Chapter 6
BLAKE
The house is cold when we step inside. Not just the temperature—though Reid clearly hasn't been running the heat much—but something else. Something empty.
I notice it immediately. The pile of mail on the kitchen counter is unopened. There's a layer of dust on the coffee table and a blanket on the couch that looks like it's been slept under more than once.
Even when it was just the two of us in this place, we took care of shit like this. Reid even had a fucking dusting song.
Reid hasn't been living here. He's been scraping by here. There's a difference.
I shouldn't have left. I should have camped out in the workshop and been here for him. He needed me, even if he couldn't admit it.
"Place looks good," I say, because I don't know what else to say.
Reid snorts. "You're a terrible liar."
"Yeah. I know."
He moves past me into the kitchen, flipping on lights. The brightness makes us both wince. Under the light, Reid looks even worse than he did outside. The shadows under his eyes are purple-black. His cheekbones are sharper than they should be. His uniform hangs loose in places it didn't used to.
I did this. This is my fucking fault.
"You want something to drink?" Reid asks. He's opening cabinets, closing them. Not really looking for anything. Just moving because standing still is too hard.
"I'll make coffee."
The words come out automatically. How many times have I said them? Hundreds. Thousands. Every bad night, every early morning, every moment when neither of us knew what to say—I made coffee.
Reid stops moving. Looks at me.
"Yeah," he says quietly. "Okay."
I find the coffee maker in its usual spot. The filters are where they've always been. But when I open the cabinet for the coffee, there's only an ancient bag of grounds that's been there since before I left.
"This is all you've got?"
"I've been drinking the shit at the station."
Of course he has. Because that would require buying groceries, and buying groceries would require coming home, and coming home would require facing the emptiness.
I measure out the stale grounds anyway. Fill the pot with water. Go through the motions I've gone through a thousand times before.
The coffee maker gurgles to life, and for a moment we just stand there, listening to it.
"I missed this," Reid says. He's leaning against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. "Isn't that stupid? Three months of wondering if you were dead, and what I kept thinking about was your shitty coffee."
"It's not shitty."
"Blake. It's terrible. It's always been terrible."
"You've been drinking it for five years."
"Because you make it." His voice cracks slightly. "Because it meant you were here."
I don't know what to say to that. So I don't say anything. Just watch the coffee drip into the pot, dark and slow.
When it's done, I pour two mugs. Hand one to Reid.
He takes a sip and immediately makes a face. But he doesn't laugh. He just lowers the mug, staring into the dark liquid like he's trying to read the grounds.
The silence in the kitchen is suffocating. It’s not the comfortable quiet we used to have. It’s a canyon.
"I don't know how to do this," Reid says, his voice stripped of all its usual bounce. "I don't know how to just stand here drinking your shitty coffee like nothing happened."
"Nothing is like it was," I say. "I know that."
"I’m still so fucking mad at you." He looks up, his hazel eyes bloodshot and exhausted. "I'm glad you're alive. I'm glad you're here. But I look at you and I just see her driving away."
I grip the edge of the counter. I deserve that. Every bit of it. "I know."
I wrap my hands around my own mug. The warmth seeps into my fingers, and I realize how cold I am. How cold I've been for months, even in the middle of the fucking desert.
"Should we sit?" I ask.
Reid nods. We move to the living room, settling on opposite ends of the couch. Not close, but not as far apart as we were on the porch steps.
The silence stretches between us. It's different now. Less sharp. The worst has already been said.
"So," Reid says finally. "What happens now?"
I stare into my coffee. "I don't know."
Reid makes a low hum. "When's the last time you did something just because you wanted to?" he asks.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean something for yourself. Not for me, not for the job, not for anyone else. Just something you wanted."
I open my mouth to answer, then close it. Because I can't think of anything. Every decision I've made for the past five years—hell, maybe longer—has been about someone else. What Reid needed. What the restoration clients needed. What the mission required.
"I don't know," I admit.
"Yeah." Reid's voice is soft. "That is a problem, isn't it?"
We sit with that for a moment. The coffee is cooling in my hands, but I don't drink it.
"So where do we go from here?" he asks, staring somewhere around the middle of my chest.
"I don't think that's up to me. I'm here because you need me. But after that, I don't know. I can't change what I did."
"No, you can't."
"And you won't forget."
"I don't think any of us can."
I can't hide my flinch. I'm not shocked by his answer. I brought all of this on myself. But I can still wish it were different.
"Then maybe I go. I stay for a few weeks, then I move on."
"And leave me alone again. I might not want to be a co-dependent asshole, but you're still my family Blake. You can't just leave and never look back."
I'm so fucking tired. "So what. I stay here, and you punish me for the rest of my life."
"Stop being so dramatic you fucker. I said I won't forget. We can't. But I can fucking well forgive you. But you have to be here for that to happen. We just have to figure it out how to move forward."
"I don't know how."
"Neither do I." Reid pulls his legs up onto the couch, tucking them under himself. He looks younger like that. More vulnerable. "But I think that's the point, right? We figure it out together. Just... not the way we did before."
"What does that look like?"
"I don't know. Maybe..." He pauses, thinking. "Maybe it starts with being honest. Actually honest. Not hiding shit to protect each other."
"I was never good at that. Honesty I mean."
"No kidding." There's no heat in it. Just acknowledgement. "But you could try. We both could."
I think about all the things I hid from him. The resentment. The way I was falling apart while pretending everything was fine. All the damage that could have been avoided if I'd just opened my mouth.
I still don't know if I would have done anything differently.
"What if the honest thing is something you don't want to hear?"
"Then I deal with it." Reid's voice is firm. "That's what I should have done with Laine. When she tried to tell me something was wrong, I should have listened instead of making excuses for you. I stuck my head in the sand because I didn't want anything to change. I was avoiding the hard shit."
Her name hangs in the air between us. The elephant in the room we've been dancing around all night.
"Have you talked to her?" I ask. "Since..."
"No." Reid's jaw tightens. "She asked for space. I'm trying to respect that."
"But you've seen her. At the hospital."
"A few times." He looks away. "When I bring patients in. We're professional. Polite. It's fucking awful."
I can picture it perfectly. Reid wheeling in a stretcher, Laine meeting him in the ER. Both of them pretending they're strangers while all the hurt simmers between them. It sounds fucking terrible.
I've imagined her face so many times over the past three months.
Tried not to, but it happens anyway. In the quiet moments between missions.
In the dark before sleep. Her laugh. The way she tilted her head when she was thinking.
The kindness in her eyes before I taught her to look at me with fear instead.
I shove the thoughts down. They don't belong to me. They never did.
"I'm sorry," I say. "For what I did. For how I treated her."
"I know." Reid is quiet for a long moment. He traces the rim of his mug. "I really fucked it up, Blake." He looks up, and his eyes are wet. "I tried. After you left... I tried everything. I begged. I promised I’d change. I told her I could be what she needed."
My chest tightens. "And?"
"She said she couldn't do it. Said she couldn't be the person who made me choose between her and my brother." He swallows hard. "She walked, Blake. I watched her drive away, and I knew it was done."
"She texted me."
"I know. She’s... she’s good. She worries." He shakes his head. "But that doesn't mean she wants me back. It just means she doesn't want me dead."
"You don't know that."
"I know her." He looks down at his boots. "I burned the bridge. I nuked it. There’s nothing left."
"But you’re still hoping."
He freezes. Then he nods, slow and painful. "Yeah. Every time the phone rings. Every time I see a shift change at the hospital. I can’t turn it off. It’s pathetic."
"It’s not pathetic."
"It feels pathetic." He looks at me, eyes searching. "Be honest. If... hypothetically. If I’m wrong. If she ever came back."
I grip my mug. I know what’s coming.
"If we tried again," Reid says, his voice quiet. "Could you handle it?"
I look at him. I try to picture it. Laine back in this house. Laine laughing in the kitchen. Laine touching Reid’s arm, kissing him, looking at him the way she used to look at me.
I want to lie. I want to tell him yes, sure, no problem. I want to be the good brother.
But he asked for honest.
"No," I say.
Reid flinches.
"I couldn't handle it," I say. My voice is flat. "It would tear me apart."
Reid closes his eyes. He leans his head back against the cushion. "Fuck."
"But," I say.
He opens one eye.
"I’d do it anyway."
"What?"
"I'd want to tear my own skin off," I say, the truth tasting like battery acid. "Every single day."
Reid flinches, looking away.
"But I'm not running away again." I lean forward, forcing him to look back at me. "I'd stay. If you get another shot... you take it. I’ll figure my shit out. I’ll move out of the house so you don't have to look at me, but I won't disappear. You take the shot."
He watches me, his jaw working as he processes the absolute wreckage I just laid out between us. "You're a fucking idiot," he whispers. "And I love her too much to tell you no. But it doesn't matter. She won't ever take me back."
The tension in my shoulders loosens slightly. Not gone, but manageable. How fucked up is it that his staying alone makes me feel better? I'm not going to question it right now. It's something I can unpack later, when I'm alone. Some fresh material for me to hate myself over.
"We should eat something," Reid says.
"When's the last time you ate?"
He has to think about it. That's answer enough.
"There's nothing in the fridge," he says.
"That pizza place that delivers until two. They still open?"
"I think so."
"Then we're ordering pizza." I stand up, looking for my phone. "And you're eating at least three slices."
"You can't just—"
"I'm not taking care of you," I interrupt. "I'm making sure my brother doesn't pass out from low blood sugar while we're having an important conversation. There's a difference."
Reid stares at me for a moment. Then something in his face softens.
"Pepperoni and mushroom," he says. "And breadsticks. If you're ordering, you're getting breadsticks."
"Done."
The pizza arrives thirty minutes later. We eat it on the couch like we used to, the box between us, some terrible late-night show playing on the TV neither of us is watching.
Reid eats four slices. I count.
It's not fixed. Nothing is fixed. Laine is still out there, still hurt.
Reid and I just admitted out loud that our old life is over, that we have to build something new without knowing what that looks like.
And somewhere underneath everything, I'm still carrying feelings I have no right to have for a woman who deserves so much better than me.
But we're here. Both of us. Alive and honest and trying. Whoo-fucking-hoo.
"I should shower," Reid says eventually. "I smell like the rig."
"You smell like three days of the rig."
"Thanks for that."
"Anytime."
He stands, stretching. His back pops audibly. "Your room's all set up. Clean sheets and everything."
Something catches in my throat. "You changed my sheets?"
Reid shrugs, not meeting my eyes. "Few weeks ago. I don't know. Just felt like I should."
He doesn't say the rest of it. Doesn't say that he was hoping I'd come back, that he kept my room ready just in case. But I hear it anyway.
"Thanks," I say quietly.
"Yeah, well." He clears his throat, looking everywhere but at me. "It's clean."
"Thanks."
We stand there for a moment. Neither of us sure how to end this night. The air between us still feels like walking on broken glass.
"We're gonna be okay," Reid says. It's not quite a question, but it’s not a promise either.
"Yeah." I nod slowly. "Different, but okay."
"Different is probably good."
"Probably."
He hesitates, then reaches out. He doesn't hug me. He just grips my shoulder, his fingers digging into the muscle for one long, grounding second.
"I'm glad you're home, Blake."
"Me too."
He lets go and disappears down the hall. A moment later, his door clicks shut.
I stand alone in the kitchen, feeling the weight of the empty house pressing in on me. I'm home. This is where I'm supposed to be. But I still feel like a fucking stranger.
I clean up the pizza box, rinse out our coffee mugs, wipe down the counter. Small things. Normal things.
I head for my room. The bed is made with fresh sheets that smell like the detergent Reid always buys. My books are still on the shelf. My clothes are still in the closet—the ones I didn't take, anyway.
I half expected that all my shit would be in a dumpster somewhere. I wouldn't have blamed him. But he didn't touch anything. Didn't pack it up or throw it out. Just... kept it. Kept all of it. Waiting.
I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the wall.
Reid thinks it’s over with Laine. He’s probably right.
But if he’s wrong... if she comes back... I just promised him I’d watch it happen. I promised I’d stand there and let it kill me.
I rub my face. My hand smells like pizza.
Mission accepted.
I kick off my boots and lie down in the dark.