Read Online Deeper Than Need by Shiloh Walker - Free Book Online Page A

like that … that I know of, at least.”
    “I wish I hadn’t had the honor of being the first.”
    Using his hand to cup her chin, he studied her face. He’d seen more than his fair share of women after they’d finished a bout of crying. Some were pretty, even after they cried. Some were a mess—faces red, noses swollen—and that didn’t bother him.
    Trinity wasn’t a pretty crier, but she still looked beautiful to him. He was starting to think she’d never look anything but beautiful to him. So beautiful, just looking at her was like a punch in the stomach. He ran the backs of his knuckles down her cheek and tried not to notice the way her breath caught. It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t. “This will pass. Hopefully, once it does, you’ll be done with the rough patches for a good long while.”
    She grimaced. “This isn’t even all of the bad shit Micah and I’ve had to deal with,” she muttered. “Rough patches? I feel like I’m tearing my way through to Briar Rose’s castle or something.” Then she winced. “Sorry … obscure reference.”
    “Not so obscure. I know that one. Castle surrounded by thorns and all, right?”
    “You into fairy tales, Noah?”
    He shrugged. “I read stories to kids sometimes.” He twined a lock of her hair around his finger, couldn’t help but notice how thick, how soft, her hair was. “I think maybe what you need to focus on is what happens once you find yourself through those thorns. The bad can’t outweigh the good. You can’t see it right now, because this is all just plain horrible, but you’ll get there.”
    “I don’t know what is going to be good enough to be worth finding somebody dead, hidden below the floor of my house,” she muttered, looking away from him and staring out into the night.
    She didn’t see the way his face spasmed, the pain that flashed in his eyes.
    “Right now, I don’t see it, either. But there’s going to be something.”
    Looking back at him, she asked softly, “How do you know that?”
    “Because I refuse to accept that you and I both had to see that, had to find that, for nothing. If nothing else, finding it will mean somebody gets closure,” he said finally. “It will take a while, I imagine, but sooner or later, they’ll figure out who it is. If that person had family, friends…? Nobody should be left to wonder.”
    There was a hollow emptiness in his words, and somehow it filled her with an ache, one that settled deep in her heart. Easing away from him, she rubbed the heel of her hand over her heart and moved to stand at the railing of the porch, staring down the street. “For all we know, it’s just some vagrant. Maybe they’ll never find out who it is. Maybe he or she had no family.”
    “Maybe it’s a girl who left behind friends, family … we don’t know.”
    Trinity looked back at him, but he sat lost in the shadows of the porch and she could barely make out the glitter of his eyes.
    “I guess helping somebody find a lost loved one would be one good thing,” she said. Then she shook her head. “But I’m still having a hard time seeing past the horror. Still having a hard time seeing anything past the fact that I somehow have to explain to my boy that we can’t go back home yet because we had a dead person under the floor of our house and the police are making sure there’s nothing that can help them find who it is.”
    Tired, aching from head to toe, she forced herself to smile at Noah. Still unable to see him, she said, “I think I’m going to go inside. It’s been … well. It’s been a day.”
    Opening the door, she went to slip inside and then she stopped. Without looking back at him, she closed her eyes, pressed her forehead to the door.
    He’d been there. Every time she’d turned around, Noah had been there. Every time she’d needed a shoulder, he’d been there. Even when she hadn’t realized she was that close to falling apart, he’d been there. Maybe now she wouldn’t