Page 47 of Speechless
“We had this conversation, but it didn’t end well,” Sarah murmured, sipping her coffee. “Bad elephants don’t get a name, apparently.”
“Hmmm. Well fortunately, this little elephant is a good elephant,” he stated in a tone brooking no argument. “He’s trusting someone special to give him a name he deserves.”
Finishing the last bite of bacon, Jenna looked into the plushie’s black eyes, imagined her own staring back at her. Having no name left scars no one could see. Wasn’t it easy to throw away something without that basic connection? Anything that was nothing…
She’d never named anything before, what if she did it wrong? Connor just shook his head and kissed her temple when she asked him and told her there was no wrong name if she believed it was the right one.
“How did you know I was Jenna?”
She didn’t understand the look shared between Connor and Sarah. There was a whole discussion flying from one to the other, indecipherable apparently, if you weren’t in it. But she waited patiently until Connor cleared his throat. “You got this…spark in your eyes, baby. Everything else about you was sad and pained, you were hurting, and when I said Jenna, you just…breathed.”
Jenna mulled that over, tried to see it in her head. She couldn’t drag the memory to the surface; it was mired among so many others and they were all stained with panic and pain. The plushie tilted in her hands and she studied him intently, focused on him with the intensity of a child figuring out a complex puzzle.
“Moose.”
Connor choked, coughed. “Well, it’s different. Certainly different…” He stroked a hand over Moose, then chucked her under the chin with a finger. “I need to talk to Sarah in the kitchen, baby. You going to be a good girl and finish your breakfast?”
She squirmed in silent protest. She didn’t want to be apart again, what if he left and she didn’t get to say goodbye? Good girls don’t pout. She nodded and pouted anyway.
Connor eased her onto the couch and slipped from beneath her. His lips were warm against her temple as he whispered, “Daddy’s not going anywhere, baby. I promise.”
A little more secure in herself, clutching that promise as tightly as Moose to her chest, Jenna watched Connor and Sarah leave the room, and picked at the food on the tray.
She wasn’t alone anymore.
Chapter Ten
Connor leaned against the counter next to the sink and crossed his arms over his chest. “Go ahead and say what you need to, Sarah.”
She sipped her coffee with all the innocence of a teenaged boy with porn DVDs poorly concealed beneath his shirt. Looking tired and unkempt, there was still no disguising her raw beauty. Flaunting it might not be her style, but Zeke was a seriously lucky guy. “Are you sure?”
He rolled his eyes, one ear zoned toward the living room. “Absolutely.”
With a wicked grin, she squealed girlishly. “You are socutewhen you’re Daddy. Like, oh my God, adorable. I didn’t know you had that in you, boss. I’m impressed. And the way Jenna responded? We’ve talked, but she’s been hit and miss with answering. You actuallyconversedwith her.”
“You did good, Sarah. Using your witchy powers for good instead of evil.”
“No magic necessary. I just told her the truth.”
He cocked his head. “You what?”
“Both of you were ignoring what was in front of you. You were too stubborn to admit you’d reached the end of your tether. Fighting so hard to hold everything together that you let yourself fall apart.” Sarah shrugged. “Jenna was stripped of her humanity by sheer terror. Hit rock bottom, didn’t know where to turn, who to trust, when she sank deeper into the abyss. All I did was remind her who you are and what she faced without you at her back.”
“You told her,” he said quietly, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I warned her we’d lose her if she didn’t buck her ideas up. I had to take the risk, Connor. Everyone had their goddamn head in the sand.”
Jesus, how fucking close had they come to shutting Jenna down completely, he wondered. One misstep, the wrong word, a simple miscalculation, and he might not have gotten her back.
Connor wrestled his temper under control. Without Sarah’s bluntness, he could very well have returned to a haunted, lifeless shell. It galled, especially when he should have had the balls to take that gamble himself, but perhaps he should be grateful Sarah had bitten the bullet instead. No one had a way with people she did. “Thank you.”
Watching him through narrowed eyes, she set her mug aside. “Thank you? Not ripping me a new one for taking a chance with your baby girl, Connor?”
“How can I when you were the only one strong enough to take it?”
She flushed, blossoming with pale pink color. “Well.”
Connor couldn’t express his gratitude, there wasn’t words for it, but he’d be damned if Sarah felt unappreciated after the miracle she’d worked. The rumble of vehicles outside drew his attention, set his hackles rising as they stopped outside, engines idling a few moments before they cut off.