22. Oliver
22
“Do you want me to keep going?” I loosened my hold of her hand.
Mya’s wide-eyed, devastated expression had me worried I’d made a mistake in following my father’s advice.
“Please do.” She gave me a nod, her eyes glossy.
Shit, can I? I supposed backing out now wasn’t really an option. Squeezing down the lump in my throat, I tried to be in the here-and-now instead of boxed inside those past memories that kept sucking me down to a dark place every night in my dreams.
“Take your time,” she whispered, and I gulped and pulled myself together.
“Three guys broke into our house,” I rushed out, anxious to get this over with. “Tucker was already in the military. I was seventeen, and at a party two streets over in our neighborhood. My dad had just come home from dinner with a friend of his, and he found my mother already, um . . .”
Mya closed her eyes.
I did the same.
Fuck.
But when she set her other hand on top of our clasped ones, I managed to remember how to speak again, and braced myself to get through this.
“They were waiting for him to come home before they . . .” I can’t do this. The only time I’d spoken these words out loud were to Tucker almost twenty years ago. This wasn’t my story to tell, a story that should never have happened. “They knocked my dad out, tied him up, then once he came to, they forced him to watch.”
I didn’t need to fill in the blanks. Mya would know. She’d know what happened to my mother while my dad had to sit there helpless and powerless to save her.
“After,” I went on, my voice trembling as much as my hands, “they told my father if he didn’t shut his mouth, back off at work and leave town, the next time they’d come and kill her and me.”
The few tears that escaped disappeared into my beard as I did my best not to choke on emotions pushing up in physical form in my throat. “Police and ambulances were everywhere when I came home.”
The fucking chills. Dammit, they wouldn’t stop. They never did when I remembered that night. Teeth chattering and nearly painful goose bumps covered my skin.
“Two broken ribs and a black eye on top of what she’d gone through.” I shook my head. “As the doors to the ambulance shut, taking my mom away, I overheard my father telling a detective what happened.”
I opened my eyes, stunned to see Mya wordlessly climbing onto my lap, straddling me without hesitation. She hooked her legs around my back and hugged me, burying her face against my chest, her fingertips in my back as she cried.
I sat there as she held me, replaying the scene from that night, finding myself frozen in time before I wound up back in that room in Thailand, living that hell all over again, too.
A shuddery feeling in my chest was the only warning I had before I completely broke down. Lost it. And I finally let go.
Quietly cried. No sounds. Just throbbing, unbearable pain.
“If I’d just come home fifteen minutes sooner, maybe I could’ve saved her. Kept my family whole. Maybe Tucker would still be alive. He’d been wracked with guilt for being away when Mom needed him. I shouldn’t have told him what happened. Mom didn’t want him or anyone to know, but I wanted him to be there for her. Talk to her. Help her, too. They were even closer than we were. Firstborn son and all.”
A new kind of guilt struck me. Was I partly responsible for his death? Did telling him fuck with his head more than serving did? Was that my fault, too? If only I could rewrite the past. Reinvent history.
“I’m so sorry, Oliver.” She was shaking against me but not letting go.
I brought my hands to her arms and gently massaged her, trying to help ease her tension. Somehow, making her feel better helped calm me down, too.
“My mother refused to speak about what happened after that night. She also couldn’t look my father in the eyes again. He blamed himself and couldn’t . . .” I thought back to the day of their fight before he took off, then skipped in time to when he came home. He was too late to make it right with my mom, though. Divorce papers had already been served and signed. She’d moved on, but Dad never did. He’d also had a blowout fight with Tucker, and my brother told him never to show his face again.
“That’s why he left,” she murmured. But she didn’t have the whole story yet, and I’d have to get through this for her. Maybe for myself, too.
I eased her back so I could see her face. Her mascara streaked down her cheeks, and her sad eyes were as much of a gut punch as her trembling bottom lip, catching the tears that continued to flow.
“You know my dad was in the Air Force before he switched to a civilian job with a major aerospace company in New York. He’d become a test pilot for them. But what you don’t know is that he uncovered some major safety issues with the new line of jets they were on the verge of releasing. His boss told him to keep his mouth closed because it’d cost the company hundreds of millions. But he didn’t. And when they ignored his safety concerns, he reached out to a reporter, planning to expose the truth. Before he could share the story, the attack happened. They did that to shut him up. Fucking savages.”
“Dillent Aerospace. I remember the name from when I was looking into your background trying to find you.”
My heart hurt. My stomach, too. Every limb in my body ached. A war of emotions raging inside me as I walked down this fucked-up memory lane.
“That company doesn’t exist anymore.” Her tears were slowing, and so were mine, but the pain remained. It hurt everywhere, even with her on top of me, in my arms, it still hurt so damn bad.
I nodded. “My dad left, not because they threatened us, but to take them down. He spent years obsessively working to destroy them. He found and killed the men who hurt my mother, too.” Taking in a steadying breath, I continued in a low, gravelly tone, “I’d been upset with him. Blamed him. Hated him. Never understood him until . . .” I closed my eyes. “Until that day in Thailand. Lying there, tethered to that bed, I lost it. Remembered every painful detail all over again as what happened to her nearly happened to you. It fucked with my head, and I took off. Stayed away because I couldn’t fight it. Couldn’t face it. I’m just like my dad.”
“No, you’re not.” She held my face, a plea for my attention. “You may have left, but I found you, and we’re in this together. I have your six the way you’ve always had mine.”
The desperation in her voice broke through her words, but I refused to relent and open my eyes.
“You’ve spent your life dealing with so much, burying it deep, and, from the sounds of it, not truly dealing with it. And now?—”
“Now I’ve finally snapped. The house of cards has fallen,” I admitted. I could only sweep so much under the rug before the truth would come out, and there’d be no more denying it. “I joined the military to escape my life and wound up fighting someone else’s battles instead of my own. I’m paying the price now for never dealing with everything before.” That was a heavy dose of reality I’d never understood. Not until I was up in those mountains with too much time to think.
Eyes open and on her, I found her crying again. There were dark clouds gathering, killing our clear sky. Ominous and perfectly timed.
“But you don’t have to do this alone. You don’t have to fight your battles by yourself.” She brushed her lips over my knuckles. “You have me. The team is your family, too. Please, let us be here for you.”
Some part of me had secretly hoped one day I’d be able to go back to the team, to her, but sitting on that mountain by the lake with this woman on my lap crying, I realized I was done.
“When a car is totaled in an accident, you don’t try to rebuild it. You get rid of it.” I gently peeled her hands from my cheeks, hating to do that knowing this was a huge step for her after what she’d been through, but I didn’t want to give her hope about me. “Like I said, you can’t fix me. I’m a living and breathing crash. I’m the wreck?—”
“You’re not finishing that thought,” she sputtered, stubbornly returning her hands to my face. “I can read you, too, and no. You’re absolutely not quitting on me. And you don’t need to be fixed. Helped and healed, yes, but there’s a difference.”
She was going to dig her heels in, dammit. My dad had been wrong about me opening up to her. It wasn’t pushing her away like part of me had thought it would.
The sky began rumbling. The weather had a tendency to change here fast, and I didn’t want her getting caught in a storm. Well, a physical one, at least. The metaphorical one was already swirling around us.
“Come on. We need to get you back before the lightning begins.” I hated myself for this, but I urged her to get off me so I could stand. I quickly packed up our stuff, including the trash from our lunch, and rolled up the blanket, tucking it under my arm before throwing the backpack strap over my good shoulder. “It’s time to go.” Time to say goodbye even if I don’t want to. Goodbye to the man I once was, at least.
I started walking, only stopping when I realized she wasn’t following me. With the clouds moving in, and the fast change in the weather, I was worried she was going to get cold as we walked in the shaded area back to the truck, so I removed the hoodie from the bag and brought it over to her like some type of peace offering.
Of course she rejected it, pushing it away with a shake of her head. “No.” Her shoulders jolted at the crack of thunder overhead. “I’m not your greatest fan right now. You’re trying to quit on me, and that’s not who you are. Not deep down, anyway.”
She stabbed the air, feisty, instead of sad, and it was a much more welcome sight after the pain of hearing my mother’s story. The last thing I wanted was to drag her down to hell with me. “I’m pissed at you, which means I don’t want to wear your hoodie and smell like you.”
Her shoulders jumped again as the next crash of thunder struck.
“Fine.” I went back to the Jansport and stuffed the hoodie in. It began raining as I zipped it up. Rolling my eyes, frustrated with this damn woman for being stubborn, I marched over to her, removed my hat and set it on her head, refusing to take no for an answer that time. “Come on and stop being such a pain in my ass.”
“I’m sorry for what you went through,” she said instead of countering back with one of her typical jabs. “And what your family went through. I’m so sorry that you had to almost watch that man . . . to me . . . especially after what happened to your mom.” She paused, shivering. “But you did save me, Oliver. You protected me. You were there for me. I need you to focus on that part.”
Not on the “killing someone” part.
“You didn’t let him hurt me, and I just . . . thank you. I’m sorry for how you had to . . .” Her choked-up, strained voice broke through my resolve and I wrapped my arms around her.
How the fuck could I not? She was hurting. Fighting her own demons while trying to help me slay mine. She was right, though. Deep down, I never gave up, not on other people, at least.
I realized too late I’d forged past that unspoken boundary. Forgot to ask permission before I’d circled my arms around her waist and pulled her into my arms to hug her. But she didn’t resist, and instead, hugged me back.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered into her ear. “For everything.” Including the fact that I can’t leave here with you. I can’t go back to the team.
I couldn’t share that last part out loud. Because a small part of me clung to one last shred of hope that maybe, just fucking maybe, I was wrong.