Page 83 of Devoured By You

I didn’t blame Scarlett for one second of what had happened, and I’d appreciated her stopping by, as well as her unexpected and unnecessary contrition. That didn’t mean I wanted to be besties with her or anything, nor have her think she could turn up whenever she felt like it.

“Upton Barrick,” Renata replied.

I frowned. Upton worked for ROGUES, a company with whom my family did an extensive amount of business, but he wasn’t someone I’d had much contact with. For one thing, he lived in LA, and for another, his business interests and mine were not aligned.

“Show him in.” I propped up my crutches by the side of my desk and faced my chair toward the door. A few seconds later, Renata appeared with Upton in tow. I concealed my surprise. I’d completely forgotten he had a deep scar running down the left-hand side of his face from getting caught up in a terrorist bomb a few years earlier that had killed his younger sister. Like I said, we didn’t cross paths very often, so it was easy to forget details like that.

I pushed myself up on my hands and reached for my crutches, but he motioned for me to sit. “Don’t get up. I’m sorry to intrude like this without warning.”

Hiding how grateful I was to sink back into my chair, I gestured to the guest seat opposite my desk.

“I admit, you’ve got me curious.”

He knitted his fingers together. “I’ll get straight to the point. Your dad asked me to come.”

My eyebrows flew up my forehead. “Dad? Why?”

“He’s worried about you.”

Something pinched my stomach. I wasn’t sure if it was guilt, confusion, or anger. “I have no idea why. I’m fine.”

He cocked his head, studying me with a blank expression, but his eyes gave him away. He didn’t believe I was fine.

And he was right to believe that. I wasn’t anywhere close to being fine.

“Do you know how I got this?” He pointed to the jagged scar marring an otherwise perfect face.

“Yeah. Bomb, right?”

“Correct. My back is littered with scars, too. I’ve had more surgeries than I care to remember, each one more painful than the last. But the thing I found the hardest to deal with, other than the crushing grief of losing my sister, was the emotional turmoil. I shut myself away, cutting off everyone who cared about me. I didn’t want to engage with anyone. And as for moods…” He flashed a perfect set of white teeth. “How my housekeeper stopped herself from slipping poison into the whiskey decanter, I’ll never know.”

“Don’t go giving Renata any ideas.”

His lopsided smile, I realized, was forced into that position by his scar. A moment of shame washed over me. Sometimes I behaved as if I were the only one who’d suffered when there were many, many people far worse off than me.

“I’m not here to tell you how to feel, nor how to act, but what I am here to tell you is that I understand. What you’re going through, jeez, man, it’s fucking tough. It’s a roller coaster of emotions, each day bringing a fresh hell to deal with.”

I hid my surprise, but it was as if he was inside my head, thinking my thoughts, feeling what I felt.

“How did you get through it?”

“Time.” He hitched a shoulder. “There’s no shortcutting your recovery. It isn’t easy, but it will happen. But the worst thing you can do is cut off those who love you the most. Ask me how I know.”

“You came all the way to Miami just to tell me that?” I smiled.

“Hell no.” He huffed a laugh. “You’re not special enough for me to travel from the other side of the country for a fireside chat.”

“Gee, thanks.” I grinned. He repaid my grin with one of his own.

“I was in town on business, and I promised your dad—or rather, I promised Ryker, whom your dad spoke to, that I’d swing by and see if I could lend an ear.” Bracing his elbows on his knees, he leaned forward. “Now, how are you really doing?”

I ran a hand over my face. “I have my good days and my bad days. One outweighs the other by some margin. I’ll let you guess which one.”

“It’s early days. I shut myself away for a year. Don’t do that. It fucking sucks.”

“A year? Jesus.”

“Yeah. It was rough. In the end, my friends staged an intervention, sending what they called companions and I called spies, to try to haul me out of the state I was in. I was so foul to them that no one lasted more than a week. Until Belle.” His eyes glazed over, and he looked as if he was keeping a great big secret. “She refused to suffer my moods in silence, giving it back to me tenfold, and then some. Boy, the buttons she pressed.” He chuckled. “Then again, she’d had some practice in dealing with grief.”