“Are you okay, who hurt you, when did this happen, why didn’t you call me, why didn’t anyone tell me? Fucking Flynn, I’ll kill him. I hate secrets. Secrets get people killed.” My panic is raging, and the words all come out at lightning speed as Forrest leads me to the couch, and I don’t stop him when he sits and pulls me down on his lap. I actually need to be close to him right now, to be touching him.

“Aghh.” He tries to grunt quietly, but I hear it, and I know that the bruising is not just on his face.

I go to start rambling again, but he places his finger on my lips. “Shhhh, take a breath. I’m okay. It will all be okay.” He strokes his hand up and down my back like he does when I’m upset. It’s so calming and puts me in a place where I can slow down my brain from racing so erratically.

He is looking at me with so much happiness in his eyes, even though he is in pain.

“Please, Forrest, I need to know,” I beg him to start talking.

“I know, beautiful, and I’ll tell you everything, but you need to promise to hear me out right until the end. Can you do that?”

“Who are you kidding, of course not, but I promise to try. Now stop stalling.” I place my hand on his face again, and he sinks into the softness and closes his eyes for just a moment, then slowly opens them and starts to talk.

“I’m just going to rip the band-aid off and tell you the overview, then we can work through what has happened this week.” His words tell me I’m not going to like this, but I guess I already knew that. Giving him a slight nod, he continues.

“On Monday, I flew to Chicago…” My body immediately goes rigid, and I open my mouth, but he shakes his head at me, and I just glare at him as he continues. “…with a plan to confront Chester, to provoke him enough that he would fight me so I could get him locked up again. It worked, he’s in jail, and you’re safe now.”

The words are spinning in my head, and I’m trying to get them to make sense.

“What, how, I—” I can’t talk. I want to scream at him, but I can’t actually put a sentence together.