Chapter 8
Eight
Everything Brax had believed was wrong.
All these years, he’d been convinced Mia had left him. Abandoned the life they’d been building because he hadn’t been enough. He’d hated her for that. Hated her for reminding him of the mother who’d seen him as an inconvenient afterthought. For showing him that no matter how hard he worked, how much he loved, something else would always be more important. For his mother, it had been drugs. For Mia… He’d never known what was more important than him. And he’d spent years rejecting her overtures because he was afraid of the answer.
Now he had the truth, and he didn’t know how to cope with it.
He’d left her. After all his vows to love and protect her, he’d left her.
She wasn’t without fault. She should’ve told him all her history before. After they’d gotten married, at the very least. If he’d known, she could have told him about her dad’s contact. He could’ve gone with her. Or stopped her.
Christ, she could have died, and he wouldn’t have known. He’d have gone the rest of this life thinking the worst of her. And here she’d accepted his hostility and refusal to listen without saying a word to defend herself. Just taking it as her due because she clearly blamed herself for all of it. He’d seen it in her face, in the simple acceptance that everything was over and broken between them.
He’d done that. Because he’d trusted what he’d been told and leaned into his own sense of betrayal instead of what he knew deep down in his gut.
It was more than he could face, so he’d bolted. Leaving her there on the verge of tears.
He was such an asshole. That was the conclusion he’d reached by the time he made it back to Jonah’s mom’s house hours later.
Someone had left a light on for him and the kitchen door unlocked. Brax slipped quietly inside, figuring he’d ended up with the short straw for the couch tonight, having not been around for the draw. That was fine. It wasn’t like he’d be sleeping.
“Ah, you’re home.” Rebecca strode into the kitchen in fuzzy socks and a long flannel robe, her hair pulled back in a tail.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t.” She angled her head, giving him a long study with what he could only think of as a Mom look, though his own had never done such a thing. After a long moment, her face softened, and she closed the distance between them to fold him into a hug.
Brax didn’t move. He didn’t know what to do with this easily offered affection. Mia was the only one he’d ever really allowed this close. But Rebecca’s soft lavender fragrance and the circle of her arms felt damned good, so he gave in and bent his head to her shoulder, awkwardly returning the hug.
She rubbed circles on his back in much the same way he imagined she would a child. “You’ve been through the wringer tonight, haven’t you?”
He coughed out a laugh.
Rebecca eased back, patting his cheek. “I’ll make you some tea.”
Brax didn’t really want tea, but this whole maternal caretaking thing was new to him, so he just said, “Thanks.”
As she puttered around, filling the kettle and pulling out mugs, he sank down at the kitchen table, feeling about a hundred years old.
“You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong. But I’ve got a good ear if you want to.”
He thought of what Mia had said. About all the secrets that had been kept as a matter of safety. She hadn’t said if those still held. Safer to assume they did. But the idea of talking this through with another woman, maybe getting some parental-type advice, was more appealing than he would have imagined.
“Did Jonah say where I was going?”
“To talk to Mia.”
He scrubbed a hand over his head. “More like to listen.”
Rebecca poured boiling water over the tea bags and brought the mugs to the table. “I’m guessing what she had to say was hard to hear.”
“That would be an understatement.” Not sure where to start, Brax restlessly turned the mug between his hands. “We married really young. She was just eighteen.”
“Mmm. I understand that. I wasn’t much older when I married Jonah and Sam’s father. Were you high school sweethearts?”
“No. Former foster siblings. We were friends. Had each other’s back in the system.”
“You went through a lot together.”
“Yeah.” He sipped at the tea and found it not as lousy as he expected. “Things were good. Hard, but good. I’d have done anything for her.”
“Jonah mentioned you’d been split for a long time. What happened?”
With a humorless laugh, he lifted the mug again. “It’s complicated. But not what I thought. I’ve spent a decade believing something of her, being pissed and hurt about it, and it turns out I was completely wrong. I’m the bad guy.”
Rebecca wrapped long-fingered hands around her own mug, peering at him over the rim. “Mmm. And that’s hard because you strive to be the good guy.”
“I don’t know about that.”
Her dimples fluttered. “I do. You’re a lot like Jonah on that front.”
“Don’t paint me to be some kind of saint. I raised plenty of hell when I was younger, and my reasons for going into the service were a whole lot more about having somewhere to put my anger than some greater good.”
“Maybe. But you’re a good man, or he wouldn’t be friends with you. Now whatever it is you think you did?—”
“Did do. There’s no ‘think’ about it.”
“Whatever it is you did, did you do it on purpose, to hurt her?”
Brax wrapped his hands around the mug, feeling the warmth soak into his palms as he considered the question. “Yes, and no. I was reacting to what I thought she’d done. Lashing out. But I was operating on bad intel. In the normal course of things, no, I would never have set out to hurt her.”
“Well, that doesn’t make you a bad guy, Brax. It makes you human.”
“I still feel like a total asshole.”
The dimples deepened into a full smile. “Assholes are human, too. So long as you come out the other side not wanting to continue to be an asshole, you’re doing okay. Does finding out the truth change anything for you about her?”
Did it?
Mia had said she’d never stopped loving him. And underneath all the hurt he’d been carting from continent to continent, war zone to war zone, he knew he still loved her. Or at least the her she used to be.
“I miss my wife.” The admission hurt because he knew the lion’s share of the lost years was on him. If he’d listened before, when she’d tried to tell him, instead of clinging to his hurt pride… “I don’t know how we come back from this.”
“Well, I expect one way or the other, the right place to start is probably an apology.”
No question he owed her that.
“I’m sorry doesn’t seem like enough.”
“So maybe think a little bigger. What would tell her you really mean it?”
“I don’t…” He trailed off, thinking way back to their beginning. It was a long shot, but maybe…
“Will it keep you awake if I use the kitchen tonight?”
“Nope.” She patted his hand. “You go right ahead.”
He curled his fingers around hers and squeezed. “Thanks for momming me. It’s a new experience. I kinda like it.”
Rebecca beamed. “Anytime, sweetheart.”
Brax shoved back from the table. “Where’s the nearest all-night grocery?”
For all the years she’d worked construction, Mia had never dreaded going to work. The job had always been her salvation. A place she could go and face problems that she could actually solve with her own two hands. But in the wake of her big reveal to Brax, she considered calling in sick. She felt like warmed-over death, more from lack of sleep and too many tears than the bourbon. Last night was an end of… something. There was relief in unburdening herself of the secret she’d carried most of her life. But it was a cold comfort. At this stage, it probably changed nothing.
She’d lied to him for years. Her reasons felt valid to her, but he might not feel the same. He was her husband. He’d been her best friend. The man who was supposed to be her partner in all things. And she’d shut him out. He wouldn’t forgive that easily.
She had no idea how he was going to be at the job site. If he’d be at work at all. She wouldn’t blame him if he wasn’t. Who knew when he’d be ready to face her again? Not to mention the inevitable questions from the crew who’d been witness to The Incident yesterday. Her certain knowledge that she needed to be there, to shut that shit down before it got out of hand, was the main thing that propelled her into her truck. If she was showing up well before her team and the clients, well, she wanted time to finish her coffee first.
She didn’t expect to see Brax’s truck already there. Had he come here last night instead of going back to Jonah’s?
As she idled at the top of the drive, unsure what to do, he opened the driver’s side and slid out some sort of package under his arm.
Well, he wasn’t avoiding her. That was a positive sign. Right?
Heart knocking against her ribs, Mia pulled up beside him and got out, her work boots crunching on the gravel of the parking lot.
“Hey.” His breath puffed out in a cloud in the frigid, early morning January air.
“Hey.” What exactly did you say to your not-exactly-estranged-anymore-but-not-really-yours-either husband?
He dug his free hand into his coat pocket, shoulders rounding in an uncharacteristic show of nerves. “I wanted to apologize for last night. For walking out.”
An apology hadn’t been on her admittedly short list of expectations. “I hit you with a lot of information. I’ve had years to process. You haven’t.”
“Still. I didn’t handle it as well as I should have.”
“I don’t think there is a right way to handle the kind of news I dumped on you.”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a shadow of his usual sardonic smile. “I guess not.”
He shifted from foot to foot before finally offering the package under his arm. “I brought you this.”
Mia took it automatically, carefully opening the tented foil to reveal what was inside. Her breath caught at the sight of the exquisitely braided pastry. It was a raspberry Danish. Her favorite. The thing he’d gone out of his way to procure for her eighteenth birthday, and every successive birthday thereafter until she’d left. But this was… more, somehow. The plait of the pastry was more complex and beautiful than was usual, with finely crafted pastry flowers and leaves, such that the braid itself looked like lush vines bursting with fruit. It was still warm from the oven, the scent of butter and raspberries wafting up to make her mouth water.
“Brax. It’s beautiful.” Where the hell had he found this? And then she realized, taking in the foil and aluminum tray beneath. He was a fully trained professional baker now. “You made this?”
He ducked his head in a nod, his shoulders hunching toward his ears. “Happy birthday.”
She blinked. Birthday? He was right. Today was her birthday. For a moment, she could only stare. She’d stopped celebrating so many years ago that she’d forgotten. “I didn’t even remember. I don’t know what to say.” Which was just as well because her throat was going thick, and her eyes began to burn with more unshed tears.
“You don’t have to say anything. Just… I wanted you to know that I remembered. And that I’m sorry.” His face spasmed. “So fucking sorry, Mia.”
He’d been beating himself up all night. It was there in the hollows of his cheeks, the shadows beneath those stormy eyes. The idea of it made her heart hurt.
Needing to comfort, she dropped the tailgate of her truck and set the pastry aside, ignoring her own fear of rejection as she stepped into him, lifting her hands to frame his face. “I didn’t tell you with the intention of hurting you or making you blame yourself for things outside your control. I told you because you deserved the truth.”
His arms came around her, crushing her to him in a fierce hug that all but squeezed the breath out of her. Every cell in her body sighed at the sensation of his warmth curling around her. Barely suppressing a whimper, she burrowed in, tightening her own arms as if she’d never let go. God, she was so touch-starved. She needed this from him like she needed to breathe, and judging by how his fingers worked into her hair, kneading at her nape as he rocked her, so did he. At least for this moment.
How long had it been since she’d let anyone close? Even for something so simple as a hug? There’d been Luca, but by her own preference, that contact was few and far between and wasn’t anything like this. And she just… didn’t trust people enough to get this close.
They stood that way for a long time, breathing each other in, until the sun peeked well over the ridge and other vehicles rolled in for the day. Even as doors slammed, they didn’t move. Mia felt the eyes on them and didn’t care. She didn’t know if she’d ever get this again, and she’d be damned if she let go first.
Dimly, she heard the door to the building being unlocked and people piling in.
From inside, someone let loose an emphatic, “Son of a bitch.”
Mia held tighter, knowing this little interlude was coming to an end.
A few moments later, her foreman, Brick Hooper, cleared his throat. “Uh, boss. We got a problem.”