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Adam was barely awake when he suddenly felt the shaking beside him. He'd been maybe about seventy percent out, but not certainly not completely asleep since they'd turned in over an hour earlier.
The blond man opened his eyes, raising his head just up off the pillow as he pricked his ears. He could hear it - very faint, but definitely unmistakably the sounds of sobbing beside him.
"Ames?" He raised his left arm and wrapped it around the slender form of his redheaded wife. Her back was to him, so they were in a spooning position. "Honey... Don't cry - please," he said in a soft, pleading tone. He raised his hand so that it touched her smooth, soft cheek and it came up moist with her warm tears.
She shook her head, then turned over onto her other side so that she was facing him. He held onto her more securely as she buried her face into his chest, pressing tightly against him as though to draw strength from him.
Adam allowed Amy to cry against him for several minutes, his arms around her, almost cradling her form. It tore at his heart to have her so upset. Throughout their entire relationship over the last three years, she had always been the emotionally stronger one - and now, it seemed the roles were reversed. He wanted desperately to be her rock, her pillar.
"Shh... I love you."
The redhead raised her head to gaze up into her husband's face as best she could through the darkness of the hotel room.
"Adam, I'm scared," she admitted in a loud whisper.
"I know, Angel - I know." He detected her shaking her head as she stared up at him.
"He's got Nora... Oh, God!" she exclaimed. "What if... Oh, my God, Adam! What if he tracks down your mom and grabs Angie?"
A surge of raged rushed through the tall blond man at such a thought. It was crazy, and it was damn impossible. Paul Levesque didn't know a damn about his mother aside from the fact that she still resided in Toronto. There was no way in hell that he would get to her house and kidnap their daughter. But the mere idea of it happenening made his blood boil.
"That's not going to happen," he whispered, his hand traveling down to her face as he cupped her chin. "It *won't*."
She nodded as she clung tightly to him.
"I know..." she admitted. "I know it's impossible, but..." She was again overcome by tears. "But he's so unpredictable and unstable, and... and I know that would be the best way he could get to *us*."
"I know," Adam admitted reluctantly. "But it's not gonna happen. I'd kill him myself before I let him get his hands on our daughter. You know that, right?"
The redhead nodded again and sank against him, laying her head against his chest. She was terrified like she hadn't felt in a few years. The madman was on the loose, he had one of her best friends, and they had no idea where he was. It felt as though their entire world were collapsing around their feet. And she could only imagine how horrible all of this was for poor Jay. After all, Nora was his *wife*.
The blond man held the still sobbing redhead against him, his hand gently stroking the soft red strands of her long hair. It was unthinkable... Everything of the last couple of days - Paul Levesque escaping from prison. How in *hell* had that happened? Then he realized the bastard had to have had a friend who'd aided him in the escape. There was no other way. With his conspicuous and permanent limp - which Adam himself had been responsible for after squeezing out a shot from Amy's gun, although only after Levesque had shot *him* first - he would have had no chance to have escaped unnoticed without some help from at least one other inmate. Damn it! And then Nora had gone missing. At first, they'd made up excuses for her absence, for the fact that, in the middle of Torrie's outbreak and the crowd that had gathered around her, there *had* to be a reasonable explanation for Nora not being there. And poor Jay - his best friend had been a horrible, nervous wreck the entire night. But Adam completely understood. He remembered how he'd felt when Amy had been shot - accidentally, as Leveque had meant to get *him* - he'd gone positively ballistic.
Amy's hand was suddenly on his face, her soft, graceful fingers tracing over his stubble-covered jaw and then traveling to trace the outline of his lips. Her tears were still dampening his chest, but she seemed to no longer be crying. She moved so that their faces were only inches apart as she gazed down into his face in the darkness. And then, after a moment, she lowered her mouth down on his, and the kiss was full of passion but at the same time, was full of tenderness and comfort.
The next thing Adam knew, they were making love. Aside from the usual times, when it was out of love, this time seemed
more than that. It was even more than comforting one another. They were reaffirming that they were alive.