She softened a bit, but the worry remained, and I gave her a light squeeze.

“It was . . . I don’t know how to explain.” I blew out a breath. “It was emotional. Swift emotional highs and lows can throw me; that’s all.”

Emma looked as though she might argue, and I stopped her with a light kiss.

“I’m okay, Snoopy. I promise.” I wanted to concentrate on other things now, like getting her into bed. But she held on to my head and met my gaze.

“I swear, Em. I’m not going to break if we—”

“I know. I’m just glad. Okay? I’m . . . very glad you’re safe and well.” The tender look in her eyes and the way her voice hitched wrapped itself around me, filled my head, and made it dizzy. If I hadn’t been sitting down, I might have staggered. We’d known each other only for a short while. I wasn’t supposed to feel this much this fast. Neither was she. Did she? I wasn’t sure.

Uncertainty and vulnerability made me speak without thinking. “Eventually I will heal all the way. And then . . .” Shit. I hadn’t meant to go there. It was too much information. Too much exposure.

Emma frowned. “And then?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to evade with a joke. But I wanted to tell her, test the waters maybe. Or maybe just have the words out in the open. Holding her gaze, I sat back in the chair, keeping my hands lightly on her hips. I told Emma something I hadn’t uttered to anyone outside of conversations with my doctor, trainers, and former head coach. “I could wait it out, let myself heal, and go back.”

“What? You . . . you’d do that?” She appeared horrified.

“Sometimes, I think about it. Hell, I dream about it. But I think about Jean Philipe, what my family went through, the shell of a man he’d become. I wouldn’t do that to my family again.”

I told myself this every day. But in the darkest corners of my soul, I was tempted. So fucking tempted.

The touch of Emma’s hand upon my cheek pulled me back to the present. “Thank you,” she whispered, her fingers brushing along my temple, as though she could somehow soothe my battered brain. “For taking care of this brain. I find I very much like it.”

Right there, I was lost. I wasn’t prepared. My life was a wreck, uncertain and unsteady. And she’d strolled in with her starlight smile, unrepentant, challenging me at every turn. Telling me I was still worth something. That I meant something. To her.

It scared the shit out of me. Because eventually she’d see that I was a man living a half life.

I gripped the tops of her smooth thighs, as if they could ground me, but I still felt as though the bottom was dropping out of my world. “Em—”

“Titou?” The sound of my grandmother’s voice at the door, closely followed by a knock, had us both freezing in something close to horror. “Are you there?”

“Holy shit, it’s Amalie.” Emma’s high-pitched whisper cut through the fraught silence, and she scrambled off my lap, practically dancing around in a panic. “What do we do?”

I gurgled down a laugh. “Hide?”

“Lucian! This is serious. I’m in your shirt.” She gestured down her length, drawing my eyes to her bare legs. I’d had my hand on them for far too brief a time. “Shit. Where is my dress?”

She started for the bedroom, then glared at me over her shoulder as I laughed—I couldn’t help it; she was adorable in her frazzled state. “And put a shirt on.”

“Why don’t you throw me the one you’re wearing?”

She flipped me the finger instead.

“Titou? I know you’re there.”

“You think she can hear us breathing?” I whispered into Emma’s ear as she hustled back into the room, wrenching her sundress over her pretty tits before thrusting a shirt at my bare chest.

Despite the quelling glare she gave me, she started to snicker. “God. How old are we?”

Ignoring the shirt, I snagged her about the waist and hauled her closer, brushing a kiss on the curve of her neck. “Why are you freaking out?”

“Because . . .” She lifted a helpless hand and waved it. “It’s rude to Amalie for me to be . . .”

“Sucking off her grandson?”

“Oh my God.” She punched my arm in horror even as her eyes sparked in amusement. “You are sick!”

“Titou!” Amalie sounded sharp now, annoyed that I hadn’t answered.

I turned to do just that, when the door rattled and then began to open. I swung my gaze back to Emma. “You didn’t lock it!”

Shit. My hair was sticking up wildly, I didn’t have a shirt on, and Emma was still half-dressed. She rightfully smirked at the panic in my eyes. “Something wrong, honey pie?”