The door shuts, the limo pulls away, and I finally let myself look at her.
Ah, Nicole.
Her eyes are closed and her head has fallen against my shoulder. Dead weight. The weight of a body that has stopped holding itself up. Her breathing is shallow but steady. The collar of her blouse is buttoned the wrong way—one button too high and one missed under it—and I can tell from the angle that she did it herself, in a hurry, with hands that weren't working properly.
Which means—
She tried to fix herself.
In the seconds between my men dragging Jerry off her and me reaching her, she tried to put her own clothes back in order, and she got it wrong, and she didn't notice she got it wrong, and now she's asleep against my shoulder with her buttons crooked.
My jaw locks, but I fight against the urge to fix it. The last thing she needs is something touching her without her permission.
She stirs, and her fingers flex against my chest, once, then curling again, tighter. I tighten my arms around her in answer, and the fist she's making closes on the front of my shirt.
"Rest, Nicole. You're safe now."
A pause. Long enough that I think she's gone under again.
Then—
"T-Thank you."
Her voice catches on the word, and it comes out scraped. Used hard. I don't know if she screamed, and I don’t think now is a safe time for me to know the answer to that.
"I don't know why it always has to be you," she whispers.
I have the answer to that, but not now, not in a moving car with her hands still shaking against my chest. So I tell her instead the only thing she needs to hear right now.
"You're safe now. That's all that matters."
It seems to satisfy her, because I feel her relax against me, the breath she'd been holding leaving her in one long exhale, and her fist finally uncurls against my shirt.
But for me, the words are painfully hollow.
Because while it's true that she's out of harm's way, I could have been a few minutes late, and then what? What if my men hadn't moved as fast as they did, what if Montero had hit one more red light, what if I'd waited another minute before going down to the stockroom myself—
What then?
This shouldn't have happened at all.
She shouldn't have suffered.
But she did.
Because of me.
She was nearly raped.
Because of me.
She could've lost her life.
Because of me.
All of it...because of me, dammit.
It's the costliest mistake I've ever made in my life, and that's why I know I'll never make it twice.