He dipped his chin in a nod. “Yeah. Haven’t changed it much since you left. Guess I wanted it to be familiar when you came back.” A wry grin tugged at his mouth and made his goatee twitch. “Reminds me of the good ole days when I stick my head in there.”
I cringed. “We had good ole days? I don’t recall those.” They were obscured by too much tragedy and misfortune. The bad memories tended to engulf the good ones. They fed on them like hungry vultures and left nothing but bones picked clean.
“Then you need to try harder, son. You two go and get settled. I’ll leave dinner in the kitchen. Don’t feel like you have to rush on my account. It sounds like you had a long trip to get here.”
I grabbed Dixie’s hand and tugged her down the hallway to where my childhood bedroom was located. There were more pictures on the walls that made my knees weak and that had my heart trying to turn itself inside out. Those were the good ole days that Jules wanted me to remember, and the days I had tried my damnedest to forget. There was no outrunning the past. Somehow and someway it always managed to catch up to you, and when it did you were so tired from all the running that when it wrapped its arms around you there was no possible chance of evading it again. It held on too tightly.
“Jules and Dalen have the rooms on the other side of the house. The bathroom is across the hall here.” I pointed to a closed door that was a few feet down from the door that was cracked open to reveal the time capsule that was my old bedroom.
“Oh my.” Dixie’s voice broke on a laugh as she followed me into the blue-painted room that really hadn’t been touched since I was a teenager.
Luckily I’d always been a big guy, so the bed that was covered in a dark blue and white striped comforter was queen-sized, but that was the only sight for sore eyes in the space. There were still trophies from when I played high school sports on the dresser, along with an outdated video game system that some hipster would probably pay an arm and a leg for now. There were posters of hip-hop artists and sexy pop singers on the walls that hadn’t had hits in a decade. Tucked into the side of the mirror that hung over a small desk with a computer on it that probably ran the first version of Windows were snapshots of a much younger me and the few friends I did have back in the day.
“He really didn’t touch anything in here did he?” I tossed her backpack on the bed as she wandered over to the mirror and started looking at the pictures pinned there. “You’re actually smiling.” She ran her finger over the image of me and the girl whose name I couldn’t remember that I took to senior prom. I only went because Caroline forced me to and I was only smiling because even when she was sick it was impossible not to around her. She told me I needed to get out of the house and that no son of hers was going to spend his last year of high school on death watch. Always looking out for me, just like the woman shooting me a look over her shoulder and muttering sarcastically, “I wasn’t sure you knew how to do that.”
Right after that prom picture was when I’d run to the closest recruitment office and signed my life away. It was the day that I knew for certain that it wasn’t better to love and lose than to never love at all. You could survive without love. It was a hollow, empty existence, but it hurt less than living each and every day knowing what you were missing, knowing how awful it was to love someone and lose them.
“It’s so weird to see this and know you were a normal teenager at some point in your life. I can’t get my head around you being anything but broody and badass.”
I ran a hand over my face and took my jacket off and tossed it on the bed next to where her stuff had landed. “Well, I’m sure you weren’t this much of a ray of sunshine before your dad got hurt. Our experience shapes who we are, good and bad.”
She shrugged a little and tapped a finger on a picture of me as a teen with Jules and a pretty blonde woman who wasn’t my mother holding on to a baby Dalen. “I always tried to focus on the positive instead of the negative, even before my dad got hurt. I let it out a little more after the accident. I stayed buoyant and refused to sink like everyone else that seemed all too willing to drown in their own sorrows. My experience maybe should have changed that but I’m glad it didn’t.” She changed the subject so quickly it took me a minute to catch up with her. “Who is this woman? You’re older in these pictures, so it can’t be your mom.”
I walked over so that I was standing directly behind her. That picture had the air locking in my lungs and my hands curling into fists at my sides. “That’s Caroline.”
She sucked in an audible breath. “Oh.” She cocked her head to the side and a soft smile toyed at the corners of her mouth. “She looks really happy with you, Church.”
I sighed and moved away from her to sit on the edge of the bed. “She was, when I finally let her in.”
I heard her soft gasp but I couldn’t look up at her. Her experience should have dampened her spirits. It should have knocked some of that constant cheer out of her but she refused to be defined by the hand fate dealt her. She was a thousand times stronger than I was. I took what fate handed me and let it not only define the way I would live my life but also dictate the man I would become. “When Jules first started dating her he didn’t tell me. Can’t say I blamed him, I was a little shit when my mom first brought him around. I guess I didn’t like to share.” I rubbed a hand over my face and looked at the floor between my feet. “Wasted a lot of time being angry that the people that I loved and that loved me were happy when I wasn’t. I treated Jules like an interloper and he didn’t want that for the woman that did her best to keep him together when my mom passed. He taught me better but I still acted like an idiot. I didn’t want him to replace my mom and I didn’t want another woman in my life that might eventually matter. I had Elma and that was good enough.”
The bed dipped as she sat down next to me on the mattress. Her tiny hand covered both of mine where they were clutched together between my legs, my knuckles white as I squeezed them together. I looked at our hands until our skin blurred. “Couldn’t not love Caroline. She was sweet, sunny, and soft. She never tried to force her way in but one day she was . . . all the way in. I was looking for her in the mornings, I was rushing home from school to have her help me with homework. She put a Band-Aid on my broken heart and I didn’t even realize that’s what she was doing. She pulled this family back together and she did it with nothing more than a smile. I had to love her and when I knew I was going to lose her it killed something inside of me. I hated myself for making her earn my love at first and I hated myself for letting that love take root. I already knew how it felt to lose a mom and I never wanted to go through it again.”
She rested her head on my shoulder and a soft sigh whooshed out and tickled my neck. “You had to do that twice. That’s two times too many, Church.”
I agreed. “I was a little bastard to my mom when she picked Jules. I was a little asshole to Caroline when Jules picked her. I wasted time with both of them for nothing. I’ve had good handed to me, hell I’ve had the best, two great women that loved me and raised me right, but I’ve also lost that goodness and I’m not willing to go through it ever again. I keep anything that might be good, that might make me happy at bay and I do it knowing I’m not a man that’s strong enough to survive another blow. Pushed my own little brother away because that was easier than thinking about having him ripped away.” I tilted my head so that my cheek rested on her curls and told her the truth about the man I was. I was a coward, not a hero. “Left the only person in the world that ever picked me, the man that chose me, in the dust because I woke up in the middle of the night choking on fear thinking about the things that could happen to him while he was on the job. I was almost a full-grown man when I made the choice to run away from home because it hurt too bad to be here and I abandoned everyone that needed me so I could fight monsters that made sense. If I was going to be surrounded by death I figured it might as well be in a place where it wasn’t a shock to lose someone.” I ran a hand over my face. “You didn’t let your circu
mstances ruin you when your world got turned upside down. I let mine destroy me. I wasn’t a son anymore. I wasn’t a brother or friend. I refused to be a boyfriend or a partner. I became a soldier, a man that forgot the past and refused to focus on the future. All that mattered was the moment and staying alive. I refused to be all those things that I had been before the army because I was bad at being them. I was a good soldier. Even on the worst days I was still good at war.”
She was crying. Silent tears rolled off the ends of lashes that were spiked together with moisture. I didn’t want her to cry for me. I didn’t deserve her sympathy but I knew her heart was too soft for the kind of brutal kick to the teeth my past carried with it. I leaned towards her and touched my lips to the crest of her damp cheek. I heard her breath shudder out as she sighed and leaned into the touch of my lips.
“You weren’t bad at being all the things you were before you became a soldier, Church. Life just made being them more challenging for you than they typically are for everyone else.” One of her hands reached up to curl around the side of my neck and I felt her fingers trace the line of my pulse that pounded there.
“You don’t need to make excuses for me, Dixie. I know what I did was wrong. I know I took the coward’s way out. Sometimes I think I’m going to choke on self-loathing. It tastes bad and it lingers for a long time. I buried my head in the sand and pretended that all the bad things happening here didn’t affect me. One look from Dalen, the distance between Jules and I, there is no getting around the fact that I fucked up. They needed me here and I needed to be anywhere else.”
Her hand slid around the back of my neck and her fingers scraped over the short hair at the back of my head. It was soothing. She was trying to tame the vicious sorrow that howled and pawed at my insides like a wild, living thing.
“You were a scared kid, Church, and yeah, maybe you were kind of a bratty one but you were still just a kid. A lot of kids act out when their parents introduce a new dynamic into the fold. I can’t say that I blame you for wanting to run or for wanting to find a place where loss and devastation make sense. Especially after having suffered so much. It takes a big man to recognize the mistakes he’s made and try to repair the damage he has done. You are moving in the right direction now.”
I kissed her on the tip of her nose and lifted a hand so that I could wrap it around her slender wrist. “You will always see the best in people even when they give you every reason imaginable not to.”
She exhaled softly and moved her head so that her lips were touching mine. “All I see is what you’re showing me, Church.” The kiss was swift and not nearly enough. “Now let’s go eat and spend some time with your dad. You have fences to mend.”
She slid off the bed and held out a hand so that she could tug me to my feet. I could still feel the sting of those memories all across my insides but when I rose to my feet and towered over her I also felt lighter. This time when her arms wrapped around my waist in a hug I managed not to screw it up and embraced her back.
It felt as natural as breathing. I thought distance was the answer to keeping myself safe from all that bad that was lurking, I was starting to wonder if I was very, very wrong.
Chapter 11
Dixie
Dinner was tense and a little bit painful. It was clear both father and son were trying but the damage had been done and the road back to uniting this family was rocky and being navigated in the dark. They found common ground talking about how the town had grown and discussing the fact that it had taken the rest of Jules’s shift to get the missing-persons report on me revoked. Jules joked that we were lucky we hadn’t been pulled over on the way here from the hospital. Church didn’t think it was funny. It was weird and a lot concerning. Disgruntled and disgusted looks from strangers were one thing, going out of the way to cause trouble and strife for a stranger based solely on the color of their skin was another. I didn’t like anything about it and I hated that both Church and Jules acted like it was nothing new.
Dalen stuck his head in the dining room and asked his dad for help with his homework. It was an obvious ploy to tear Julian’s attention away from Church but neither man called him out on it. Church was going to have his work cut out for him with his younger brother and I wondered if either sibling could see how unmistakably similar they were. Church clearly looked up to and idolized his father and had pushed him away for complicated reasons I still didn’t fully have my head wrapped around. Dalen noticeably looked up to his big brother but was viewing his tentative homecoming with understandable skepticism. They were two apples that had not fallen far from the very handsome tree that had raised them.
I offered to do the dishes and told Church to take the bathroom first. The Harley meant I’d had to pack creatively for the trip south and I was out of wardrobe reinforcements, so I asked Jules if it was okay if I borrowed his laundry room. He nodded absently as he headed towards the opposite side of the house from where Church and I were staying. Church told me he would find something for me to sleep in for the night and took the chore of laundry out of my hands by mixing a load of his stuff and my stuff together before disappearing into the bathroom. I waited until I heard the shower shut off before starting the dishwasher and wasn’t surprised at all when my phone rang and Kallie’s number was the one that flashed on the screen.
I made my way to the front steps of the sprawling house and blinked in surprise as bugs with glowing backsides swirled around me the minute I sat down.
“I already told you I’m not getting into the middle of this with you and Wheeler.” I didn’t even give her a chance to launch into her defense. I didn’t want to hear it.
“I went to try and talk to him today. He was with another girl.” She was crying and sniffling. If I hadn’t known that she was the chef behind this particular shit stew, I would have felt really sorry for her.
“He does not have some girl in my apartment, Kallie. I’ve known Wheeler for years and I don’t believe he’s the type to jump into a revenge fuck. You broke his heart . . . again.”
“He was with another girl and she was gorgeous. She answered the door and then bolted when I demanded to know who she was. Apparently she’s your neighbor.”
I sighed and put my forehead in my hand. I didn’t even want to think about how terrified Poppy probably had been when she was faced with my sister’s misguided wrath. “Poppy. She’s watching Dolly for me while I’m gone. She was probably just over to get more dog food or some of Dolly’s toys. She wasn’t there with Wheeler. Not that you get a say in who he spends time with after what you did.”
There was a soft sob on the other end of the phone. “I have eyes, Dixie. It didn’t look innocent.”
I heaved a sigh. There was no way I was going to waste the breath it would take to explain why it wasn’t possible that there was anything going on between Wheeler and my stunning neighbor. Kallie was too caught up in her own drama to have the empathy Poppy’s situation called for.
“You need to leave Wheeler alone, sis. It’s time to go your separate ways. You can’t care more about him after you threw him away than you did while you had him in your grasp. He deserves better than that.”
She hiccupped a little and I heard her blow her nose. I moved the phone away from my ear and made a face. “What about me, Dixie? What about what I deserve? I’ve been with Wheeler since I was fourteen. I’ve loved him since before I understood what love was.”
I swore under my breath and pushed my hair off my forehead.
“You screwed up more than once, Kallie. He forgave you the first time. I don’t think it’s fair to expect him, or the rest of us for that matter, to keep forgiving you for the same mistake. You should only have to touch a hot stove once to know that it’s going to burn.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.” She sounded genuinely terrified and I couldn’t blame her. He’d made her life pretty easy up until this point and now she was going to have to figure out that her actions had some really hars
h consequences.
“You should have thought about that when you went to bed with a guy that wasn’t him then.” I didn’t mean to scold her but I couldn’t stop the censure from creeping into my voice. I was really disappointed in her and in her choices. Even I was having a hard time finding the silver lining this go-around.
The line went silent and I almost hung up because I thought she had disconnected. I barely heard her when she whispered, “It was a girl.”
I dropped the phone. It hit the cement and bounced. I was sure the screen was going to be shattered when I picked it up and breathed a sigh of relief when it was still intact. “Did you just say what I think you said?”
It was Kallie’s turn to sigh. “I didn’t cheat on him with another guy, it was a girl. The first time I was unfaithful it was because I thought something was missing in the relationship. Our sex life has always been fine. Wheeler is sexy and very intent on making sure things are good, but I wasn’t into it and he could tell. I thought it was me. I thought we’d outgrown one another.” She sniffed again and I mumbled her name softly. “I hated it. I hated the sex with the other guy so much. I hated that it hurt Wheeler. I hated myself. It was awful. When Wheeler agreed to take me back and we got engaged I told myself I was going to make it work no matter what. I thought something was wrong with me and that if I ignored it, it would go away.”
“Why didn’t you say something to someone, Kallie?” She was around when I was in high school and crushing hard on Remy Archer. I had had a thing for Rule and Rome’s brother for the longest time. I’d taken my shot at a party one weekend and cornered the handsome and preppy half of the Archer twins and stolen my first kiss. It had been exactly like Kallie described. Fine. There were no fireworks, the world didn’t move, and it was clear I was way more into it than Remy was. Years later after Remy had passed away and Rule had married his best friend the news that Remy had been gay had made the rounds. It was far from shocking and all of us that knew Remy when he was younger wished he hadn’t had to spend so much of his life pretending to be something he wasn’t. My tummy flipped itself into knots thinking that my sister had put herself in the same boat.