“Good for you,” Claire murmured. “I drive Jason nuts half the time. You know what a geek the man is. He likes for things to fit in neat little compartments, and he is constantly ruffled because I don’t.” Nudging her with her elbow, she added, “He likes to take all his frustrations out in the bedroom, though, so it works really well for both of us.”
Ogling Mac’s ass for a second longer than was acceptable in mixed company, Ava said, “I know exactly what you mean.” Both she and Claire had huge smirks on their faces when the men walked back to their sides. Mac and Jason shook their heads but didn’t bother to ask questions. Ava was sure that they didn’t want to know.
Unbelievably, she hogged baby Sofia for the rest of the evening, even braving a diaper change, which thankfully was strictly pee. When it was time to leave, she found herself volunteering them to babysit one evening soon so Declan and Ella could have a meal out. Mac looked at her as if she were crazy, but the baby bug had officially bitten her.
* * *
They had been back at Mac’s house for a few minutes when he got a call from Gage. There had been a break-in at one of the buildings where they handled security, and even though the police had the situation under control, Mac needed to go double-check that the building was secure for the night. “I shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours,” he said as he grabbed his keys.
She thought about going home, but if she were going to be alone, she would rather be at Mac’s house. Going back to her lonely apartment didn’t hold much appeal. “Be careful,” she said as she kissed Mac good-bye and said she’d see him when he returned.
An hour later, she had already showered and changed into one of Mac’s T-shirts. She didn’t want to go to sleep without him, so she wandered his house restlessly. When she came to his office, she decided to do what half the world did when they were bored, play Candy Crush. Mac had given her the password to his computer, so she curled up in his big leather chair and logged on. She smiled at how organized his desk was. Everything was neatly filed and labeled. You could take the boy out of the military but not the military out of the boy. Idly, she opened the desk drawers, laughing as she noted that his organizational skills extended there as well. She was just shutting the last drawer when a label on a folder caught her attention. AVA STONE. “What the hell . . . ?” she mumbled as she pulled the folder out.
As Ava thumbed through the list of reports, she wasn’t really surprised. She knew that Mac had kept an eye on her for years. Maybe she thought that it was more informal than these written reports proved, but she understood where his protective instinct for her had come from. The file didn’t contain a report on every man she had brought home over the years, but it was a good-sized list. The whole folder was a mirage. Now she thought of how Mac must have felt when he had these pages sitting in front of him in black-and-white. For the first time, she truthfully acknowledged to herself how much she had needed help to heal and how even though she was better, she still needed support to continue the process. She couldn’t go back to the pretend life she had been living.
She was almost to the end of the folder when she found an envelope. Her name was handwritten with her address listed as in care of Brant Stone. The return address showed a location in New York. She didn’t know anyone there, so she was truly puzzled as to who would be trying to contact her. Ava pulled a single sheet of paper from the envelope and felt the breath leave her body in a startled gasp as she read the first line.
Ava,
I know that I’m not supposed to have any contact with you, but I couldn’t continue to live my life as though nothing ever happened. You are the only victim here, but that night and what I did to you has haunted me since I was sober enough the next day to realize what had happened. You may not believe me, but I wanted to turn myself into the police. My parents and your grandfather wouldn’t hear of it, though. Your grandfather made all manner of threats to my parents if they didn’t take me and leave town immediately. He said that you didn’t want me to humiliate you further by contacting the police. I have no idea if that was true, but I had little choice but to do as my parents wanted.
For weeks, I had been drinking more and mixing it with any type of drugs that I could get my hands on. But that night I had too much of both. Something about the combination made me so angry and aggressive. When you said no . . . I just snapped. I had no real concept of what I was even doing. When I realized what I’d done to you, it almost destroyed me. Ava, there is no excuse that I can make, or no way to apologize enough, but I am so very sorry for what I did to you. Not a day has gone by in my life that I haven’t regretted what happened that night. I’m not writing this expecting your forgiveness; I just needed you to know that as meaningless as it may be to you now, I’m sorry.
Kevin
Ava sagged in the chair, letting the letter flutter from her nerveless fingers. Turning the envelope over, she saw that it was postmarked four years earlier. “Oh my God,” she whispered as her head whirled and her stomach clenched. Why had no one ever told her about this? There were at least two people who knew, Brant and Mac. She would bet that Declan did as well. Her brother had to have given the letter to Mac. Operating on pure adrenaline, she picked the letter up and ran to the door before realizing that she didn’t have her car. Running back into the kitchen, she found the box near the back door and easily located the keys to Mac’s truck that he rarely used. She had teased him for years about men in the South always having a truck, even if they didn’t drive it often. Declan was the same way.
Accessing the garage by way of the kitchen, Ava stopped only to hit the opener mounted on the wall before climbing up into the truck. Within moments, she was speeding toward Brant’s house. Her mind was buzzing with questions, and she planned to get some answers. How could they have kept something like this from her? Kevin hadn’t gone into much detail about what had happened afterward, but she had a feeling that Brant knew, and she was tired of being in the dark.
It was almost eleven by the time she pulled into his driveway. She was glad to see a light glowing in the living room window. She pounded on the door several times before her disheveled brother pulled it open, blinking in surprise. “Ava . . . is something wrong?”
She pushed him aside, stalking into the entryway. A sleepy-looking Emma rounded the corner, blinking at her in shock. “Ava?”
Without answering, Ava held the envelope in Brant’s face and watched him pale as he realized what she was holding. “Why am I just finding out about this?” she demanded.
Instead of answering her question, he asked one of his own. “Where did you get that?”
Ava felt as if steam were literally shooting from her ears. “That’s all you’ve got? Where did I get the letter that you never bothered to give me? Why would Mac have this and not me?” she snapped.
Brant was nothing if not a smart man, and she could see the exact moment that he decided to try to placate her. “Av, it’s not a big deal, really. I don’t know why Mac would give that to you now, but it’s been years since I received it.”
That was so the wrong answer, and she was seconds away from blowing up when Emma stepped between them, clearly confused as to what was playing out before her. “All right, everyone in their separate corners. I have no idea what’s going on here, but I think we need to talk about it somewhere else.” Before Ava could reply, Emma had pulled her farther into the entryway and motioned for Brant to shut the door behind him. Apparently, Brant had been too rattled to realize that the door was still standing open. Emma ushered her into the living room and Brant followed warily behind them. “Okay, so what’s in that letter you’re waving around?” Emma asked while looking back and forth between Ava and Brant.
Instead of answering, Ava simply handed the envelope to Emma and watched as the other woman extracted the paper and read it. When she was finished, she handed it back to Ava, again without saying a word. Finally, Brant, never being one to enjoy strife, spoke up. “Ava, I didn’t give you that letter becaus
e I didn’t want you to be hurt again. You had moved on with your life and were doing so well. I was afraid it would bring back a lot of bad memories that you didn’t need.”
Ava stared at her normally intuitive brother, utterly amazed that he too had fallen for her smokescreen. Had he never once seen the cracks in her veneer? Dropping onto the leather chair behind her, Ava shook her head, trying to hold back tears. “But that’s just it, Brant. I wasn’t doing well. I haven’t even been in the same zip code as what you’d consider doing well.”
Brant looked alarmed by her statement, and he started to pace in his agitation. One of the things she loved about her brother was his desire to fix everything. If there was a problem, he didn’t rest until he found a solution. She could see him trying to work through her statement in his head and figure out what he could do to make it all better. The problem was that he didn’t fully comprehend what she was telling him. “But . . . you work, you date, you have friends. I don’t understand.”
Emma laid a hand on her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze as she said, “Tell him the truth, Ava. I think you both need it.” Emma released her and then stepped over to kiss Brant on the cheek before leaving the room.
Patting the chair next to hers, Ava said, “Sit down, Brant. I think we need to talk, and I’d rather do it without you pacing.”
Brant looked as though he wanted to argue but instead took the chair that she had indicated. “Tell me what I’ve missed with you, Ava,” he said quietly.
Ava took a deep breath, knowing that this was going to be hard on both of them. She and Brant didn’t really have heart-to-heart conversations about their feelings or personal life, so this was awkward, but she needed him to know. “I’ve had a hard time living a normal life since my . . . rape.” She saw the flinch that Brant was unable to hide at her words, but he kept quiet, letting her continue. “At first, I just buried it all deep inside because that’s what I was ordered to do by Granddad. I was too scared and ashamed to talk to anyone about it anyway.
“Granddad made me feel like it was all my fault and that was why we couldn’t tell the police the truth. He made sure he let me know how humiliated I would be if our friends and family found out. I felt so dirty, like I was responsible for what happened to me.
“For years, I buried it away as best I could and learned to pretend that it never happened. As I started getting older, it became harder. I knew that people were beginning to wonder why I never dated or had a man in my life.” When Brant shifted uncomfortably, Ava realized that Brant had had similar thoughts. “So I went to a bar in hopes of meeting a man I felt safe enough around to spend time with. Without going into many details, I met a college student instead who was sweet and felt sorry for me. He was also broke and in need of spending money, as were his friends. Before long, I had a steady line of young men who were more than willing to spend a few hours with me when I needed them. They worked around my apartment, making repairs or if nothing needed fixing, we watched a movie or played a game. It worked out perfectly. Everyone, including Mac, thought I was functioning normally, and hey, I even got my sink drains fixed anytime I needed it,” Ava joked weakly.
Running a hand through his hair, Brant said, “But . . . why? Ava, I’m missing something here. I was ready to kill that little fucker Kevin for what he did to you, but Grandfather told me to leave it alone. He said that you never wanted it mentioned again and if I insisted on having Kevin thrown in jail, it would ruin your life. He insisted that I honor your wishes and leave it alone. Ava, I was so sick over the whole thing, but I finally agreed to do what you wanted even though I damn well knew it wasn’t right. He said it was your idea to have Kevin and his family leave because you didn’t want to face any of it.”
Dropping her head into her hands, Ava simply shook her head. “It wasn’t, Brant. God, I was only a scared kid. I was too traumatized to know what to do. I sure wasn’t in any shape to broker a deal with Granddad to salvage my good name. He made me feel so guilty over being attacked that I couldn’t look at you or Declan. And as for Mac, it changed everything there. I had loved him for most of my life, but after that, I never considered myself good enough for him again. As I got older, I couldn’t resist the draw of being near him but only on my terms. I couldn’t let him see how broken I was. I didn’t want him remembering the way I looked that night when I crawled onto his porch and collapsed against his door.”
“But Mac has always loved you, Av,” Brant added. “There’s never been anyone else for him; he’s never made a secret of that.”
Smiling through her tears, Ava admitted, “I know that now. I think I always knew that he loved me, but I couldn’t accept it. I didn’t know how to be loved by him.”
“Oh, Ava,” Brant sighed, looking destroyed. “I never knew what you were going through. Sometimes you would say things or just have a certain look on your face and I would think to myself that I needed to see if you were okay. But then I would see you again and you would seem perfectly normal. My mind would always go back to what Grandfather told me. That you didn’t want to talk about what had happened and I had to respect your wishes. So I did . . . for years. Now I feel like an unfeeling, uncaring bastard.”
“Brant, don’t,” she began before he held up a hand to stop her.
“It’s true, Av. Maybe I just didn’t want to acknowledge what was right in front of me. Let’s face it, I’ve never been good at dealing with anyone’s feelings, and I certainly had no idea how to handle something like that happening to my baby sister. It’s no excuse at all, but I had no clue how to help you. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t a better brother and protector to you.”
Ava took her brother’s hand, squeezing it tightly. “Stop, Brant. I’m not telling you this to heap guilt on your head. I became such an expert at pretending to be okay that I can’t blame people for believing it. You and I both know that I’m a hell of a saleswoman, and I applied that same principle to my personal life. I sold everyone, even myself at times, on the illusion that I was fully recovered from what happened to me and that I was living my life. The scary part is that I don’t know how long I would have continued to do that if not for Mac shaking me up. If he hadn’t decided to move on with his life, I might never have been brave enough to admit that I needed and loved him.”
“I should have seen through it, though,” Brant agonized. “You’re my sister, and damn it, deep down inside, I knew you weren’t okay!”
A part of her wanted to be mad at Brant for wanting to avoid talking with her all these years about her rape, but would it have changed anything really? Most likely she would have brushed him off completely had he tried or given him a bunch of false reassurances. If she harbored ill will toward anyone, it was their grandfather. He had been her authority figure back then and had been the one to make her feel as if she needed to pretend that nothing had ever happened. She, Brant, and Declan had just taken their cues from him. He wanted it all to go away, and that was what had happened, at least on the surface. No matter how hard it would have been for them to handle, she knew now that if she had told either of her brothers that she was drowning, barely keeping her head above water most days, they would have dropped everything to help her. But she hadn’t, and they had accepted her facade as truth.
“We did as we were told,” she whispered. “I just wish you had given me Kevin’s letter years ago when you received it.”
Brant jumped to his feet, a pulse ticking visibly in his jaw. “Why? His apology means nothing, Av. I didn’t want to upset you over something that was completely inadequate. An apology doesn’t make what he did to you okay. The only reason I kept the damn thing and passed it along to Mac was that I was afraid he would try to contact you in another way when he didn’t receive a reply. I asked Mac to keep track of him, so I wanted him to be aware.”
Stung again by Brant’s decision to keep the letter from her, Ava took a deep breath, trying to remain calm. “No, the apology from Kevin wouldn’t have made what he did all right, but the rest
of the letter would have helped me in a way.” Looking down at her hands, she admitted, “I’ve always wondered if it was my fault. You know, did I lead him on or give him the impression that I wanted what happened? I’ve run through that night in my head over and over. When Granddad refused to let the police handle it, I felt like I was guilty. It made me feel dirty, as if I had somehow done something to make Kevin believe that we would have sex. But in the letter, he said that he had been drinking and doing drugs. He said he was so out of it that he didn’t know what he was doing that night. He took the full blame for his actions instead of trying to put it back onto me.”
Brant wilted back into the chair next to hers looking spent. “I just . . . I never thought that maybe you needed to hear what he had to say. In my eyes, there was never a question that any woman would be to blame for something like that happening to her. But I should have thought, with the way things were handled, that you might need any type of closure that you could get. Fuck, Av, I’m so sorry. You’re right; I should never have kept that from you. At the time, I thought I was protecting you, but now I see that I was just continuing to believe everything was just perfectly fine when the proof that it wasn’t was right under my nose.”
Ava stood, moving to Brant’s side. Then she did something that she didn’t do nearly enough; she wrapped her arms around her brother and held on tight. After a brief moment of hesitation, Brant pulled her into his arms, nearly squeezing the breath out of her. He murmured his apology against the top of her head before kissing her gently on the temple. “I love you, my overbearing brother,” she joked to lighten the mood.
His eyes looked suspiciously moist as he replied, “I love you too, sis.” When she pulled back and returned to her own chair, he gave her a crooked grin. “So, you and Mac . . . finally?”
Always Loving You Page 19
