Easy ripped out of the nightmare as if the images in his subconscious were about to wrap their bony fingers around his throat. He was as disoriented as he was surprised he’d fallen asleep in the first place. Ass numb, back screaming, neck kinked, he shook his head in an effort to beat it all back.

A distressed whimper. Then another.

The sound worked where the physical motion hadn’t. Easy was immediately and clearly awake.

Jenna.

He was off the cement and beside her in an instant.

Blue eyes flashed up to him with such fear and pain that it reached inside his chest and squeezed his heart.

Easy crouched by the bedside and held up his hands. “Jenna, it’s Easy. Remember? You’re all right. My guys—the ones you met the other night—we got you back. You’re at a safe place. Sara’s here, and she’s okay, too,” he rushed out in a soft voice.

Her eyes narrowed and darted from focusing on his face to a quick survey of her surroundings and back again. “E-E-Eas,” she rasped, her voice a dry scrape.

Relief shot through his veins. “Yeah.”

“Eas-y,” she whispered. And then she threw her upper body off the edge of the bed and caught him around the neck. “Th- thank you,” she said in a strangled tone.

Moisture where her cheek pressed against his. Trembling shoulders. Thick swallows. Jenna’s crying both gutted Easy and built him up—because she didn’t fear him. Instead, she’d turned to him for comfort. Yet she cried so quietly that he might not have heard it had her mouth not been so close to his ear.

“Don’t you worry about a thing,” he managed as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders. Slowly, he rose until his hip rested on the edge of the mattress.

Jenna pulled herself closer until she was sitting in a ball in his lap, her arms so tight around his neck and shoulders it was like she was holding on to him for dear life.

“Shh,” he whispered as he stroked sweaty red hair off the side of her face. “You’re okay now.”

“Okay,” she whispered against his throat. “Okay. Okay.”

“Maybe I should go get Sara—”

“No!” A quick shake of her head against his. “Don’t leave me.”

No. He wouldn’t. He’d left a friend once and knew all the ways that could go wrong. “I won’t,” he whispered.

Easy wasn’t sure how long he sat there holding her, he only knew that at some point the tremors in her body stopped, her hold loosened, and her breathing evened out. She’d fallen asleep. In his arms.

That she’d found solace in him—a man who had no solace for himself—was the sweetest fucking thing he could ever remember experiencing. And it made him feel strong in a way he hadn’t in what seemed like forever.