Chapter Eighty-Eight
Georgia
I didn’t truly remember how much I hated this house until I walked into it and remembered how empty it was.
Well, empty of people.
Everything else was a disgusting mess.
But years ago, when I was small, the three-bedroom, two-bath, split-level ranch with a basement had felt as big as a palace but as vacant as an empty coliseum. Not that I’d ever been to a coliseum, but I had been to a Detroit Tigers game. Once. My dad took me before his last deployment and bought me a baseball cap.
It was the one thing I’d kept from my life when I’d fled from this house because I’d been wearing it. I’d thrown it on, tucked my hair under it, and snuck out the back door.
In retrospect, it hadn’t been a smart move.
Kind of like coming here again hadn’t been a smart move.
I’d heard what Blade had said on the phone and to the attorney. I knew what a sweep team was. I remembered what he’d said his work had done for him two years ago after he left Reena’s, but I hadn’t explicitly asked Blade if the bodies would be gone before I’d walked through the front door.
Holding my hand over my nose and mouth in an attempt to combat the stench, I glanced around the trashed living room.
Stained, yellowed carpet with cigarette burns. A cracked brown leather sofa that was as old as my memories. Broken plastic blinds hanging on by a thread behind torn curtains. The urn with my grandfather’s ashes was tipped over on the mantle. The flag from my father’s funeral was wedged under one side of a flat-screen TV where the missing foot should’ve been, and Henry’s shit was everywhere.
Dirty clothes, crack pipes, sneakers, condoms—both used and unused ones.
And his leather jacket draped over the banister that led down to the basement.
Bile crawled up my throat, and I pivoted.
Slapping a hand over my mouth, grabbing the front door with the other, I yanked it open and was suddenly face to chest with Xander.
His arm raised like he was about to knock, his eyes widened with surprise.
Shoving past him, I leaned over the rusted railing and vomited.
A second wave hit as large hands grabbed my hair and pulled it back.
I vomited again.
One of the hands gently rubbed my back. “You want me to get you some water?”
At the sound of his voice, the gesture, the memories, I hurled again.
Then I started crying.
“Okay, you’re scaring me, Lynnie. Do you need me to call someone? Get you some medicine or something?”
I cried harder.
I didn’t scare Blade.
Yes, I’d walked away from him—I’d had to—but he never would’ve asked me if I needed him to call someone. He also probably never would’ve held my hair and rubbed my back while I was vomiting.
Jerking away from Xander, feeling more like an island than I ever had, I tried to pull it together.
But me pulling myself together had dissolved into only three methods, and I couldn’t stomach caffeine or chips right now, I had no car to run away in, and I definitely wasn’t going to ever have dangerous sex to escape again.
Spitting out bile, refusing to look at the boy next door who’d grown into a man but was still nothing like the man I really wanted to see, I turned toward the front door.
“Lynnie, wait. Please.”
Tears dripping, spit on my chin, the taste in my mouth feeling like just desserts, my voice rasped more than usual. “Go home, Xander.”
“I just…. I haven’t seen you in years. It was like you disappeared. Then you were suddenly walking up the front steps this morning, and I happened to be home on leave. I was getting up and glanced out my window, and I couldn’t believe it. I had to see you. I just want to talk to you. Please.”
“I have nothing to say.”
“I know, and I deserve that, but please, I—”
Misplaced anger spilled out, and I directed it at him. “You just watched me vomit my guts out, Xander. Do you really think this is a good time?”
“Oh shit. Just—just hang on a sec.” He jumped down the front steps and took off toward his house.
The anger retreated as fast as it’d come, leaving me more deflated than I’d ever felt—until I looked back at the stupid fucking house. Then I felt worse.
Before I could gather the courage to walk back inside and see if what I wanted was still here, Xander was back, taking the front steps two at a time.
“Here.” He held a bottled water, a banana, and a wet paper towel out to me.
My heart hurt. “We’re not kids anymore, Xander. You don’t have to take care of me.”
Proving that he wasn’t a kid as he stood in his ACUs, Xander issued an order like a man. “Take the water, Lynnie.”
I took the water.
Then he silently held out the banana and paper towel again.
I took those too.
When I wiped my mouth, he shoved his hands into his pockets. When I opened the water and rinsed out the vomit taste, he rocked back on his feet like he used to when he was twelve. When I capped the water, swiped at my face and shoved the banana in my purse, he looked down at his boots that were military issue.
Then he confessed. “I’m not sure I ever took care of you. You were always so….” He looked up without lifting his head. “Self-contained.”
“An island,” I corrected. I was what I’d had to be. And the second I thought it, I remembered two years ago when a SEAL told me, almost verbatim, the same thing.
Xander slowly nodded as he pulled his lips between his teeth for a second. “You didn’t have to be, you know.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You had me.”
Instead of blurting out the first shit that came to my head, like I did with another man who used to wear a uniform, I chose my words carefully. “We were kids, Xander. It wasn’t your job to take care of me, or always be there for me, or save me, or whatever. You were a kid. You had your own life. You had baseball and friends and a future. You did what you were supposed to.”
High on his cheekbones, a slight pink surfaced. “I loved you.”
“No, you didn’t.” I wasn’t lovable. Not back then. Not now.
He laughed without humor. “You can’t tell someone what their feelings are, Lynnie.”
“I’m not Lynnie anymore!”
For a split second, his face fell, and I saw all the hurt. I saw it because Xander had always worn his emotions. He could afford to, and that was always the difference between us.
Blade never revealed his emotions.
I hated that I respected him for it, and I hated that I still had hate, but I did respect Blade, and maybe I needed to start respecting who I was too.
Or embracing it.
I didn’t apologize for yelling at Xander.
“You’re right,” Xander agreed, looking at me with the same kind eyes he’d always had. “You’re Georgia Lynn Lyons, you’re an island, and you never needed me. But I owe you an apology for that night seven years ago. I never should’ve had sex with you like that. I should’ve called my parents or the police. I should’ve left and gotten you help. Actually, I should’ve gotten you out of there. I apologize for that, but I’m not an idiot. I know what I’m saying now is just words. I don’t deserve it, but I hope one day you can forgive me.”
Shit. “Xander, stop.”
“I’m sorry, Georgia. I’m really, really sorry.” Leaning down, he kissed my temple and whispered the same thing he’d said to me at my father’s funeral, the same thing he’d said in my ear on my wedding night, when he was forced by Henry to thrust into me in front of a basement full of junkies. “Time is magic.”
The tears came back.
The boy next door looked down at me for only a second before he pulled me into his arms.
A sob broke free, and an angry voice growled from behind Xander.
“What the fuck did you do to her?”