Chapter 10
Colt
Taf watches me from the far side of the room. He’s been glaring at me since I got home, and the heat of that glare is almost overpowering the murmured conversation of Denver and Sebastian in the hallway.
Reckless. That’s what Denver called me. She yelled, she raged, she told me I had no right to rush into danger when she’d only just got me back.
“Eighteen months,” Taf says. Lifting my gaze to him, I say nothing.
“That’s how long JJ was in San Francisco.
Eighteen, almost nineteen months. And you know what hurt the most?
” He pushes himself off the wall and steps forward to grip the back of the couch.
“He could have come home when Wilder did, but he chose to stay. If he’d asked you, he knew you’d let him come back, but he stayed away …
in danger, away from me, away from all of us …
” He drops his attention to his hands, to his whitening knuckles.
“It made sense,” I say quietly, my throat raspy. “We needed someone inside, and he knew that.”
“Do you think that fucking matters to the man that loves him?”
Taf rarely uses a cutting tone with anyone in the family. Even when he tortures, he’s oddly polite—he told me once it was because he likes bringing new life to the phrase “kill them with kindness.”
He continues, “Do you think I cared about what made sense when the man I loved was living in danger every day? You know what Ranger would have done to him. I’d have lost him.
Probably in the most painful way imaginable.
Even now he’s home I … I’m so fucking angry at him, Colt.
I’m getting past it, but he left us. Left me.
” His eyes shine, but his jaw is tense. “Don’t make me angry at you, too. ”
The guilt cuts through me, even more of it than I can handle in one fucking day.
“If someone hurt JJ, you’d do exactly what I did,” I say, but even I don’t back my own weak argument.
“I wouldn’t have gone alone. I wouldn’t have forgotten that we’re a team. That we’re a fucking family,” he says, and he returns to his place against the wall. “We lost Wilder. I refuse to lose anyone else because of this pointless fucking war.”
Part of me wants to apologize. Another wants to argue my position. Taf and I rarely argue, and I feel weirdly out of my depth with it.
Confident steps interrupt our discussion, and Sebastian appears. He’s dressed in gym attire, and while he sits on the coffee table in front of me and busies himself opening his bag, I try to ignore the shame that’s choking my throat.
“Look at me,” Sebastian says softly, and I do, quickly wincing as he shines a light in my eye.
He remains expressionless as he asks me to follow his fingers, and I’m aware that each response I give to his questions is more clipped than the last, but I don’t want him here. Denver called him, despite my protests that I was fine.
“You woke up from a weeklong coma a few days ago,” Sebastian says. “You had swelling on the brain and a severe concussion. And from the looks of this”—he nods at my knuckles—“you thought fighting was a good idea.”
Irritation sparks under my skin. “Gotta work.”
“Don’t be a fucking child, Colt,” Taf snaps.
I grit my teeth, tempted to lean further into being a mouthy prick, but decide against it.
Sebastian says, “The pain. How bad is it?”
Closing my eyes, I take a breath. “Bad.”
“Out of ten.”
“… Eight. Maybe nine.”
“Are you sleeping?”
I rub my forehead. “Sometimes it’s all I do.”
“Then your body needs it.” Sebastian scribbles on a pad, tears off the paper, and holds it out to Taf. My friend takes it, gives me a warning glare, then leaves. “I’ve prescribed stronger painkillers. You will take them sparingly. You will rest. No fighting. No working.”
“I have to work.”
“Then your recovery will take longer. You will continue to get agitated. You might even end up back in the hospital. You’ll also continue to piss off Denver, who, unless you hadn’t already noticed, isn’t a woman to piss off.
” Just hearing her name is a reminder of how I acted.
And Alistair … I said things to him I didn’t even mean.
Despite the urge to argue, I don’t. What can I even say? So, I sit like a scolded child as Sebastian stands and packs away his things.
He eyes my suit and says, “Denver said you were at a funeral.”
I focus on my hands and nod. “My brother’s.”
“Wilder is dead?”
Our eyes meet, and I frown. “You knew him?”
“Yeah, I knew him.” He places his bag down and sits on the coffee table in front of me. “Your brother killed mine.”
It’s like a jolt to my system. My heart picks up, and I straighten as Sebastian keeps his gaze fixed on mine.
And then I remember him.
He treated me after the fire. Said he took two bullets in the back.
Bullets from my brother’s gun.
“You’re Sebastian Whitlock.” Ethan’s best friend. His brother was Archer Adler. Two lives stolen by my brother. “You were at Denver’s wedding.”
He nods slowly, his shoulders dipping slightly.
“I lost my brother and my best friend that night. Almost lost my career in the months after it.” He looks at his hands.
They’re trembling. “I spent my life wanting to help people and suddenly, I wanted someone dead. I wanted Wilder to hurt so badly that I’d dream up all these scenarios.
Ones where I got the gun off him. Ones where he died and not Archer.
Sometimes thinking about his death was the only thing that helped me sleep.
” He closes his hands into fists, frowning at them as if confused.
“Now I know he’s dead, and … I feel nothing. ”
The admission should anger me. This stranger is saying that my brother’s death doesn’t warrant sympathy. It warrants … nothing.
But sympathy and kind words are all I’ve had all day, and I rejected them, didn’t I?
Sebastian’s eyes shine. “How can I not feel anything?”
“What did you want to feel?”
He opens his mouth but must struggle with the words, because at first, he says nothing. He looks at me, clearly fighting his tears.
“I thought it’d fix me.”
Months ago, I sat in an elevator and told Denver that revenge would get her nowhere. I told her the pain wouldn’t ease, and if she ever stood over my brother’s body, nothing would change for her. She was punishing herself by hunting him.
And now I’m punishing myself for losing him.
Where will that get me? I can let the guilt eat me alive if I want. I can spiral, go down a dangerous path and let my hate snatch what I have left.
Or I can take my own advice and not let the past destroy me.
“Maybe you were already fixed,” I offer quietly. “I guess sometimes we get so lost in grief we forget we’re still moving. Then when we get a glimpse into life, we realize we’re missing it.”
I’ve lost enough people to know that.
Sebastian sniffs and blinks the gleam from his eyes before standing. “Rest. Keep Denver happy. Doing those two things will keep you alive.”
He’s at the door when I speak again. “I’m sorry for what my brother took from you.”
Sebastian watches me, and I try to remember what Denver told me about Ethan’s friend. A good man, she’d said. Someone better than all of us. I see that in him, the patience that a healer should have.
“I’m sorry you feel like you have to apologize for something he did,” he says quietly and offers me a weak smile before leaving.
A glaring, painful truth spoken by an almost total stranger.
It hurts. It’s painful, and freeing, and fucking awful.
My throat thickens and I swallow, trying to push down the lump that keeps growing.
The words. The night. The pain. It’s all too much.
The first tear falls and I let out a shuddering breath, dropping my head back. I pinch the bridge of my nose, fighting the urge to let the day consume me.
I feel her before I see her.
Denver climbs onto the couch, straddling my hips, and wraps her arms around me. I bury my face in her chest and she holds me.
“It’s okay,” she whispers. “You’re safe with me. You can break now.”
And I do.
I shatter.
I cling to the woman I love, my safety, the person I trust most in the world, and I sob. I cry for my brother, for his mistakes and mine. I cry for my father, who never told me who I was to him.
I cry because I am so damn tired.
And when the tears stop, Denver takes my hand. She walks me upstairs, and we get into bed, and she cuddles into me like nothing has changed.
Because nothing will change for us in the most perfect way. She will always be a constant presence, a beacon of strength and hope, a woman I will love as long as my heart beats. No matter what happens, our love is steadfast, and I lean into that.
“Thank you.”
She kisses my chest. “You never have to thank me. This is what love is.” She angles her head to look at me, her smile small but true. “And I’ll only ever know how to love you for the rest of my life.”