Always (Follow Me #6)

Chapter Fifty

Back at my place, I pour a bourbon for each of us.

I take a sip, letting the smoky liquor burn my throat. It’s a good burn. A burn I need at the moment.

My heart is still racing from having a gun pointed at me.

But more from seeing it pointed at Skye.

I felt terror at the prospect of losing her—so much so that I lost control for a few precious seconds.

Control.

What my life is all about.

And seeing Skye, the gun…

That was my fear turned into matter. Fear with its ugly black-and-red head, laughing at me in a satanic, mocking way.

But I steadied myself. Got back to basics. Cold plunge. Forced meditation.

It saved me.

It saved Skye.

And I’ll do it all over again if I must.

But damn it, I’ll do everything in my power to make sure Skye is never put in harm’s way again.

“I’ll always protect you,” I say.

“I know.”

This is my fault. The words don’t make it past my throat. I should have been here with Skye. Instead, I chose to meet with three vigilantes so I could keep my own hands clean. Because Reardon and Ramirez got too close. Skye could have been harmed. Tessa was harmed.

I wanted to punish men I had no right to punish. I’m not the law.

Never again.

I’m sure the Unholy Trinity would have wreaked their own kind of havoc on Beau, Peter, and Garrett, but I was thrilled to see Beau and Peter get shoved into an NYPD squad car, their hands cuffed, their rights being read.

As for Garrett, he’ll be arrested in Boston by morning on charges of rape, reckless endangerment, and administration of a controlled substance.

“You blame yourself,” she murmurs.

I lift my eyebrows.

“Not just for feeling repulsed by her scars when you were a little boy. You blame yourself for her death.”

Right. She’s talking about my mother. I told her she’s tied with my mother for being the strongest woman I know.

“Yes. I do,” I admit. “I always will.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” She strokes my arm.

If only her words were true. But Skye doesn’t know the whole story. No one does.

“She survived the fire,” Skye continues. “She was strong.”

“She was. She made sure Ben and I got to safety.”

“Any mother would save her child first.”

“I know. But she was never the same. Even though she was still beautiful.”

“I’m sure she was, if she was your mother.”

I simply nod. Once I got over the shock of my mother’s scarring, I realized her eyes still lit up when she smiled. Her face was different, marked by the fire that had taken so much, but she was still my mother. The woman who loved Ben and me with such a powerful force that she still got out of bed each day in spite of the depression that plagued her. Those lines, those marks—they didn’t change who she was. If anything, they reminded me of how strong she was. I told her that sometimes, when I saw her hesitate in front of the mirror. “You’re still beautiful, Mommy,” I’d whisper, and it was the truest thing I ever said.

But the guilt of how I treated her when I first saw her never went away completely.

“You don’t have to tell me, Braden.”

“No. I want to. It’s time.” I shake my head. “I’ve never told this story to anyone.”

She smiles. “Then I’m honored.”

“I haven’t even told my therapist.”

“I’m doubly honored.”

I draw in a deep breath. “She and my father stayed together, and he did get sober. He tried, but he wasn’t cut out for marriage, really. In his way, my father loved her.”

She nods.

“But she was never the same after the fire. She fell into depression.” I close my eyes. “We kept her going. Ben and I.”

“She loved you very much.”

“She did. And she loved Dad, for all his faults.”

“You love him, too, don’t you?”

“In my way. But I’ve never forgiven him for what he cost me.”

“Your mother?”

“Yes.”

I stay silent as time seems to suspend itself. Skye doesn’t push.

Time to come clean. Truly clean with the woman I love, the woman I want to make a life with.

“She got sick,” I finally say. “One of the burn wounds never healed properly, and it got infected. She developed a bad strep bacterial strain. The one they call the flesh-eating bacteria.”

“Oh my God. Streptococcus A.”

“That’s the one. I had just started high school, and Ben had just started middle school.”

“And you lost your mother.”

I nod, my eyes heavy-lidded. Still, no moisture pools in them. I don’t cry. I haven’t cried—I mean truly cried—since that day.

“Why is this so difficult for you to talk about?” she asks. “It’s not your fault.”

“It is.”

“Braden, it’s not. Blame your father if you want. I at least get that. But not yourself.”

“You don’t understand, Skye. That day… That day of the fire…”

“What? What happened the day of the fire?”

The memory hits me like a punch to the gut, sudden and unforgiving. I was just a kid—too young to understand what I was asking, too stupid to realize what could happen. The fire was everywhere, like something out of a nightmare.

“I didn’t want to leave my room,” I say, swallowing the lump in my throat. “I didn’t want to leave my precious comic books to get burned into ashes. She’s yelling at me to get out. She’s got Ben in her arms, and she doesn’t have an extra arm for me. So she finally leaves, gets Ben to safety, and then she comes back for me. She lifts me up, and I drop the handful of comic books. I yelled at her, Skye. I told her…”

“It’s all right. You told her what?”

“I told her I hated her for making me leave my comic books.”

“Oh God…” She gulps.

“That’s right. She got me to safety, and then she went back in to get the comic books. But they were already ablaze, and that’s what…” I shake my head.

“That’s what burned her,” she says monotonously. “The fire from your comic books.”

I don’t respond.

Not at first.

Every second she was gone felt like a lifetime. My heart was hammering in my chest, so hard it hurt. I remember screaming for her, begging her to come back. I didn’t want the comics anymore—I just wanted her. The smoke filled the air, thick and suffocating, and I stood there, helpless, as the fire swallowed the house whole.

Finally, I continue. “Maybe. I don’t know if it was the comic books or not. But she went back in, and she got dragged out by a fireman with third-degree burns on the left side of her body.”

“Tell me,” she finally says. “Tell me what you need right now.”

I take a sip of my bourbon. “No one knows that story,” I say. “Not even Ben or my dad. She told him she went back in to get our baby books.”

“Have you considered that maybe that’s the truth?”

“No. She was in my bedroom when the fireman dragged her out.”

“So your father knows, then.”

“He knows she was in my bedroom. He assumed that’s where my baby book was. It wasn’t. The baby books were in a cedar chest in the living room underneath some quilts.”

“And Ben doesn’t know?”

“He was only three. He had no idea where the baby books were.”

“And you did.”

“Yeah. Sometimes Mom and I would look at them together. I liked looking at my first lock of hair.” I shake my head. “I haven’t let myself think about this in so long.”

Skye reaches out and touches my cheek. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not. It’s never been okay, and it never will be.”

Because the guilt is again swallowing me whole.

And it hits me like a freight train.

The engagement ring in my safe back home.

How she let me take her beautiful ass—and how I wanted to be the only one to ever go there.

How I was the first man to give her an orgasm—and how I never wanted another man to have that pleasure.

How much I want a life with Skye. Everything I’ve planned.

How I was never complete until I met her.

All of it. Everything and nothing. Skye Manning is my world.

My whole fucking world.

My heart plummets.

Because now…

Now it can never, never be.