Chapter Eighteen
Megan saw his serious expression. Adam wanted to tell her, and that meant a lot to her. Sienna had said he’d never talked to anyone about his brother. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
He took her hand, gently tugging her to the couch. She let her gaze slide over him—all the golden skin of his arms and chest, the smattering of hair that gathered into a slim line over his ripped abs and vanished into his sweatpants, resting temptingly at his hip bones.
She loved looking at him, at all the power he kept controlled in his amazing body. Now that she’d seen him in action, she realized just how strong and fast Adam was. He had used that to protect her and Cole. Maybe it was archaic of her, maybe sexist, but she liked the feeling of safety.
“I knew you’d come.”
Adam stared at her as they stood between the coffee table and couch. “Last night?”
“I remembered the security system, remembered it would alert your phone.”
“You trusted me.” He sank down and pulled her next to him. “It’s time I trust in you.” Waving to the coffee table, he said, “I’ve been carrying this box around in my car for a while. In the trunk. I couldn’t decide if I should burn it all or store it.” He looked over at her.
She glanced at the box, guessing it had something to do with his brother. She was bursting with curiosity. “Did you decide?”
He squeezed her hand. “I have to keep these. They are all I have left.” Then he let go, turned to the box, and took off the lid. He reached in and pulled out a photo album. Quickly, he flipped the pages. “In this picture I was four, and…”
Megan saw his neck suddenly bulge and knew he was struggling to talk. In that second, she hated his parents. Adam had clearly been traumatized. Why hadn’t they helped him? Gotten him to a therapist to help him deal with it? She picked up his left arm and burrowed under it until she was pressed against his side, trying to comfort him however she could. She stayed there as a minute passed.
“Brady,” he said in a raspy voice. “He was two.”
Megan gasped when she looked down at the picture. “Oh, Adam. He looks like Cole. All but the eyes.” She touched the photo encased in plastic. She couldn’t believe the resemblance. She’d known Cole looked like Adam, but he was almost a dead ringer for Brady. “He was your baby brother.”
He nodded. “I was two and a half years older.”
“It must have been a shock when you saw Cole.”
He searched her face. “It was surreal. All I could think was that Brady should have lived, he should have had a son like Cole.”
Guilt. Megan recognized it. “I’m glad you’re Cole’s father.”
He closed the photo album and picked up another one. “This is the last picture of Brady. Eighth-grade graduation.”
Megan studied the boy who was staring straight at the camera, looking so serious.
“He was planning to go into the Junior ROTC program. His only goal was to become a Marine like our dad.”
That information spun through her mind. How many times had she asked Adam why he’d gone into the Marines? He’d always said because his dad was a Marine, but Megan had sensed their relationship was strained. She’d always believed he had another motivation for his decision.
Now she knew she was looking at the reason in this picture.
“Did you want to go into the Marines, before…” She trailed off, not wanting to make him uncomfortable, but when it came to Adam and his life, his experiences, she was a dry sponge desperate for water.
He shook his head. “No. I was a swimmer and surfer. I swam meets, won medals, and surfed every chance I got. Brady and I, we were in the wrong birth order. He was the serious, dutiful one, and I was the one who just wanted to play. The only thing I was serious about was swimming.”
Megan remembered his guys telling her his nickname—Shark, the name he hated. “I never knew you liked to swim, had a passion for it.”
His face hardened. “It died the summer of Brady’s graduation.” He ran his hand over his face. “I think the person I was died that summer.”
She had known this would be hard, but it felt like her heart was cracking. She put her hand on his chest. “We don’t have to talk about this.”
She felt his chest expand beneath her touch, then he exhaled. “We went to the beach. It was a party for Brady and his friends. Brady could swim, just not as good as me. We were jumping waves. I had no fear, and I got Brady to go pretty far out there. He got caught in an undertow.” Adam clamped his mouth shut, making his jaw and cheekbones stand out against his skin.
His stark, desolate expression revealed the pain that he’d held inside for years. She pressed her body to his, softly stroking his chest, while waiting to let him tell her when he wanted to, in his own time. She could hear distant sounds of golf carts, voices, the occasional shout of laughter, but it all seemed far away.
Finally, Adam dropped his head against the couch and stared at the ceiling. “Some people, a few of Brady’s friends, spread the rumor that I lured him out there and left him to die.”
“That was cruel,” she said.
His dry eyes were tinged with shadows. “I had no fear of water. None. Even when Brady vanished from sight, I thought I could find him. I was strong and fast, the best swimmer in my school. I was that cocky, that sure. I swam in the direction the undertow would have pulled him and began searching. But the undertow was more powerful than I’d thought. By the time I had to come up for air the first time, I knew it was bad.”
She reached up, resting her hand on his face. “You were a kid. Fourteen or fifteen?”
“I turned fifteen that summer. Pretty soon lifeguards were there, Jet Skis, people were yelling and searching. It took…oh Christ.” He lunged to his feet, stalking to the kitchen.
Megan saw him with his back to her, hands braced on both sides of the sink, shoulders bowed. Ripples passed through his muscles. She felt helpless, but she was not going to let him suffer alone. Moving up next to him, she put her hand on his back. “Do you want to talk about something else?”
He stared into the stainless steel sink. “One of the lifeguards found him. They got him to the shore. I was exhausted from diving and trying to find him fighting the undertow. I remember getting to the shore, stumbling out. I can still feel the hot sand on my hands and knees as I crawled up to where they were working on him.”
He swallowed. “Everyone knew he was dead. My mother turned, saw me and completely lost it. She screamed that it was my fault until they had to sedate her.”
Megan’s heart twisted and her stomach cramped for him. “It was an accident.”
He stared out the window over the sink. “There was an investigation. I was put in juvenile detention for a few days because my parents didn’t want me. But once the medical examiner ruled it an accidental drowning and the police cleared me, my parents had no choice. They took me back.”
His words were spilling out in uncensored chunks. All those years of keeping this bottled up…the dam had burst.
“We moved from San Diego. I thought they wanted to protect me. But no, they wanted to get away from the talk about them for turning on me. I begged them to move away from the beach, away from the ocean. I never wanted to see it again, never wanted to smell the saltwater…I just wanted to heal. But my parents chose Raven’s Cove. This town, it was my punishment.” He sighed. “Years later, I thought when I left this town, I’d finally be able to escape, but then the nightmares started.”
She couldn’t hold back any longer. “How could your parents do that to you?”
He turned slowly to look at her. “I tried, Meg. I tried to be the son they wanted, but nothing would break the wall of silence they lived in. We weren’t allowed to talk about Brady, or what happened. All the pictures were hidden. They told no one in this town about him. Unless my mom got drunk. Then she dragged out the pictures and would scream and cry.”
Megan looked at his arms, the muscles popping and veins bulging. She ducked down beneath one and rose up between his tensed arms. “Why did they do that to you?”
“Because they believed I was a strong enough swimmer that I should have been able to save him, even in the undertow. They believed I let him die.” He lifted his chin, once again looking out the window. “I know I tried to save him. I spent a night in the hospital, exhausted and dehydrated from the effort. But they just couldn’t believe I had tried and failed.”
Burning hatred for his parents erupted in her belly. Gripping the edge of the counter, Megan jumped up on the two-inch edge lining the sink. Balancing her ass there, she put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes. “They were wrong, viciously and cruelly wrong, to blame you. A child! They blamed a kid, Adam. I’m a veterinarian, not a psychiatrist, so I don’t know why they did that. But I know they were wrong.”
He stared at her. “I lived and he died.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” She cradled his face, hoping he would hear her. “You have to forgive yourself. It’s time to let Brady go. You have honored his memory.” She paused to get another breath and went on. “Adam, you served your country for him. You saved lives. You said yourself those would never have been your choices. Can’t you see it?”
Her heart pounded fiercely, beat with a powerful love that she’d only ever felt for Cole. But now she felt it for Adam.
She kept talking, desperate to reach him. “Brady dying was a tragic accident. Your parents let it ruin them. But you…” She was so damned proud of him, her eyes flooded with tears and tracked down her face in hot streaks. “You didn’t. You took his memory and let it guide you into being a better man. A hero for your country.”
A shudder ran through his body. He gripped her waist. “You really believe that? Brady made me a better man? That maybe part of him was with me this whole time?”
“Part of him will always be with you.” She touched that tattoo, finally understanding what it meant to Adam now. “You got this for him, didn’t you? It’s your tribute to your brother, the symbol of you taking up his dream for him when he died.”
“Yes. I wanted a part of him to be there on the battlefield with me.”
She swallowed a knot of love in her throat. “Brady is with you. And I think we’ll always see a special part of him in Cole. But you’re the hero. I know you would trade it all if you could have been Brady’s hero that day, but you can’t. And instead of letting that destroy you, instead of letting your parents destroy you, you made yourself into a hero who saved others.”
He dropped his forehead against her, another shudder working through him. “Megan.”
His voice was thick, and she felt his tears slide over her hands. It killed her to feel his pain. No one had held him when his brother died. No one had comforted that boy. She wrapped her hands around his neck and pulled him tight into her body. “I’m here, Adam. I’m here.”
…
“Adam?”
He lifted his head, looked into Meg’s face, and saw her drying tears. He knew his own face was ravaged, but he had nothing to hide from her. Not anymore. “What?”
“My ass hurts.”
He laughed and scooped her up in his arms. “Sitting on a two-inch ledge will do that.” He carried her to the bedroom. “Lucky for you, I’m trained in first aid.” Reaching the bed, it briefly crossed his thoughts that he could be assuming more than she intended. Ignoring that, he put his knee on the bed and eased her onto her back.
She relaxed against the comforter. “I’m a doctor, you know.”
He reached for the buttons of her shirt and grinned. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this light, this…okay. Oh, the pain for Brady was still there. Just like it was for all the friends he’d lost while serving in the Marines. But he no longer felt like he was drowning in the guilt. “You may be a doctor, but can you kiss your own sore ass?”
Her eyes sparkled. “That might be beyond my skills.”
“That’s why you have me.” He pulled her up and gently eased off her shirt, mindful of her bruises. Then her bra. Carefully lowering her back down to the mattress, he pulled off her shoes and undid her jeans. He pulled those and her panties off.
Leaving Megan bare to his gaze, as naked as he’d been emotionally with her earlier. The trust that was growing between them was special and something to be treasured. He quickly shucked his sweatpants, then he kissed her mouth, tasting the salt of her dried tears.
In seconds, he had to have more, sweeping in to the sweet depths of her hot mouth, sliding his tongue along hers, and pouring all he had, all he felt, into the kiss. Blood roared in his ears, pounding through him to swell his cock. Breaking the kiss, he looked at her flushed face and shining eyes. “I want to make love to you, Meg. I want to slide into your body until I feel you in my soul.” He brushed the hair out of her face. “Once I thought walking away from you was the right thing to do. Now I know I want and need you in my life. I never want to lose you.”
He fitted his hips between her thighs, then reached down, guiding his arousal to press against her. Bracing on his elbows, he watched her face as he entered her. Slowly, savoring the feel of Megan. The feel of the woman who accepted him. The woman who made him feel whole and worthy.
She arched, drawing him deeper. “Adam.” She ran her hands down his back, cupping his ass. “It’s always been you. Only you. I love you. I just want you to know that.”
He began to move faster, angling his hips to give her what she needed. Taking her higher, feeling her body flood with wet heat, while gripping him tighter and tighter. Keeping her gaze, he kept driving into her, giving her all he had. “I’m always coming back to you, Megan. Always.” He leaned down just as he felt her thighs tighten. “I love you.” Then he kissed her as the hot pleasure overwhelmed them both.