say," I rasped, gathering myself.

He felt his muscles stiffen and his body grow taut like a brick wall, "I know," Jericho murmured, stroking his fingers through my moonshine blonde locks, "but I'm here for you so don't push me away. Let me help you. I want you to stay with me so I can be there when you need me. I don't care if you're the worst house guest on the planet, I want you here. You hear me?"

I sniffled, "I hear you."

"Quinn and Miranda want to be there for you too if you let them. You don't have to face this alone. Not when you have so many in your corner," he made a good argument but none of them understood what I was going through, "maybe Miranda can help take your mind off of everything. She and Ace finally got hitched last week."

"What?" Shock obliterated my thoughts, "you're kidding."

"Nope," Jericho popped the p, "he took her to Portugal and organized the whole thing. She wanted to elope so that's what they did. They returned this week with an actual ring around her finger but she refuses to take his dog tags off."

"I think it's sweet," I said honestly, tucking myself further into him, "and unique. They'll probably get their happily ever after."

Jericho hummed, "He deserves it. They've been through a lot."

"Yeah, have to admit, if he changed his life choices it would bode well for them," I quipped.

This time, Jericho chuckled with genuine amusement and I could almost picture his eyes going from moss green to emerald in joy, "That's like asking a cactus to stop being prickly. It's impossible."

"If I were Miranda I would have run the opposite direction. Her husband is crazy," I grumbled, feeling my body go lax with exhaustion.

"That's love, I guess. Loving the person with all their flaws. It's why Quinn and Miranda chose to stay even when they had every reason to walk out the door. It's why my brothers would do anything for them. They know that kind of love is hard to come by."

I knew that, too. It was almost unfair that these men who weren't looking for the soul-crushing love they had to obtain it while I kept coming up empty.

I needed to get those thoughts out of my mind, though. Right now, I needed to focus on getting better and finding a way to stop what was happening. I needed to find a way to stop Parker before more innocent people got hurt. He was a dirty cop tied up in things he had no business in and, somehow, I got tangled in the mess as well.

"Have you spoken to Parker?" I asked after a moment.

Jericho grew even tenser, "No, I haven't."

"I need to see him."

"Not like this you're not."

"Jericho," I didn't want to argue with him, "please. I need to see if he's okay. And, I need to know where we stand."

It wasn't a complete lie.

"Fine," Jericho relented with a growl, "tomorrow. You can see him tomorrow after your session."

"You're going to be controlling my schedule and everything? Sweety, that's a bit much," I wasn't going to have the privacy to do what I needed to.

"Until you're out of this wheelchair, Swan, we're going to be inseparable," he crooned, pressing my body into him, "now, get some rest. You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow."