by Honor James
“Ouch.” She winced sympathetically. “I’m sorry that happened to you.” She was, too. She hated that he had been hurt. She had worried about the men, from the moment they got called to active once more and had to leave her in the middle of the night she worried. “How often are you in physical therapy?” She had been in it for a long time after her accident.
“Not yet,” he said. “Oh, they tried to stick me in for the back injuries and stiffness, but I’ve been doing this long enough that I can handle that. The leg, I might actually take the VA up on the offer, but I doubt it. I know my own body better than they ever could, and know how far to push, or not. Besides, I can’t actually do any of that until I get a sign off from the doctors. They had to stick in a rod to hold my femur together, lots of plates, and even more screws to hold it all together. I’m now a walking, talking metal detector nightmare and a half.”
“Jesus,” she whispered with wide eyes. “The fact that you still have your leg.” She went to reach out to touch him and realized what she was doing. It had been instinctive, it had been something she had done so often in the past. She brought her hand back to herself and sighed. “I’m sorry.” There was so much she was sorry about but she didn’t even know where to begin. “I’m glad that you are able to move, able to walk and talk, and that you are alive. That speaks of your stubbornness.” She ended with a smile.
Timmons gave a snort at that and shot her a look.
“Don’t apologize, least of all to me,” Keagan said. Leaning over, he pulled out several smaller boxes, and one by one began to open them. He pulled out what looked like motion sensors, much like the ones she had, but smaller. “I’m lucky, plain and simple. Thankfully, it was at the end of my tour so I didn’t have to test that luck any further.”
“This is true.” She watched him, her eyes eating up the sight of him while she could. She looked away when he looked her way. She wanted to touch him. God, she wanted to wrap herself up in his and Bryce’s arms and tell them everything, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t do that to them. They deserved far better than what she was. They deserved to be happy and she knew it. “I have something I have to do at one. It will be all right if I leave you all here, right?” It was time for her monthly visit with her shrink. Boy, that was going to be an enjoyable visit. Not!
“Should be, this will take most of the day to get set up, and then we have to run tests on everything. You’ll have to take one of the guys with you,” Keagan said. “Non-negotiable, by the way. It’s all part of the protective services we offer, and part of the contract you still haven’t signed. Michael has a copy for you to read over and get a lawyer to check if you want. You can sign it at any time,” he added as he began setting the motion detectors down on the floor on his other side.
Shit. “Okay,” she said instead and looked around. “I should go and track him down now so that I can sign the contract.” She didn’t need an attorney to check it over, she trusted Keagan. “Who is it that will be going with me?” Please not him or Bryce. Maybe Aeron or even Michael would go with her?
“Whoever you feel most comfortable taking,” he told her quietly, not looking up. “Harker and I will stay as far off as needed for your comfort. We’ll be available, but I know you’d rather not have anything to do with us so we’ll stay on the periphery of everything.”
He was so wrong, but she didn’t correct him. “Thank you.” She felt sick inside. Her heart was in utter and complete turmoil and she hurt. Desperately. “I’m going to go and get ready. The offices are about an hour drive from here, so I think that we should leave in a couple of hours.” She heard her own voice waver and tried to force the pain down into her soul so that she could allow it to pour out later. Right now she couldn’t let that pain out, it would destroy her.
“Yeah, sounds good. Kick whoever’s in your room out, tell them I said if they didn’t leave I’ll drag my gimpy ass up there and shoot them myself.” He shot her a look and gave her a weak, lopsided smile. “You should likely take Michael. He seems to be in the loop on everything from your past, and he’s probably the best choice. And he can keep a secret, apparently, even from his friends.”
“I think you are right.” Blue Eyes had certainly acted as if he knew far more than he should. She didn’t say anything else, she couldn’t. It hurt too much. When she walked out of the room her tears were falling down her face. She wished she could stop them but they wouldn’t stop. Walking away was the hardest thing she had ever done in her life.
Thankfully, when she went to her room no one was there and she was grateful for that. She closed the door, flipping the lock behind her, and after grabbing her clothes, went to the bathroom to shower.
Chapter Six
When Sadie walked back down her hair was freshly washed and she was dressed in her typical garb, long pants, long shirt, and hair loose around her shoulders. She had taken her time getting ready, not because of seeing her shrink, but because she didn’t want to face the men. She saw Blue Eyes waiting there with a file and she smiled. “Is that the contract?” she asked and accepted the file from him and the pen. “And are you driving me to my appointment?” she asked without opening the file, just standing there and trying not to give away the fact that she had immediately looked for Keagan when she got to the base of the stairs.
“I will be driving you,” he said. “You have time to look through the contract. Pay special attention to the last sheet though,” he advised, and waved her toward the kitchen. “No one’s in there right now, and you can still see Keagan if you choose the right chair.”
“You are too smooth,” Sadie said with a frown. “How did you know?” she asked quietly. “That I was looking for him. How?” How the hell did he know? She had gotten very, very good at hiding her feelings and what she was doing. Goodness gravy. Once she took a seat, she looked and sighed. She could see Keagan, she was a sucker. Totally and completely and knew it.
“I have my ways,” he told her. He spun a chair around and straddled it. Bracing his arms on the back, he rested his chin on his folded hands. “You’re not nearly as smooth as you think you are, Ms. Green. Besides, I pay attention, and I know for a fact you’ve missed those two. A lot, at a guess. Given all that’s happened in your life, why you’re denying yourself happiness now with the two people you love and who love you is beyond me. Why torture yourself when you don’t need to?”
“Because they deserve so much better than me,” she whispered honestly. Taking in a deep breath, she opened the file and began to look it over initially as she went. She was broken, she knew that. She was a monstrous mass of scar tissue, a woman who had tried many times to kill herself. No, they deserved someone sane, beautiful, and perfect.
“Bullshit,” he said. “They deserve someone who loves them for who they are. They deserve to be able to love someone for who she is. We all have scars, Ms. Green. Some are on the inside, some are on the outside, but they are damaging all the same. Would you care for Keagan any less if he’d come back without his leg?” he asked her.
She looked up at him, “No. God no. He’s so much more than that.” She then narrowed her gaze on him and frowned. “Oh, you are bad.” In a good way. Damn his blue eyes. “Wait. This has to be wrong.” She had gotten to the last page and shook her head. “This shows a balance due of zero. This isn’t right. I haven’t paid for any of this.”
Plucking the sheet from her hand, he turned it so he could read it. He mumbled to himself softly, and then handed it back with a nod. “It’s entirely correct, actually. You are not being charged for any of our time, services, or for the materials we’re putting in. You are, as the lawyers like to say, a pro bono case. On the house, courtesy of those who love you but are too stubborn to admit it for fear of being hurt, again.”
She just looked at him and heard the sob that was torn from her throat and then shook her head. “Those boneheads,” she whispered and watched in fascination as the teardrop puddled onto the paper and made the ink spread out. “And they wonder w
hy I’ve loved them since practically the first second I met them.” She sighed and looked to Michael. “And what do you suggest? Should I beat them over the head and make them accept me?”
He snorted at that and shook his head. “You don’t have to do that. But you do have to let them in, share the hurt you’re feeling, share with them all that happened, and let them be there for you. You’ve buried so much pain, taking it all upon yourself for no reason. They want to be there for you, Ms. Green. But you shut them out, close them down, and fucking hold up a do-not-enter sign at every turn. They won’t push, it’s not in their natures,” he said. “Give them a little, you’ll get more than you could ever imagine in return. This is a gesture to you from them, to prove they still care and will do anything to protect you. Take it in the nature it was offered, and let them know you still care. Neither one of them cares about physical perfection, you should know that. If they were that shallow, I’d have charged you the going rate and to hell with them both. Now, you’d better sign everything before you drown out all that pretty ink. And we should get a move on. I’m starving and feel the need for a big-ass, juicy burger today before your meeting with your…” He shot her a smirk, pushed up from the table, and turned the chair back around, setting it right in place.
“Wait.” She put her hand on his forearm and stalled him. “Can you pull everyone back? I need like a half hour with them. Please?” She would start to bare her soul. God, she just hoped that Blue Eyes wasn’t leading her in the wrong direction. At his smirk and nod, she rose and chewed her lower lip. She walked into the living room where Keagan was still pulling things out of boxes and took a seat at his side on the couch. She looked up when Bryce walked back in, grumbling the entire way. She waited until they were alone to start.
“That night meant so much more to me than I can ever tell you,” she began. “I had started to fall for you both long before that night, but then—” She sighed and began to play with her shirt sleeve. “I wrote you daily. I didn’t know that the letters weren’t getting to you, that the packages were being intercepted. I wrote when I found out I was pregnant. My father came to me three days later and told me that you both had asked him to tell me to stop writing you and to deal with the issue on my own. I didn’t know.” She was crying, but she couldn’t stop those tears. She was opening her soul to these men. “I never thought of not having them, though. I loved them. From the second I knew I was pregnant I loved them. When I learned I was going to have twins, I was over the moon. I had written to you both again. Several times, but they were returned,” she confessed. “I sent you both an image of the babies, and it was returned to me in shreds.” She wiped at her tears as she spoke.
“And then the accident happened.” She couldn’t look at them. She looked at her hands as she replayed the night of the accident in her mind. “I was run off of the road. I didn’t see the vehicle but I know that they had wanted me dead. I got free and was trying to get out of the vehicle when it burst into flames. I finally got out but because of all of the paints and turpentine that seemed to become a part of my wardrobe, I was burning and couldn’t put the flames out.” She relived those pains, the injuries from the burns.
“I was found by a young man who was hunting in the woods. If he hadn’t found me I would be dead. I was rushed to a burn ward but by that time I was in a coma. The injuries had been internal as well, even if I hadn’t known it at the time. Our babies lived for another two weeks, I was told, but they didn’t make it past that. The doctors did a C-section to remove them from me while I was in a coma and they were buried without anyone there for them.” She sobbed, she hadn’t been able to stop the pain from that horror had she wanted to. “I woke a few months after that. I tried many times to take my own life. I hadn’t wanted to live any longer.” She felt her tears hitting her hands but didn’t stop talking. “And then, after years of treatment, I was released from the home I was being kept in. I still have to go for therapy, but not as often.” She knew she was a coward, but there it was. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could have done more. I would have loved to have had them. To this day I still can’t take the nursery apart, it hurts too much.”
When she finally stopped herself there was absolute silence. She didn’t move, didn’t look around, just waited. Keagan was the first to move. He pushed up from his chair, and somehow managed to get her to move over enough for him to fall onto the couch at her side. His arms wrapped around her tight, hugging her to his body as he gently rocked her. A moment later another body settled at her back, arms slipping around her middle and holding her tight. They still weren’t saying anything, but she could feel and hear Keagan’s erratic heartbeat under her ear. Then something hot and wet hit her forehead and slid down her nose.
She pulled back and touched her finger to Keagan’s cheek and sniffled. “And now you know.” She let her other hand touch Bryce’s hand that was wrapped around her middle. “Father said he had told you both. I shouldn’t have believed him.” But why wouldn’t she? He was her father, but more than that he had been a trainer to the men, and their friend. He had loved these men like sons, so she never dreamed he would have kept them apart. “I still dream about them,” she confessed. “A little girl and little boy, both so much like their daddies it wouldn’t even be funny. They would have your wicked sense of humor, and your laugh,” she said to Keagan and then Bryce. “They would have been inquisitive and fearless. I just know it.” They would have been their daddies’ babies, through and through. No, she wouldn’t have known which one was the father, but it wouldn’t have mattered at all to her because they would have both been Daddy.
Keagan cupped her face, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead. “I wish we’d known,” he whispered. His voice was choked up. Sucking in a shaky breath, he rested his forehead to hers. “I’m so sorry we weren’t here for you, sweetheart. I could kill your father for what he did to us all. He took everything from us, I won’t ever forgive that,” he said quietly.
“Neither will I,” Sadie admitted. “Never. He’s dead to me. I never, ever want to see him again. I told him as much already.” She looked back at Bryce and asked, “Are you okay?” She had always cared more for their well-being than her own, that fact didn’t slip her notice now, either.
“Not even a little,” he said in a low tone. He began to stroke her hair gently. “All you’ve gone through, been put through, and pretty much alone. I hate that,” Bryce told her. “Sadie, I’m only going to say this once for all our benefits. You push us away now, and I’m going to have to go batshit crazy on your ass. We clear?”
“Crystal.” She laid her head back on Keagan’s shoulder and sighed. “Okay, I really do have to go to my shrink. If I don’t, then they will raise a ruckus and they will contact my father and stupid stuff like that.” Her father had tried to have her declared incompetent, and only her visits to the shrink kept him off her back.
“Then you should go, Sadie,” Keagan told her. “We’ll be here when you get back. So go, and have your session. We’ll talk about how to get your father out of your life when you return, or soon. We need to ensure that no one has that sort control over your life, especially him.”
“True. I just don’t get it. He was never like this before.” Before them, before her pregnancy. “So Blue Eyes is taking me?” she asked with a grin. “I can’t remember his name but I recall his eyes. Beautiful blue, but looks as if he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.”
“Michael, and he is, he always has, actually,” Bryce told her. “And you can stop discussing his eyes, in any way, shape, or form. No need to blow his ego up even more than necessary.”
“You two can stop there, the lady’s entitled to her opinion,” Michael said as he stopped in the archway of the living room. “You ready to go, Ms. Green? We should get a move on so I can still get that burger.”
“As long as you call me Sadie instead of Ms. Green.” She looked at Keagan and impulsively leaned in and kissed his cheek before doing the same to
Bryce. When she stood, she looked at both men and felt her heart flipping and flopping. Jesus, she was so over her head and knew it. “Do you want us to bring you guys anything back?”
They shared a look then shrugged as they looked up at her. “Food,” they both said with nearly matching grins. At her look, Bryce chuckled and shook his head. “Whatever you think of is fine. If not, we’ll just order in pizza or Chinese for everyone. We’ll have to feed them eventually anyway, so on second thought, don’t worry about bringing anything back. Give us a shout when you’re headed this way, and we’ll put in an order.”
“That sounds good to me.” Sadie smiled and with a nod walked away from the men, feeling better than she had in a very long time.
Chapter Seven
Sadie had felt uncomfortable through her whole session with Dr. Weiss. She didn’t know what was throwing her off, but something felt so odd today and it frustrated her. She talked to the doctor about Bryce and Keagan coming back into her life and the relief she felt at being able to talk to them candidly about what happened. While she spoke, she rubbed at the cuts that were on her wrists, not across the wrists but up and down. She had truly wanted to kill herself in that time in her life. The cuts ached as she talked, but soon she was ready to leave.
She walked to the door with her doctor and said, “I’m ready to start coming off of some of the medication.” She had meant to say that last week but had forgotten. “I need to stop living in a fog and face life clear headed. What are your thoughts?”
The doctor gave her a look, full of censure. “Do you truly believe you are ready, or are you being told you’re ready by outside forces? This is something we will need to discuss in more detail. It is a big step, Sadie. One I’m not entirely convinced you are ready for at this time in your life. You have had so many changes in such a short amount of time, I think it would be better for you to wait for your life to balance out before we take such a step. I also think you need to come back and discuss your opinion on the medication. I have a spot open in three days, I’d advise you to schedule in at that time. It’s only a half hour, but I think we can have a concise talk in that time frame.”
