Excerpt of Hard to Hold On To by Laura Kaye

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.