Chapter 20 Arro
ARRO
Isuspected that if Mac hadn’t been my constant shadow during the day and hadn’t had one of his men sitting outside in a car watching the house at night, I might have forgotten about the threatening copycat notes and gotten on with my life.
Tomorrow would be four weeks to the day since I’d slammed the door in Mac’s and Robyn’s faces.
Not very polite or mature, I know, but her defense of him aggravated me.
And I’m grateful that their relationship was such now that she would defend her dad.
Clearly, my feelings toward the bastard continued to be as complicated and confusing as ever.
While I’d gotten pretty good at avoiding conversation with Mac while he was on guard duty, I was feeling stifled.
Maybe if someone else shadowed me, I’d be fine.
Thankfully, we’d finished work at the Lairg site, and I was working from home on preliminary plans for replanting in Aberdeenshire and harvesting in Fearnmore, which was not far west of Caelmore.
Mac guarded the house, and I felt bad that he had to sit out in the car the whole time, but any guilt I was feeling was obliterated when he shadowed me in the village.
When I went to Morag’s to buy lunch, Mac at my side, she’d told us that everyone was talking about the fact that Mac and Jock were guarding me.
“Is there something going on that we should be concerned about?” she’d asked.
And, of course, Morag wasn’t a gossip and was genuinely worried about me, so having to lie made me feel like a dick.
“This can’t go on,” I griped as Mac and I walked out of Morag’s. “I need my life back. I hate lying to people.”
Mac opened the passenger side of his SUV, and as I hopped in, I said, “There’s no point worrying anybody else if this turns out to be a prank.
Which is looking more and more likely.” I waited for him to round the vehicle and get into the driver’s seat.
“There’s been nothing in three weeks. This”—I gestured between us—“can it stop now?”
Brows furrowed, Mac swung the SUV out of its spot in the car park outside the Gloaming, but instead of turning left out of the village, he drove right. Toward the beach.
“Where are we going?”
“We need to talk.”
Indignation rushed through me. “I’m hungry, and I want to eat my bloody sandwich and get back to work.”
He shot me a look of disappointment that pissed me off. “Please, Arro. There are some things I need you to know.”
Something in his voice gave me pause. “About what?”
“A few different things. I thought we could have our lunch out by the beach and talk. Like old times.”
Like old times.
We weren’t the people we were then, though.
Still … something in Mac’s tone made me loath to say no. Moreover, I was wearied of being angry at him. It did me little good to hold on to such anger. I might have been hurting Mac, but I was also hurting myself.
“All right,” I agreed.
Mac’s shoulders seemed to drop with relief, and we drove the rest of the way in silence.
While he parked at the edge of the lot on Gordon’s caravan site, raised up over the sand dunes, windshield framing the sea, I settled the coffee we’d gotten from Morag’s into the car cupholders in the central armrest before unwrapping our sandwiches.
I handed Mac his once he switched off the engine and removed his seat belt.
“Thank you.”
I nodded and took a massive bite of my ham salad sandwich. Gesturing with one hand, I gave him a wave that said, “Go on, then.”
Mac studied my face so tenderly, it made me self-conscious. Swallowing my food, I huffed, “Don’t watch me eat. Just tell me whatever it is you brought me here to tell me.”
He smirked and took a bite of his roast beef and pickle sandwich instead. I’d ordered it without asking him, I realized, because I knew that’s all he ever ordered at Morag’s. I knew some of the tiny details about him that a girlfriend would know. But not all.
My bitterness rising, I looked out the windshield and stayed silent, waiting for him to talk.
“I started seeing a therapist.”
The food in my mouth wasn’t broken down nearly enough when I jerked in shock at his words, and the damn bite got caught in my throat. Choking, I fumbled for my coffee.
“Are you all right?” Mac patted my back in concern.
I waved him off as I took a drink of the hot coffee and let it wash the choking hazard down. Coughing, eyes watering, I shot Mac an accusing look. “Warn a person before you make an announcement like that.”
His lips twitched. “Apologies.”
Once I’d fully recovered, I asked. “Are you serious?”
“About therapy? Aye.” Mac took another bite, and my gaze dropped, watching the muscles in his jaw and then the bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. Why was everything about him still so physically fascinating? Focus, Arro. Therapy, remember.
“You, Mackennon Galbraith, willingly visited a therapist? Not a physical therapist, but a counselor?”
“Who specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy, especially for men.”
Holy shit, he was really seeing a therapist.
A swell of hope baffled me.
So I ignored it.
“Why?”
Mac raised an eyebrow. “You even have to ask?”
“Are you … are you saying you did this because of what happened between us? You actually took my advice?”
“Of course I did.” He turned in his seat to face me. “Arro, what I did was wrong. Everything between us. Pulling you in, pushing you away. Over and over. My fault. My mistake. And it’s not an excuse, but I have an explanation for it now.”
Blood whooshed in my ears because my heart raced like mad. “Because you think badly of yourself?”
“I’ve always known I didn’t like myself very much, but the therapy is making me realize my past has clouded my self-perception. Has skewed my version of events in my past. With you, what I did, it happened like some self-fulfilling prophecy, not because I am who I thought I was.”
Stunned, I slumped back in my seat.
Mac studied me thoughtfully and asked, “Can I tell you why I am the way I am, Arro? Will you allow me that?”
Tears threatened, but I forced them down. And because, despite our history, I knew he was a good man. “You can tell me anything, Mackennon.”
He squeezed his eyes closed, a look of such torment, a part of me wanted to forgive him anything and everything. But I couldn’t. Not yet.
However, I could listen.
And as the rain pitter-pattered on the car roof, I did just that.
I listened as Mac not only told me about his mum abandoning him as a baby and his father’s heroin addiction, but how those events had made him feel.
He told me a story he’d never entrusted me with before, about being in a youth gang and witnessing a boy’s murder.
How he’d carried that guilt and sense of failure with him his whole life.
How there was no one left but the murdered boy’s two brothers to admit his wrongdoing to.
“There’s more to that, and I’ll come back to it,” Mac said.
Then he talked about Stacey and Robyn, and while we’d talked about some of this before, it became apparent that a lot of his feelings he’d kept to himself.
And when he told me why, that he was trying to protect this image he thought I had of him, I wanted to tear my hair out in frustration.
It was exasperating that he thought I only wanted to see him in a certain light.
Yet somehow, I found the will to stay silent. To listen. To process the progress he’d already made with his therapist. How she’d helped him see the person he really was and provided him with mental techniques to help keep him on the path to be the man he’d always wanted to be.
“And it’s work, Arro. I didn’t realize how many times in a week I have these thoughts about myself. But I’m learning how to turn them on their heads.”
I gaped in amazement at him because no one would believe it if they met Mac.
He was this big guy, this masculine bodyguard who oozed charisma and flashed wicked, flirtatious smiles at women just to make them feel good.
He came across as this confident, easygoing guy who never let a thing bother him.
And it was all a lie. A cover for the mess beneath.
At my silence, Mac looked away, the muscle in his jaw working for a second before he said hoarsely, “I realize that all of this means I’m not the man you fell in love with.
But that man wasn’t good enough for you, and not because of who he was, but because of who I thought he was.
I am trying to be a better version of him.
” He looked at me now, expression filled with so much, too much.
“So that whatever happens between us, I will never hurt you like that again.”
I forced myself to ask, despite my fears, “What is it you hope happens between us?”
“I … I love you, Arrochar.”
Words I’d longed to hear for so long. I looked away, biting back tears, not wanting him to see them.
“I love you, and I want to be with you.”
The tears leaked free, and I swiped at them in vexation.
“Look at me.”
I looked back to him, so angry I couldn’t bear it.
“Why couldn’t you say that to me months ago?
That night … it changed things, Mac. Not this”—I gestured between us—“I’m proud of you for speaking to someone, for recognizing this was impacting your life, but I can’t change this seed you planted that night. It changed …”
“How you feel about me,” he finished, staring sternly out at the sea.
My gaze caressed that aquiline profile I knew as well as I knew my own face.
I wanted to reach out and touch him. I wanted to forgive the past and throw myself into his arms and kiss every inch of his mouth and taste him on my tongue and drown in all the love that still existed within me for him.
The love that swam through my blood like millions of tiny pieces of metal filled with atoms seeking their northern poles and knowing they could only find them within Mac.
Fingers twitching, ready to reach out and abandon the hurt, I suddenly seized upon the awful memory of that night and the paralyzing mistrust that came with it.
I lied to him to protect myself. Even as I cursed myself as a hypocrite, the words, “I’m sorry,” tumbled out of my mouth.
“Don’t you be sorry.” Mac turned to me. “You have nothing to be sorry for. But do you think … do you think you might ever change how you feel?”
“I don’t know,” I offered honestly.
Determination flashed in his gorgeous hazel eyes. “Then know I’m not going anywhere. I’m not ready to give up on the idea of us. I’ve told Lachlan the same thing.”
My breathing hitched at the idea of a Mac who fought for us rather than ran. “You spoke with Lachlan?”
He nodded. “He won’t stand in our way.”
“He approved?”
“He wants us to be happy.”
“Uh …” I let out a grunt of disbelief. “I’m not sure what is happening.”
“I’m fighting for you.”
“O-o-okay.”
“Yeah?” He smiled slightly, a sexy, lopsided expression that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made my fingers itch for a different reason. “Okay?”
“I can’t promise you anything,” I felt the need to say.
Mac grinned now, wolfish and wicked and very dangerous to my heart. “That’s all right. This is good enough for me.”
Feeling that familiar flutter of butterflies in my belly, I wrenched my gaze away and took a bite of my forgotten sandwich, even though I was no longer hungry.
“Is that it?” I asked a little belligerently. “All you wanted to discuss?”
Mac’s expression sobered in such a way my spine straightened with tension. “There’s something else. Craig, the boy who my friends killed?”
“Yes?”
“Billy, the friend who was with me when we tried to stop them, he contacted me a few months back and told me that the others involved in Craig’s murder had died under unusual circumstances. He was concerned someone close to Craig was coming for their revenge.”
Fear shot through my heart at the thought of anyone hurting Mac. “But you tried to stop them from hurting Craig.”
“And I hoped that was the reason they’d left Billy and me unscathed.
He moved to Australia with his wife and has had no troubles.
But there’s a possibility I have had troubles.
” Mac stared pointedly at me. “We can’t rule out that the notes are about me.
I thought there was no connection, which is why I never mentioned it, but yesterday I got a call from a contact high up in the Glasgow police, and she told me Craig’s brother, Lee, has been brought in for questioning regarding the death of one of my old friends.
Bryan McNab was run over outside his house, but the person reversed back over him, suggesting it was deliberate.
The police didn’t have a lead because the car used in the crime had been reported stolen a few days before, but Lee’s been under investigation for running a chop shop.
And they found that car in the garage he’s running it out of. ”
“Jesus … but w-what does that have to do with me and the notes?”
Mac took a shuddering breath. “They found information on us all on a computer they confiscated from Lee’s office in the garage.
There was stuff about me, where I work, links to articles he’d saved about Lucy’s murder trial, and there were photographs of you and me, Arro. He had someone follow us months back.”
“But why not target Robyn, then? She’s your daughter.”
“Perhaps because Robyn seemed like too strong a target, just as we discussed before.”
I considered this and let out a string of curse words. “Did you tell Lachlan?”
“I told him and Robyn last night before I spoke with him about …” He gestured between us.
“So what now?”
“We wait and see if the police can provide us with any more information, but until Lee is in prison, I can’t suspend your security detail. And you have to stop finding reasons not to come to jujitsu. I want you there tomorrow.”
Processing it all, I nodded slowly. “Okay, agreed.”
“This could all be a good thing, Arro.” He pressed a reassuring hand to my shoulder and for the first time in weeks, I let him touch me. “If this is Lee, once he’s behind bars, everything can go back to normal.”
Well, not really, I wanted to say. Normal was when Mac brushed off our feelings and my advances.
The normal Mac now spoke of involved a possible future of waking up to him in my bed every morning.
A dream I’d once longed for.
A longing, if I was honest with myself, that still existed somewhere within me.
Except a pesky, painful thing called fear wouldn’t let me reach out to turn the longing into a reality.