Chapter Twenty-Eight
Killian
“How do you like your steak, son?” Jack Madley asked, as he fired up the barbecue. A tray stacked high with five of the biggest, thickest steaks I’d ever seen sat on the shelf next to the grill.
I looked at Sawyer who was carting a cooler of beer onto the deck and then at Garrett who was fiddling on his phone. Neither of them answered.
Eden’s dad chuckled. “I know how they like their steaks. I was—”
“Killian likes his steak rare,” Eden said, setting a salad on the table, and pulling a face. “Yuck.”
She wasn’t a big fan of steak but had chosen the menu, designed specifically for me. I was getting the Eden Madley special birthday treatment, and the Madley men were more than happy to go along with it. They loved steak, the bigger the T-bone the better.
“Sorry, sir, I thought—”
“It’s Jack,” he growled. He’d corrected me a few times last night, but I kept reverting to sir, for reasons I couldn’t understand. I’d never called anyone sir in my entire life, but the man deserved my respect. Jack Madley had embraced me as his daughter’s boyfriend, without judgement. I didn’t know how to handle that, any more than I knew how to handle this whole situation. Eden might have wanted to get away from home, and I could understand why she didn’t want to live in a small town or anywhere near that jackass, but this house was a home. It was clear within minutes of meeting her family that they all had her back, and she’d been raised with love.
I was drinking a cold beer on the deck in the early evening sunlight because I’d been told birthdays are special in the Madley house which meant I wasn’t allowed to lift a finger to help. I looked out at the green expanse of her backyard and into the woods where I’d hung out with Sawyer last night after Eden had gone to bed, a cunning plan to make it look like she was honoring her dad’s wishes.
“Do you ever get that feeling when you’re surrounded by people having a good time, and you feel like you’re not really there? Like, you’re numb?” Sawyer had asked me.
“Yeah, I know that feeling.”
“I’ll be twenty-four in October, but I feel like I’m decades older than the guys I grew up with.”
“I know that feeling.”
“I thought you might.” He took a swig of whiskey and stared at the bottle in his hand. “My second deployment…we were out on patrol, crossing a field. Me and my buddy Casey had metal detectors, scanning the area. We were just about to cross a dirt road. It looked like fresh earth had been dug up, so I told Casey and Jonesy to stay back and I’d inspect it. Next thing I knew, I was blown off my feet. I woke up in the field, and I stared up at the blazing sun. For a minute, I thought I was dead. It was so fucking quiet. But then I heard voices and I knew I wasn’t dead. The IED had blown a crater in the road waist deep. I jumped in and the first thing I saw was a leg. Then I saw Jonesy. Both his legs were blown off, but he was telling me about the car he planned to get when he got home. His fucking legs were gone, and he was talking about a car and I was telling him it’s gonna be all right. You’ll get that car. A few guys jumped in to help. In my head, I was telling myself that Casey O’Malley is somewhere in that field. And he’s okay. But I saw his boot sticking out of the dirt and I started digging him out…”
While he’d been telling me the story, he’d used that same automated voice I used when I told Eden my Johnny Ramirez story.
“We carried Casey back to base camp in a black body bag. My best friend was dead, Jonesy got his legs blown off, and I got away with a twisted ankle and some scrapes. I’ve replayed this thing in my head so many times, and I always ask myself what I could have done differently. Did I trigger that IED? Why did that happen to them and not me?”
Jesus Christ. How did he live with those images? I closed my eyes and leaned back against the trunk of the tree. “It wasn’t your fault,” I said finally, and I meant it.
I tipped back my head and looked up at the stars reeling in the night sky. Unbelievable that the world kept spinning. The stars still came out at night. The sun rose and set every day in this fucked-up irrational universe.
“I never told my family or friends that story,” Sawyer said quietly.
“Why did you tell me?” Although I had some idea.
“You look like you’ve been to hell and back.”
“I look that good, huh?” I joked.
“Ridden hard and put away wet,” he joked right back at me.
“You shouldn’t talk about your sister that way.”
He held up his hand. “Spare me the details.”
“You weren’t gonna get any.”
“She traded up, that’s for damn sure,” Sawyer said.
“Is he as big of an asshole as I think he is?”
Sawyer passed me the bottle of whiskey, and I took a swig. Jack Daniel’s, not my favorite. I passed it back to him and crossed my arms over my chest, waiting for an answer. “I never liked him. Everyone in this town treated him like he was God’s gift. They called Luke and Eden the golden couple, but it was high school bullshit. Luke is shallow. He never knew the real Eden. She’s a pain in the ass but my sister is cool as shit.”
I already knew that.
Eden placed an armload of wrapped presents in front of me. Oh hell, no.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“What does it look like? Your birthday presents.”
“I told you not to buy me anything.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not the boss of me so I ignored you.”
Sawyer and Garrett snorted and took a seat at the table. “Get used to it,” Jack Madley said, throwing the steaks on the grill. “She’s been ignoring my good advice for twenty-two years.”
Eden rolled her eyes. “I get such a bum rap around here.” She smacked me on the shoulder. “Open your presents. They’re not just from me.”
“The T-shirt is from me,” Sawyer said.
“The whiskey is from me,” Garrett said.
“You guys are the worst,” Eden huffed. “It’s supposed to be a surprise.”
They shrugged and settled back with their beers. Eden sat across from me and snapped a photo. I held up my hand. “No.”
More snorts in unison from the Madley men.
“Fine.” She scooted her chair closer to me. “Open your stupid presents.”
I opened the Jameson and thanked Garrett who informed me that Eden told him what to buy. Opened the box with a black Harley Davidson T-shirt and thanked Sawyer. “Picked it out on my own,” he claimed. Since we’d spent the entire day out, doing ‘guy stuff’ and shopping for Sawyer’s new motorcycle, I found that hard to believe. As a birthday present, he let me take his Kawasaki Ninja on a joy ride. I used to have a Ducati, one of the few things I’d ever bought myself, but I sold it after Johnny died.
“That looks a lot like the T-shirt I bought you for your birthday two years ago,” Eden said.
Sawyer snickered.
“You re-gifted something I gave you?” Eden asked.
I tossed the T-shirt to Sawyer. He caught it and tossed it back to me. “It’s a cool T-shirt,” he said, to soften the blow. “But I’ve got a million T-shirts and no time to wear them.”
“It’ll look better on Killian, anyway.” Eden crossed her arms and slumped in her seat.
The next present I opened was a stainless-steel Leatherman. “Dad, I gave you that for Christmas,” Eden said.
“I didn’t need two of them, kiddo.”
By now, the guys and I were dying laughing. Eden threw her arms up. “You guys are hopeless.”
Two unopened presents remained—a long cylinder and a small box.
“I bet she rolled up my old naked girl posters and re-gifted them,” Sawyer said as I unwrapped the cardboard cylinder.
“Like I want Killian to plaster his walls with naked girl posters,” she scoffed.
I popped open the plastic lid. I knew what was in there, and I almost didn’t want to take it out. But she gave it to me and she wanted me to have it, so I slid it out, and I unrolled it, and looked at the painting I’d seen on her easel the night she sketched my face. “You can stash it in your closet,” she said, chewing on her lower lip.
I put my arm around her and kissed her on the cheek. “It’s not going in the closet. I love it. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She gave me a big happy smile. “When we get home, I can stretch it and put it on a frame. If you want.”
“You can do that?”
“Yeah. It’s easy.”
The last gift was a key chain—a silver globe. She turned it over in my palm to the smooth side, so I could read the engraving. Every new day is a world of possibility.
“I know it’s totally corny.” She shrugged. “But I went with it. They had to make the writing small to fit it all in. I always have too much to say.”
“No shit,” Sawyer said.
I had nothing to say. Not a God damn thing. The torture of an Eden Madley birthday special continued. After dinner, she carried out the cake, lit all twenty-seven candles, and sang Happy Birthday to me, insisting her dad and brothers join in.
When the song finally ended, she nudged my arm, laughing. “You look like you’re in pain.”
I rubbed my hands over my face. I was in pain. Nobody had ever done this for me before. I stared at the cake, the wax from the candles dripping into the icing, then at her face, all lit up in the glow, her green eyes shining. So fucking beautiful.
“You need to make a wish and blow out your candles, birthday boy.”
A wish. I looked at her again and made my wish. I wanted every new day to include her. She was a world of possibility and it was a world I wanted to live in.
The next day, before we left, Jack Madley asked if he could have a word with me. I was stupidly nervous he’d give me hell for sleeping with Eden under his roof after he’d given me instructions to sleep down the hall from her. I followed him out to the deck and waited for him to lay into me. We stood side by side, facing the woods. It was so fucking quiet here. I could hear the birds chirping from the oak tree in their backyard and the hum of a lawnmower in the distance.
Jack clapped a hand on my shoulder and I startled. He chuckled. “I didn’t peg you for the jumpy type.”
I laughed. “I’m not usually.” He dropped his arm to his side. I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my arm. It was only nine in the morning, but the heat and humidity were already stifling.
“I wasn’t sold on her idea to move to Brooklyn alone.”
“I can understand that.”
“She might think she’s all grown up, but she’ll always be my little girl.”
I side-eyed him. Was he going to tell me to stay away from her?
“Look out for her,” he said. “Make sure she stays out of trouble.”
My shoulders relaxed. “I will.”
He nodded and asked me to take his number. I entered it into my phone and pocketed it. “With any luck, you won’t be escorting her to the ER anytime soon. But in case of an emergency, make sure you call me. Raising a daughter is a hell of a lot different than raising sons. I worry more about her safety. Always have.” He shook his head. “She’d call me a sexist for saying that.”
I laughed, remembering the time she’d accused me of the same thing. “I won’t let anything happen to her.”
“Good. I’ll hold you to it. And don’t mention we’ve had this little chat or I’ll be getting an earful from her.”
“I’ll keep it to myself.”
“And next time you visit, your doors will be booby-trapped. Nothing like a bucket of ice cold water falling on your head in the middle of the night.”
I bit my bottom lip to keep from laughing. God, I loved this family. They were everything I’d never had but had always wanted. Supportive. Funny. Loving. Protective. Loyal. Even though Eden’s mom had died much too young, this family didn’t fall apart. Her dad hadn’t hit the bottle to drown his sorrows. He stood strong, like that oak tree in the backyard. And he had passed that strength on to his kids.
I aspired to be a man like Jack Madley. Someday. Maybe.