Chapter 27

Alive and breathing

 

“You’re gonna give yourself a stroke if you don’t calm down,” my uncle told me.

I loved my uncles, but I was happy Lenox, Jasper, and Levi were all getting ready to leave to have dinner with the director to discuss some upcoming training contracts. Now that they’d retired from the Army, they owned a huge facility where they offered comprehensive firearms instruction and scenario-based training to a variety of government agencies. They’d never been short on contracts since they’d opened their doors; men with their specialized skillset were in high demand.

I didn’t need them all ganging up on me again, telling me Meadow looked like she was getting ready to stab me and they’d hold me down, so she had a clear target.

“You don’t understand.” I gritted my teeth, trying not to lose patience with the men who had raised me.

“I don’t?” Nolan’s face turned to stone, his stance widened, and his arms crossed over his wide chest, a pose that used to scare the shit out of me when I was a teenager.

“How could you? I fucked up. I was so caught up in her that I didn’t see what was right in front of my face. She almost died. One more minute and she wouldn’t be here. Do you know what that feels like?”

“I do. When I found your aunt on that oil rig, she’d already lost a fucking kidney and half her liver. The motherfucker had opened her up and taken an organ, Nicholas. Do you want to know what he was selling next? Her goddamn eyes. She was prepped and ready to be butchered again when we got there. So, yes, son, I think I understand exactly what you’re feeling. You were there, you knew how I felt about Reagan, but I was trying to play it cool, and let her go. You wanna know why I didn’t stop her from leaving and moving to Florida? Pride. I was too afraid she’d turn me down and move after I told her how I felt. And my poor man-ego was afraid of rejection. I let her go. I wasn’t there to protect her. She almost died. They both almost died. But neither of them did. Meadow is alive and breathing.”

Shit. I felt like a complete asshole. I was only eleven when Reagan was taken. My uncle was scared to death even though he tried his best to hide it from me. Everyone was. When she came home, no one talked to me about the specifics. I was a kid, and my uncles did their best to shield me from anything that would upset me.

“The only thing that mattered to me was that she was breathing when I found her. I must’ve repeated it a thousand times in my head – as long as you’re breathing I can love you through anything. The whole time she was in the hospital, all I needed was for her to keep breathing. The rest? The scars, both physical and emotional – we’d love her through them. Her nightmares – I’d hold her. It didn’t matter. None of it did.”

“She wants to know the details,” I told him.

“So tell her,” Jasper spoke for the first time.

“What? Why? She doesn’t need to know,” I countered.

“You’re wrong. She does. Your aunt blackmailed me into telling her what happened when I found her. She refused to move in with us until I told her what happened on the oil platform. I dodged every time she asked me, until one night in bed she held my ass to the fire and demanded I tell her everything,” Nolan explained.

“She’s not ready. I’m doing the right thing,” I argued.

“No.” Lenox started. “You’re not ready. And that I know something about. I spent twelve years thinking I was doing the right thing, and another nine months after that fighting a losing battle. It almost lost me Lily and Carter.”

Levi had been the only one not to speak up, but by the look of condemnation on his face, I knew I was about to get a dressing down.

“You’re wasting time, and all of us standing here can tell you, time is not your friend. Man up, and tell her what she wants to know. When she breaks under the weight, hold her up. The woman in there loves you, don’t waste it because of some misplaced guilt. There was nothing you could’ve done differently that would’ve prevented Beth from hurting Meadow. If you keep holding on to that notion, there will be no room left for Meadow.”

“What’s going on?” Meadow asked as she limped into the living room.

Levi’s hand on my shoulder halted my reprimand. “You’re gonna have to learn to pick your battles. She’s stronger than you think. And you handling her with kid gloves is not helping. You can only push her so far before you’re on the begging end of this relationship. Trust me, it sucks.”

“Nothing, sweetheart. Come and sit down. We were just getting ready to leave for dinner,” Nolan answered.

“You’re going too?” I asked.

“Yeah. Meadow, Nick has some stuff he needs to tell you; we’ll give you privacy.”

My own fucking uncle threw me under the bus.

Goddammit to hell.