Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
The drive home was quiet. Lucy rode in the back. Regan sat in the passenger seat with her face turned toward the window.
CB drove through the dark, thinking about the kiss and how he’d just spent three hours standing six feet from her pretending it hadn’t happened.
At the house, Lucy kissed them both on the cheek—CB included, which he hadn’t expected and didn’t know what to do with—and disappeared upstairs with Desi at her heels.
Regan said goodnight to the middle distance and went to her room. CB checked the security app, checked the perimeter, and checked his phone for anything from Mack.
Nothing needed him.
He showered, pulled on a t-shirt and sweatpants, and sat on the edge of the guest bed.
The house settled around him. Outside, something moved in the tree line—deer, probably, the security app showed nothing—but he circled the house once more, out of the need to reassure himself that the two women were safe, before he returned to the guest room.
He was lying on the mattress, unable to sleep, with an arm behind his head, when he heard Regan’s door.
A soft knock.
He crossed the room and opened the door. Regan stood in the hallway in an oversized t-shirt and pajama pants, her hair loose, her feet bare on the carpet.
She lifted her chin. “I can’t sleep,” she said.
Did he dare wonder why? “Me, either.”
A beat.
“Can I ask you something?”
He stepped back from the door.
She came in and sat in the chair by the window. He returned to the edge of the bed. The room was dark except for the ambient light from outside, enough to see by, not enough to feel exposed.
“Do you regret it?” she asked.
“Kissing you?”
Her lips twitched. “Leaving. The gang, the life.” A pause. “Your father.”
He dragged his attention away from those lips he wanted to taste again and turned the question over in his mind. It was one he’d asked himself plenty of times in the past ten years.
He was silent long enough that she shifted in the chair. “Sorry. That’s too personal. I don’t know why I?—”
He held up a hand. “It’s okay. I regret that I couldn’t leave in a way that didn’t put up walls between my father and me.”
She eased back in the chair, her face lit with curiosity. “I assume he didn’t take it well.”
“He didn’t. Our relationship has never been the same.
After Mom died, it got worse. But,” he said, “the Army was the right call. It liberated me from the gang. Unfortunately, it estranged me from my dad, but I stand by what I did. The Army, becoming a Ranger…” He smiled.
“It was an incredible part of my life. I don’t regret any of it. ”
“I bet you were good at it, too. Why did you leave?”
“I was good at it.” He rested his elbows on his knees, recalling his favorite moments. Getting through RASP, the brotherhood he had with his teammates, the special reconnaissance missions he’d excelled at. “I left because of Dad’s stroke.”
She gave a slow nod. He sensed the journalist in her wanted to know more about that, but he wasn’t sure if he could talk about it with her.
“Shadow Point is the right call, too,” he said. “The work I do matters to me, and just like being a Ranger, I’m good at it.”
“I can see that.” She picked at threat on the hem of her shirt. “What was your mom like? Was she a handful like mine?”
Her wry smile was good to see. “My mom made the best apple pie you ever tasted. A country girl, through and through, she gardened, canned, and cooked constantly.” He missed her every damn day. “She believed in me, and I let her down.”
“How?”
“She died while I was deployed,” he said.
Flat. Factual. The only way he knew how to say it.
“We were on an assignment across enemy lines. Deep cover. A hostage extraction. My unit was unreachable for weeks. No communication in or out. It was standard protocol for the operation.” He stopped, his chest tight.
Started again. “When we got back to base, my CO pulled me aside. Mom had died suddenly while I was in the field, and by the time I found out, she’d already been buried. ”
Regan made a small sound, sat forward. “Clive, I’m so sorry.”
He stared at his hands, trained to handle weapons, fix vehicles, provide medical care in the field, and yet, incapable of saving the one person he’d loved more than anything.
“I came home on emergency leave. Dad had already had his stroke—the doctors thought it was the grief, the shock of it. He was alive but diminished, and he needed someone to look after him.” CB laced his fingers together.
Unlaced them. “I put in for early separation. Came back to take care of him.”
“And found Ryder heading up the Outlaws.”
His hands fisted. “He was running the Outlaws, running the house, sitting in the kitchen like he’d always been there. My dad calls him son . Not in a general way. In a—” He stopped.
“Like he said it to you.”
The night pressed in around him. The anger he hadn’t quite acknowledged dug in under his ribs. That feeling of betrayal sat bitter on his lips. “Yeah.”
“Were you and Ryder close growing up?”
He nodded. “We were. He was the closest thing I had to a brother. I’m sure that’s why Dad calls him son now—Ryder was like a son to him, especially after I left.
” He hadn’t meant to share all of this, but the words kept pouring out.
“Since his stroke, Dad is often somewhere else. He had to reorganize around the loss of my mother, and Ryder was part of the new order of things. I’m the one who left. Ryder stayed.”
“So you’re being punished for things you couldn’t control—your mother’s death and Wade’s stroke.”
“I got the results of a choice I made freely.”
She was quiet for a moment. “That’s a very CB way to frame it.”
He shrugged. “I’ve got him set up with a good assistant. I make sure the house is squared away, the bills are on autopay, and his medical situation is managed.” He paused. “Some of the Outlaws want me back. Not all are happy with Ryder’s new way of doing business.”
“Have you thought about it? Taking the gang from him?”
He blew out a deep breath. It was right there—all the good he could do with the Outlaws if he took his rightful place with them.
Rangers lead the way . Their motto that had twisted in his gut over and over here at home. If he were a better son, a better Ranger, would he step into the leadership he’d been born for?
“I don’t like what they’ve become,” he said, “but being part of that world isn’t for me. I have my own way of helping people.”
“Did your dad want you to come back? Be part of it again?”
Wade had never asked him to take Ryder’s place. “Ryder is the golden boy, now. I go see Dad every Thursday and bring him groceries. That’s about as much as he wants me in his life.”
“So Ryder steps into the role of son and takes over the gang, and you’re demoted to bringing Wade groceries?”
“He likes the crackers from the Blackridge market. They don’t carry them anywhere else.”
Regan was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was careful. “You keep showing up for people who make it hard.”
He considered that. Shrugged again. “That’s who I am. I take care of people I care about.”
She rose from the chair and came to sit beside him on the edge of the bed. “It is who you are, and I, for one, am glad.”
He’d spent a long time trying not to think of it as a character flaw. Dr. Montgomery insisted it wasn’t. CB wasn’t so sure.
Regan mimicked him, resting her elbows on her knees. “The look on my father’s face,” she said. “After the story ran.” She didn’t say anything more, just sat her chin in her hands.
He waited.
She blew out a deep breath. “I’ve never said this out loud.
” She paused. “He was proud of me. I could see that. He always was, no matter what. But underneath it, there was this grief, this—he’d lost his oldest friend when I exposed Ray.
They’d known each other since they were boys, and I took that friendship and crushed it.
Ray Briggs wasn’t all bad, just like you said about the Outlaws in general.
He did a lot for marginalized youth—always coaching Little League, promoting the school’s basketball team, and participating in fundraisers.
Dad looked up to him. Put him on a pedestal.
I put Ray in front of the whole county and let everyone see what he was under all of that.
” Her fingers strayed to her shirt hem again, picking at the loose thread.
“I was right to do it. I know that, and I’d do it again.
But I’ve replayed that look on Dad’s face every day since, wondering if there was a version of telling the truth that wouldn’t have cost him so much. ”
“Was there?”
“No.” The word was certain, yet laced with guilt.
“Yet, you’re still punishing yourself with it.”
“Just like you are with your mom and dad.”
He stiffened. Doc had said the same thing to him in his last session. “I’m living with my choices.”
“As am I. That’s the thing I had to make my peace with. The truth costs what it costs. I don’t get to decide the price.”
Her words landed hard. He agreed with them, but they unsettled him anyway. “As long as you’re honest with yourself.”
She didn’t answer. But something in her shoulders let go. “I’m trying to be, which…”
When she didn’t continue, he nudged her shoulder. “If there’s something you want to say, say it.”
They sat for a while in the quiet. He wondered if it was about the kiss. Or maybe her investigation.
After a while, Regan stood. “Goodnight, CB.”
He caught her wrist. Gently, just enough to stop her. She turned back, and he rose.
“For the record.” He kept his voice even. “Whatever this is—I’m not approaching it like a job anymore.”
Her eyes held his. In the dark, they were unreadable. “What are you approaching it like then?”