Silver Secrets (The Silver Springs #2)

Chapter 10

Ten

“I shouldn’t have said it like that.” Sloane took a deep breath, willing the ache in her head to go away. “Look, this obviously wasn’t a good idea. I’ll just ask Mae if she can give me a lift home. I don’t need?—”

“Red. I swear, if you try to tell me one more time that you don’t need someone to look after you tonight, I might actually lose it.”

Gage sat down in the chair next to her, his emotions rolling off of him in waves so big Sloane knew he had to feel like he was drowning.

“Are you ready to talk to me about it?” she asked as calmly as she could manage. Her head and wrist were growing more painful, the effects of the medication they gave her at the hospital clearly wearing off. But seeing so much hurt bubbling up to the surface with Gage was more painful than any injury she had, and she was determined to get him to talk to her about it.

Gage held his hand out, his palm towards her, silently waiting for her to accept. Sloane slid the fingers of her uninjured hand through his and immediately felt his relief.

“No.”

“Gage.”

“Red. Please.” His voice broke as his head crashed down to where their hands were joined. He pressed his forehead against her hand, most likely thinking that was all the touch she’d be able to give him. But Sloane wanted to give him so much more. That’s why she didn’t hesitate to bring her other hand, brace and all, up off her lap to stroke his hair.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Gage taking in long, slow breaths as Sloane continued to run her fingers through his hair. As time went on, her hand moved farther down, until she was touching the skin on the back of his neck. If Gage had any thoughts about what she was doing, he didn’t voice them.

“I know you’re a therapist and listening to people talk is your job, and that you love it, but I can’t even begin to explain what it was like to drive up on that scene tonight.”

She nodded, squeezing her hand gently against his. Mentally, she was kicking herself. His upset was her fault. She’d called someone who had been touched so tragically by a vehicle accident before. Why hadn’t she thought to call emergency services?

Sloane pushed down all the anxiety, and focused her attention on Gage’s eyes. There was a storm brewing inside of them. He was lost at sea, and she needed to be the one to get him back to shore safely.

“I know it had to bring up things… from their accident.”

He groaned. “Of course it fucking did. When I got there, I didn’t even see your car. That’s how bad it fucked me up. I know this sounds crazy, but it was our old van that I saw first. Same sticker Mel made me put on the bumper when Mikey was born. Same car seat we strapped him into on the back seat. It was like a fog filled my mind and I was there, at their accident. I never even saw pictures of it when I came back stateside, but my brain forced me to face it tonight. And then I heard your voice calling to me, Sloane. If you’d been…” His eyes closed as he slowly shook his head back and forth.

Killed.

She knew that was what he couldn’t say. What he wouldn’t let himself imagine.

“It was bad enough seeing all that blood. I wanted to throw up. Still feel like I might. I was pleading with every fucking deity I could think of as Gunner drove to let me take your place. Fuck, Red. He and I were talking earlier about whatever this is going on between us and I just?—”

“Accidents happen, and I’m okay.”

He looked up at the bandage on her forehead. “I’m not convinced it was an accident, Red. And you are not okay,” he grumbled.

“It was just someone with road rage. I’m sure the deputy who questioned me at the hospital will be able to figure out who it was.”

“They better find them before I do.” He squeezed her hand tighter. “Can’t lose you too.”

Sloane finally found the courage to bring up a question she’d been wanting to ask for months. Maybe it was easier to get the words out after what she faced because she could feel how badly he needed to talk about them. About their accident. About when they died. Her eyes drifted over his shoulder, to the pictures he had scattered around of a beautiful woman with long, silky hair and a little boy with the same sparkling eyes and dimples as his dad.

“Will you tell me about them? About their lives?”

Gage’s eyes went wide. “I don’t know that I can,” he whispered.

“You don’t have to share about the end if you don’t want to. If it’s too painful. We’ve danced around it for a while, and I understand. Really, I do, because I like my privacy. But I care about you, and I want to know about their lives. About who they were. Your favorite memories with them. Do you think you can share them with me?”

Gage nodded. “I want to, but I don’t know where to start,” he sighed.

“How did you meet Melody? Did you grow up together like Gunner and Lily?”

“No.” His smile was so genuine that Sloane couldn’t help but mirror it. “At the time, our team was based out on the West Coast, and she was at this ratty dive bar called The Frog Hog with her friends.”

“The Frog Hog?”

He nodded. “Hawk dragged us there one Friday night, talking about some insane hookup he had, but all that was forgotten when he laid eyes on this woman with blonde hair tied up in a messy bun and fire in her eyes. Hawk started flirting with her?—”

“Oh,” she huffed out a laugh. “I think I know where this is going.”

“Yeah. He’s pretty much the same exact guy he was a decade ago. But Mel wasn’t having any of it. She was up on the bar, dancing and singing at the top of her lungs. Hawk was trying to get her to take a shot with him. Instead, she jumped down with her drink in her hand, marched over to me, grabbed my hand and pulled me out on the dance floor. The look on his face was priceless.”

“I bet the look on your face was the same.”

“I was pretty shocked. Out of everyone in our team, I think Gunner is the quietest, but I’m definitely a close second. You’d never have known that with her, though. Mel was so easy to talk to. She just had this way of putting you at ease. I think it was how outgoing she was. Like all the burden of being extroverted was taken up by her bubbliness. I didn’t feel like I was forced to be anyone other than myself when she was around.”

“I can understand that.”

“I know you can.” Gage squeezed her hand. Sloane had almost forgotten that their fingers were still intertwined. When was the last time someone was touching her and she wasn’t acutely aware of it? Yet there was none of that with Gage. In fact, she knew her touch was helping to ground him. To keep him calm. And she could see the beauty in that so clearly.

“So, how long did you two date before you got married?”

Gage’s cheeks turned red almost immediately. “Four months.”

He held his free hand up by his face and smiled. “And before you say that’s an insanely short amount of time to date someone before marrying them, I know. I honestly can’t believe it still to this day.”

“You two were that in love?”

“Yeah, we were. But we were also a little reckless, and Mel got pregnant with Mikey. But I honestly knew it was right. Us living together. Getting married. Having the baby and becoming a family. I think from the moment I stepped out on the dance floor with her, I knew it was always going to end up that way. So I didn’t hold back when the pieces just sort of fell together.”

“I think that’s really beautiful, Gage. Your soul knew that she was the one for you.”

Something flared in his eyes, but she watched as he shut down the emotion before carrying on with a big sigh.

“They don’t tell you how terrifying pregnancy and delivery can be. I grew up thinking it was just this boring nine month process that you came out on the other side with a kid after a few pushes. I was so unprepared. We got married when she was six or seven weeks along, and she’d only been dealing with a little nausea. But then came the morning sickness that lasted all day and all night. I felt helpless. And I was deploying on more and more missions right when she needed me the most.”

“Were you overseas when your son was born?”

“Thankfully, no. We’d just gotten home two days before she went into labor. It was like she waited for me to be back and then her body knew it was time.” He shook his head, blowing out a big breath before continuing. “Mel ended up needing a c-section. Christ, I freaked out. It was all ‘heart rate’s dropping’ and ‘baby in distress’ and then suddenly they were wheeling her out of the room and down the hall, telling me I needed to get into scrubs. It was terrifying, but the minute I walked into the operating room, I saw her smile and wiggle her fingers for me to go over and sit by her. She was so strong.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and laughed. “You know, at one point she even reminded me to breathe? And then the doctor pulled Mikey out and we heard his first cry over the drape… the look on her face was just pure elation. When I think about her, that’s the face I always see.”

“That’s such an extraordinarily special moment to share with someone.”

He nodded, but his eyes were sparkling with tears. “Mikey’s entire life existed inside the span of one single heartbeat for me. He would be eight this year. Eight. And I just don’t know how to process that.” A tear escaped and flowed freely down Gage’s face. “Sometimes I forget that they’re gone. In the morning, when I’m lost in the fog of another dreamless sleep. I sometimes wake up and wait for the sounds of their busy mornings to filter in like the sunlight. Then it’ll hit me. I’ll never see them again, and I can’t help but wonder what would he be like? Would he look more like me or Melody? Would he have a favorite food? TV Show? Would he be obsessed with sports? Would there be a team he liked to cheer for? Would he play in a league for little kids?”

His free hand moved to turn his mug, but he didn’t bring it to his lips. Instead, he flexed his jaw back and forth for a moment. Sloane let the silence between them stand, knowing Gage needed time to gather his thoughts.

“I can still remember the sound of his very first cry in that operating room. It’s crystal clear in my mind. The way he felt in my arms when I held him for the first time. But for the life of me, I can’t remember that newborn smell. I remember all the hours he spent on my chest. All the hours I rocked him back to sleep. I can remember the way his beautiful fuzzy newborn hair tickled my nose every time I went to inhale that scent, but it’s not there anymore.”

Her heart broke for him. “Some of the parents that I’ve seen in my practice talk about losing those memories.”

“I’m sure it’s common. Kids grow and new memories take their place.” Gage laughed, but there was no humor behind it. “Instead of the sweet smell of a newborn, there are a million memories of muddy clothes or stinky sports gear. But that’s the thing that’s so tough, Sloane. When my memories fade, there are no new ones to replace them. There is no new laughter to replace the sound of his baby babbles. The memories just fade and nothing is left in their place.”

She reached over and let her palm rest against his cheek. “If you tell me about them, I won’t let them fade.”

“Sloane…”

“One good thing about going to school for as long as I did was the sheer number of filler courses I had to take. And one of my favorite lectures I ever attended was called ‘Death and Immortality’. It focused on death traditions from civilizations around the world. Do you know what the one major theme was in all the cultures we studied?” Gage shook his head. “The belief that as long as someone was remembered, as long as their stories were shared, as long as their names were said and celebrated, they lived on.”

She squeezed his hand tightly. “I know you have the guys. I know they were all close with your wife, and your son, and I know they’ll be here to keep saying their names. But in the moments when you don’t want to lean on them, in the moments when you are feeling like it’s too much of a burden to share your grief with them, I want to be someone who says their names too, for you. I want to honor them in my heart with you. I want to be someone who helps keep their memories alive in those quiet and lonely moments.”

He cleared his throat and shook his head. “We don’t need to do this right now. You’re hurt. I should be making sure you’re resting, not dumping my trauma on you. Burdening you with things that belong in the past.” Gage tried to stand, but Sloane stopped him.

“I want to know, Gage. Please. You sharing them with me is an honor. Never a burden.”

“I’m not a client,” he snapped. “You don’t need to fix me.”

The strangest feeling washed over her. She wanted to pull him into a hug. To pour just a little bit of her own strength into him. His heart was breaking wide open in front of her and she wanted to hold him as she whispered how much she understood his pain.

“We’re not in a session right now. I’m not asking this to help you process your grief. I’m asking you to tell me about your family because…” Sloane moved her chair closer to him with her legs as she leaned in. “Because you’re someone who is very important to me. If you don’t want to talk about it now, you don’t have to. I won’t push. But I will be here for you. Whenever you’re ready to share. And I’m not quite ready to let go of your hand yet.”

His eyes dropped to where their hands were still connected and a sad smile filled his features as his thumb swept back and forth over her skin.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “It wasn’t fair of me to snap at you. I know it’s been six years, but sometimes the pain still feels so raw.”

“I think that no matter how much time passes, you’ll always carry that pain. But that’s not always a bad thing.” Gage’s eyes crinkled in the corners. “It’s a reminder of how much love you had for them. How much love was left in your heart for your wife and your son that no longer could be expressed directly to them. That love needs to be shared, and sometimes, it comes out of us as grief. But it’s still just as potent.”

He sat quietly for a minute, their eyes locked on one another.

“It’s not just grief, Sloane. It’s guilt. They died because of me.” He finally shared as his voice cracked. “They died because I was deploying on a mission, laughing with my friends on a plane to the other side of the world to work a job that I loved. When I should have been there with them. They laid on those fucking cold metal tables, waiting for me to come identify them. They didn’t even let Mikey…” He cleared his throat as his chin quivered. “They didn’t let my little boy lay with his mother. They didn’t let her have her arms around him one last time. All I could think was how scared he must have been to be laying there all alone in a dark, cold box. How sad Mel must have been to be separated from our little boy.”

One tear fell, and then another, until it was clear that the dam holding back all his emotions had broken free. Tears poured down his face, and Sloane didn’t hesitate to reach up and wipe at his wet cheeks. “I know they weren’t there anymore. I believe they were together in whatever there is beyond this life. But they should have been laying together.”

“You’re right. They should have.”

He nodded. “I held Mel’s hand. In my wrinkled and worn uniform because I’d rushed there straight from the airfield, I didn’t know what to say. So I thanked her for everything she gave to me. A beautiful life as a husband. As a father. I told her that I’d never let anyone forget how vibrant she was. What an incredible mom she was. It’s funny,” he smiled as more tears continued to track down his face. “Mel always used to sneak Mikey ice cream. They thought I didn’t know. But I would hear the two of them giggling every night after dinner while I worked in my office. Before I… I left her there, I kissed the top of her head and told her it was okay now to give Mikey all the ice cream he wanted.

“And then I laid my hand on Mikey’s chest. He was so warm as a baby. Even as a toddler, he never wanted to be dressed because he was like a little furnace. But his skin… felt… wrong. I could almost pretend with Mel that she was just sleeping. She was always pressing her cold feet into my legs in bed.” His laughter was heartbreaking. “But Mikey, he was too cold, and my brain wouldn’t let me trick it. My heart knew it wasn’t right. There was nothing I would ever be able to do to warm him back up.”

Gage paused, his breath hitching as he shook his head back and forth.

“I laid my head against his little belly and I thanked him for being such a good son. I told him he was braver, and stronger, and smarter than I could ever be. That it was his job to look after his mommy in heaven, until I could be there with them. Beyond their injuries, they both just looked like they were sleeping. I tried to tell myself that it was all a misunderstanding. That one single kiss or wake up tickle could bring them back to me. I begged, Sloane. Cried. Screamed. I threatened the fucking person in the room with me. All the training I’ve been through in my life. The boot camps and hell weeks and deployments. The never ending tactical scenarios. And you know what? I couldn’t use a damn thing I’d ever learned before to get me through that moment. No one teaches you how to say goodbye. Did I do it right? How was I supposed to fit a lifetime of ‘I love you’s into that moment? I just wanted them to come back. Wanted to tell them the greatest thing I ever got to do wasn’t in a war theater halfway around the world. It wasn’t in a uniform, following commands. The greatest honor I ever had was being a husband and a father. And in the blink of an eye, it was all gone.”

Those final words left him in a gut-wrenching whimper. Unable to do anything else, Sloane squeezed his arm. “You did it right, Gage. Anything you would have said, or done, in that moment was the right thing. They knew how much you loved them. They knew you provided a beautiful, safe life for them.”

He shook his head. “If I wasn’t deploying, they wouldn’t have been on the road then. It was my fault, Red. And every fucking day I live with that fact. I won’t… fuck… I can’t lose you too when I know I could keep you safe. You just have to let me in. You have to tell me what happened.”

“It was someone with road rage. And as upsetting as that is, there isn’t anything else going on. I’m here, and I’m safe.” She tried to play it off like Gage was just talking about her own accident. But she knew he wasn’t. He was pouring his heart out to her, sharing the most emotionally devastating moment from his life, begging her to open up to him about why she was so closed off. But she couldn’t. She could never share that with anyone if she wanted to stay safe. If she wanted to keep the people she loved in Silver Springs safe.

“You don’t know what that’s like… and I’m so grateful you don’t. Honestly, no one should ever have to shoulder that sort of pain. It crushes you, a little more with each passing minute, until your only hope is to flip the switch inside your mind that numbs everything.”

He couldn’t be more wrong. Sloane knew that type of pain intimately, but it was her fault he wasn’t aware of that. She knew what it was like to feel responsible for someone’s death. To be forced to watch every last bit of their life force drip out of them. Her breathing picked up, painfully squeezing her chest.

Gage let go of her hand, and she shuddered at the loss of his touch. Her eyes dropped to the bracelet tied around his wrist. Three blue beads threaded through thin black rope. There hadn’t been a day that she could think of where he wasn’t wearing it. His fingers danced across the beads, as if touching them created a bridge between the two planes his heart existed on. He caught her eye as she looked away from his wrist.

“This was on the table when I got back to the house. Melody had been doing some crafts before we left for the base. They finished mine just as I was getting everything ready in the van. Mikey wanted me to tie it on right then and there, but I couldn’t because of the mission. I promised to wear it the minute I got back home. I was numb until I saw it, Sloane. It wasn’t even in my hand for five seconds before I was on the floor, crying so hard I thought my heart was going to come out of my body.”

“You’ve worn it since that day?”

He nodded, sniffling slightly before clearing his throat. “Mel was so good at crafts, the things they would make together never stopped amazing me. She specifically made this one out of rescue rope, with an adjustable slide tie, so I can take it off easily. But I don’t like to. Theirs weren’t finished, and once I got my wits about me, I sat at our kitchen table and tried my best to replicate the pattern. I put a pink bead, a blue bead, and a white bead on Mel’s bracelet and Mikey’s little bracelet got one pink and one blue.”

“One from his mom, and one from you.”

“Exactly. I wanted Mel’s to be a symbol of our family. The white bead for our baby boy who was now an angel, like her. I asked the funeral director to make sure they were wearing them, or that the bracelets were at least inside their caskets with them.”

“That’s really beautiful, and such a special way to still be connected to them. I bet your son would have loved getting to wear a bracelet his dad made him.”

Gage’s face crumbled. His shoulders shook with silent sobs as Sloane moved to sit closer to him, her fingers tracing up and down his arm to provide what little support she could. He sat back after only a minute, wiping his face with his hands. Gage sucked in a harsh breath and gave her the most heartbroken smile she’d ever seen.

“He was only two. My sweet, funny, adventurous little boy. He loved getting to sit on my lap whenever I worked on coding. I can still hear his little voice saying ‘Up Dada. Up see footer!’ It always made me laugh.”

“Footer?”

“Computer. He hadn’t quite gotten the hang of the word yet.”

“That’s adorable.”

Gage nodded. “He was Mel’s little shadow, but he loved curling up with me when I had my laptop out. I think the keystrokes were soothing to him. The only other person I ever saw him like that with was Gunner. Why he took to that grumpy bastard, I’ll never know. Thought he was Captain America or some shit like that. But Gunner ate it up. Every time we were with the team, for little celebrations or just a get together after a mission went well, Mikey would jump from my arms and run to him. They did this thing where Gunner would zoom around with Mikey on his shoulders, like he was a fighter pilot, and Gunner was the plane. The laughter that came out of my kid…” His chin quivered and he sniffed, but the tears stayed on his lash line as he continued. “The team all helped carry Melody’s casket, but only Gunner carried Mikey with me at the funeral. The other guys wanted to. They all loved him. But Gunner was his buddy. I think he’d be happy to know Uncle Gun gave him one last ride on his shoulders before he was laid to rest.”

Sloane had been trying so hard to keep it all in, to be strong for him, but that broke her. Warm tears toppled over her lashes and down her cheeks, splashing onto her lap.

“It’s clear that you and Gunner share a deep bond. The way he looks at you when you hold Sage has always been so pensive. I’m sure he’s remembering back to when he held Mikey like that.”

Gage’s eyes met hers. “I never thought of that before.”

“Your team loves you, deeply, Gage. You don’t have to hold back your feelings around them. Or around me.”

“It was always meant to be me, Sloane. I would have given anything to take their place. For me to be in that car instead of them.” His thumb circled the pulse point on her wrist. “I would have done anything for it to me driving tonight instead of you.”

“Don’t say that,” she whimpered.

“I was the one we always talked about dying. I left letters behind for Mikey when I went on my first assignment after we had him. In case I didn’t make it back. Mel and I talked all the time about the things I wanted him to have from my childhood, the things I wanted him to have when he was a little older. My grandfather’s pocket watch. The money clip that I had with me when Mel and I got married. But we never, ever talked about what happened if I had to go on without them. I didn’t know what to do with all of their things. Everything suddenly seemed so important. Mel’s clothes? Should I have donated them? What if I wanted to just feel close to her again, and I gave everything away that smelled like her? The same with Mikey. Would I ever want to see all the outfits he’d worn? Cuddle with the same beat up tiger he carried everywhere from the time he could walk?”

“What did you decide?”

He shrugged. “Kept it all. Well, whatever Mel’s parents decided they didn’t want of her stuff. The guys came and packed everything away while I sat on my back deck. I mean everything. Every hair brush. Every blanket. Every fork and every dish. I had kept a few pictures out, thrown in my duffle bag with the clothes I needed to just survive with. They took turns, coming out to sit with me, never letting me be alone, and by the time I was ready to go back inside, they had everything boxed and loaded into a moving truck. They left for a mission two weeks after we lowered their caskets into the ground, I processed out of the military, and I’ve never been back. Not for one of Mel’s sweaters. Not for Mikey’s tiger.” His voice broke. “I’ve never been back.”

“There’s still so much time, Gage. Your heart will know when you’re ready.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be.”

“If it brings you comfort to know that it’s there, then that’s what matters. So much was out of your control. You can give yourself grace with still wanting to hold on to their things.”

“So was tonight, Sloane. I hated it. Your car’s going to be totaled…”

She rubbed at her temple, leaving her other hand still tucked in Gage’s. “I know. I’ll need to get a copy of the report and send it to my insurance in the morning. Then I’ll have to find a rental.”

“I’ll drive you where you need to go.”

“No. That won’t work.”

“Why not? Then I’ll be there if something happens again.”

“Gage, this is what anxiety looks like. It tells you that something bad is going to happen and that you can compensate for it by trying to control every situation. But you can’t. I’ll get a rental car. I’ll still drive myself to work, and home, to my client’s house if I need to, and the store.”

He groaned, squeezing her hand tightly, as if he was afraid she might disappear if he let go. “Everything in my body is screaming at me to convince you to move in here with me. To drive you where you need to go. To lock you up and keep you safe.”

“And I know that it’s coming from a place of friendship and concern.”

“If you think the feelings I have for you are just friendship feelings, Sloane, then I have a bigger problem to face right now than my anxiety riding me to keep you safe.”

“Oh, I?—”

He shook his head as he stood up. “Come on. I just unlocked the darkest part of my heart and spilled it all out at your feet like you weren’t just in a fucking car accident and need rest. I’m sure that was overwhelming.”

“I asked to hear about them, Gage. I asked because I care about you too.”

“As a friend?”

“As something more,” she admitted.

“You don’t need to make any decisions tonight about your car and driving situation. Let’s get you in bed and we can talk about everything in the morning.”

They walked down the hall in silence, Sloane lost in her thoughts. She nearly bumped right into Gage’s back when he stopped just inside his bedroom.

“Are you going to be comfortable here?”

She slowly turned around. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take the couch? If this is the only bed, I don’t want to take it from you.”

“As much as I wish it wasn’t, and you can always change your mind if you don’t want it to be, right now, it’s just one night. If I can’t make it one night on a couch, someone needs to send me back to boot camp.”

She nodded. “I’ll be fine, Gage. Thank you for letting me stay.”

“You don’t need anything? Do you want some ice for your wrist? I should have brought in a glass of water…”

“I promise, I’m fine. I’m glad we talked. I’m glad you shared them with me tonight. I know it was tough, and I’m so sorry I brought back all those feelings…”

“No. It was… nice… to have someone to share them with. I feel a little closer to them tonight.”

“I’m so glad.”

They stood in silence for another moment before Gage nodded. “Okay, Red. I’ll be out in the living room if you need anything. Sweet dreams.”

“Sweet dreams, Gage.”