BOOTH

It was hard for me to sit there and not feel stupid. After the scene in the main room, Stella and I didn’t get any alone time before my brothers helped me up and we made our way to the war room. I had really wanted to stay with my honey. The first time we said I love you should have been a bit more romantic, and the way it went down was real and pretty fucking raw, but there was no way in hell I was going to let her walk out my door and not see her ever again because I was an idiot. That woman, and only her, owned me. So my choice had been simple in the end. I chose love. I chose Stella. Best fucking choice I had ever made.

“Brother,” Deck said from his seat to my left. Next to him was Creed and Darth. On the other side of the table were my VP, Steel, and Mannix, then Ford. Though Ford didn’t hold an officer’s patch, he was an invaluable part of the team, and his trust level was the same as any of the other men surrounding the table. I took a deep breath and prepared myself to tell my story.

“When Carson joined up, I made it a point to pull some strings and use some of my influence to make sure his path would eventually lead to our team. I promised my mum that I would look after him, and up until that day, I had never broken a promise to her.” I held up my hand to stop the barrage of denials from my brothers. “Let me get this out first, okay?” I waited for all my friends to nod then continued.

“Jerry was a crap father to me, but to Carson, he was the best father he could be.” It hurt to talk about my father’s obvious love for his youngest son and his indifference to me. If I lived to be one hundred, I would never be able to work out what I did wrong in his eyes. He was the prick who drank and gambled all our money away, but it was Carson who forgave him constantly, stuck up for him, and admired him because of his army service. I never did. He called himself a soldier, and he was once. Brilliant in fact, but he lost it.

“The hardest thing I ever had to do was deliver my brother’s body to our mother. Her devastation when she found out why she couldn’t have an open casket for her baby boy’s funeral will never leave me.” I tried to keep my voice from cracking, but the memory of that day was too much for me.

“Why won’t they open the casket, Vincent? Why can’t I see my boy? How do we even know he is in there?” my mum cried into my chest.

Fuck me, what was I supposed to say? Sorry, Mum, Carsen was blown to pieces, and I was pretty sure we left a few pieces back in the desert?

“Mum, it’s best if we keep it closed. He is there, Mum, trust me, okay?” I could feel her nod against my chest. Thank you, God, finally. I couldn’t keep saying my brother’s name—the pain and guilt that followed were drowning me.

“Trust you? That is a fucking joke,” I heard a voice yell from behind me.

Holding Mum steady with one arm, I pivoted and turned to find my father glaring at me. The whole room had suddenly grown quiet. People I grew up with, neighbours, family, and friends, my team, everyone was watching.

“Jerry, please, this isn’t the place.” Mum tried to diffuse the tension, but she had no chance. The hatred in my father’s eyes had reached a new level. This was it.

“You got something to say, old man?”

“You were supposed to protect him, see him safely through his deployment. Nine months and he would have come home, and we were going to start a business together. Now he is in fucking pieces inside that box,” Dad roared, making Mum cry. I had so far kept his condition a secret from her.

“That’s not true! Vincent, tell me that’s not true. You said he died valiantly like a hero,” she begged me again for a second time in minutes.

“Dammit, woman, open your eyes. Your idiot son failed his mission and killed his own brother. It should have been you. You are a fucking waste of space, and I will make sure you pay for this.” Then he was on me, punching me in the face over and over. Spittle from his mouth hit me in the face as he cried out how he wished it had been me who had died.

Yeah, me too, arsehole.

“Booth, you okay?” Steel asked me, jolting me out of my head.

“No, brother, honestly, I am not. But I will be.” I looked at my men. All of them not only with me here but had followed me into battle many times during our enlistment.

“Looks like you and blondie are working things out,” Creed said. There was no smile on his face, but his eyes had a bit of a spark to them. Hopefully, Creed would find his own peace and a way to live with what he had seen and endured.

Nodding, my head, I wholeheartedly agreed. “Yeah, it took me a bit, and I nearly lost her in the process in more ways than one, but yeah, she is mine, and I am hers. After this, she and I are going to spend some quality time together.”

“Want to tell us about Ingrid?”

Ugh, not really, but I had to tell them. They deserved the truth, and they needed to hear everything.

“She has been helping me sleep. She studies, and I sleep. When I have a nightmare, she wakes me straightaway. You know what happens when I dream about Carson. All of you know what I do. I don’t like it, I fucking hate it, and I feel less of a man because of it.” I hated the defeat I heard in my voice and the way my nightmares made me feel weak.

“Booth, mate.”

Deck started to protest, but I put up a hand up and stopped him. “It is how I feel, Deck. You have always been able to remove yourself from situations of blame and see the bigger picture. I can’t. I feel the failure of that day like it was yesterday. I was the CO on that mission, so it was my job to foresee any problems and prepare for them. Running out of ammunition was a rookie mistake, and I was no rookie,” I said vehemently.

“Booth, no one knew that ambush was going to happen,” Mannix interjected, his eye patch reminding me of that day when he lost his eye and his blood brother lost his leg. The day Carson died.

“I was the chief commanding officer, and it was my job to bring every one of my men home. And that’s it. End it, please. Now I am going to work on this problem, and I know you have my back.” There were nods all around. These men had been to hell and back and then went back for more with me. Their support went without saying.

“I think maybe Stella is right,” Steel said out of the blue. “It’s time to start seeing what is right in front of us, brothers. I, for one, am going to start. I am thinking about asking Callie to marry me.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Creed exploded from his seat, getting up so quickly that he overturned it. “Why the fuck would you want to marry that gash when Mia is so fucking perfect?”

Steel jumped up from his seat, his fists clenched at his sides. In a fair fistfight, I would put my money on my VP—his height alone was an advantage, plus, he was fucking strong—but if you added some MMA to the mix, my road captain would win easily. Creed was a powerful fucker, and he had a fair bit of crazy in him, which fed his anger.

“I would watch how you say about Callie if I was you, brother. And if Mia is so fucking perfect, why don’t you go for her,” Steel goaded Creed, but from the tick in his jaw, he didn’t look like he enjoyed what he said. Steel had his head up his arse about Mia for a year or more now, but if he were going to propose to Callie, he might want to curb her extracurricular bedroom activities first.

“Maybe I fucking will,” Creed answered, his words knocking the cocky grin right off my VP’s face.

“How the fuck can you ask Callie to marry you if she hasn’t even seen your leg?” Darth said with a growl. Darth had stayed quiet during all of my shit so far. He was next to me when the IED blew Carson to pieces, and he helped me pick my brother up, finding bits from the ground, and loading him up in an old blanket we found. We had never spoken of that day, and I guessed we never would, at least, not of our own free will. I looked over to Mannix and noticed his look of concern.

“Brother, you can’t marry a woman who finds that repulsive—her fucking words, not mine, remember? Think about this, Steel, please, before you decide. Find out where she was last night and who she was with. Find out where she goes when she leaves for weeks at a time. Marriage should be forever, not full of lies and betrayals,” Mannix said to his brother quietly, and I knew Mannix was speaking from experience. The betrayal he lived with every day kept him from any kind of commitment with Rainn. The club’s stunning dancer was just a plaything for him, or so he would like us to believe. Their arrangement was weird and not something I would ever enter into, but they seemed to be happy. So whatever.

Steel gave Mannix a curt chin lift. I could see he was holding his temper at what they had said to him, which was the plain and simple truth. Callie was a gash, no matter how harsh that seemed. I had seen her with the prospects in recent weeks, and I knew she was making the rounds of some of the guys on Deck’s construction crew. There wasn’t too much that got past my radar. The only people to get by me so far was Rogue and my own girlfriend, who had been hiding brutal beatings from me to protect my club—no, couldn’t forget that fucking shit for one minute.

“Sort it out, Steel. Callie needs to learn a bit more respect for the club and the women here. Charlotte and Stella are queens here, and Mia is not far off, in my mind. I won’t have Callie mouthing off. The other day, I heard her telling Shiloh to shut up.” I chanced a look at Deck, and my sergeant-at-arms gritted his teeth but said nothing. He knew Steel had copped enough on Callie’s behalf, but my guess was the bitch would be on the receiving end of a mouthful the moment Deck laid eyes on her again.

“The fuck?” Steel growled. His devotion to the club’s princess was just like everyone else’s, one hundred percent.

“Brother,” Darth warned, getting up from his seat for the first time since entering the room. Shiloh had his complete and total submission. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her.

Steel held his hands out in a show of acknowledgment. “I got it, brothers. That shit will never fly, and I understand your concerns, but just give me a minute to figure this shit out. I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life. I want kids, and I want a wife. I want Deck’s life,” he added and laughed at Deck’s expression. There wasn’t any chance in hell Deck would ever let any man sniff at Teach let alone take her from him, but Steel had achieved what he set out to do. The whole room erupted into laughter, and Creed grunted once or twice.

But it was weird. For the first time since loading my brother into the Humvee that fateful day, I felt lighter. There was no talk of Rogue. He didn’t belong in this moment with my brothers.