by Teresa Hill
"He has," Rachel said softly. "It's not the first time he's beaten up someone. Badly. He's been in prison, Emma. Joe has the records. Rye told him what he needed to find the records. It's no mistake. He was arrested for the first time when he was sixteen."
"When he stole the car. He told me about that. Rachel, he was sixteen."
"And they sent him to a juvenile detention center, and while he was there, he got into a fight with another boy and killed him. He spent the next eight years in prison for manslaughter."
* * *
Emma wouldn't believe it until she heard it straight from Rye. She waited until Rachel finally left, then slipped out the back door, walking the eight blocks to the jail in a daze.
Joe took one look at her and said, "Sam know you're here?"
He didn't want to let her in to see Rye, but she simply refused to leave. Joe finally gave in. He took her back into the office, unlocked a door, and there was Rye, locked up in an awful little cell in the back corner.
It was a colorless place, washed-out gray with gun-metal bars. He stood in back by a tiny window—covered with more bars—and he didn't turn around.
She stared at his back, at muscles bunched in his shoulders and his arms, strength that had never frightened her until yesterday, when she'd tried to pull him off Mark, and he'd turned around like a wild thing ready to attack.
He had scared her then.
But he'd saved her from Mark, and she'd been scared enough that she couldn't regret the manner in which he'd done that. Except for the way he was suffering now because of it. She remembered how her mother looked after her father had taken his fists to her. Mark could easily have done that to her. If she'd let him, he might have done it again and again and again.
Some men were just like that.
She'd have sworn Rye wasn't.
"Sure you want to do this?" Joe asked softly.
"Yes."
Rye turned around at the sound of her voice. Clearly, she'd surprised him. He put his back to her again just as quickly, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. His head dropped back until he was staring up at the ceiling and probably swearing, if she was any judge of the situation.
"You yell if you need me," Joe said, obviously not liking this.
He left, not quite shutting the door behind him.
Emma walked over to the bars. She hated the idea of him being caged up this way, of having these bars between them. She hated dragging him into a situation blind and having him end up here because he wanted to protect her.
Didn't they know that? None of this would have happened if he hadn't simply been trying to protect her.
Rye finally turned around again. He looked like he wanted to strangle her at first, and then he just looked so tired. "You okay?"
She nodded, tears threatening already.
"What are you doing here, Em?"
She cleared her throat and managed to say, "You're here."
"And believe me, this is a lousy place to be."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Emma, don't even start with that."
"I know you must be angry...."
"Not at you," he said.
She blinked back tears. "But you're here because of me."
"No, I'm here because of me. My choices. My actions. We talked about this. Remember?"
"You saved me from him," she said.
"And then practically beat him to death. If I'd pulled him off you and called the sheriff, I wouldn't be here. I know that. You do, too."
"I know that it was my problem. All of this has been my problem."
"Come on, Emma. You're smarter than that." She flinched at the tone, but he kept on going. "Guys like Mark want you to believe it's all your fault. That's how they get girls like you and how they keep them. Don't buy into that crap. Not with him and not with me."
So he was being cruel to be kind. Fine. And maybe he had a point, but she had one, too. "Look at this." She threw her hands out toward the bars. "Look at where you are."
"It's not anyplace I haven't been before," he said. "I told you it was ugly. I told you that you wouldn't understand."
"Make me understand," she begged. She wanted him to make excuses, to tell her it was all a mistake.
"What is there to understand? This is who I am. This is what my life has been like."
She came to the heart of it, then, to the hardest part. She whispered, "They said you killed someone, years ago."
He looked her in the eye and said softly, "I did."
Emma took a step back at that.
He wasn't anywhere near her. It wasn't like she was afraid of him. It was the truth. She thought maybe if she could get away from it, it wouldn't hurt this badly and that maybe it wouldn't be true.
"How could you do that?"
The look he gave her then left her nearly completely undone. He took a ragged breath and stepped back himself. One minute, he was looking at her. The next he was staring off into the corner of the room behind her. He was lost, gone back so many years. She thought she was seeing the boy he'd once been.
Seventeen, she thought. Not far from the age she was now.
He'd taken someone's life at seventeen?
She felt like she could see it all, the horror, the bewilderment, the sorrow, and she wondered what he'd been like before that, what he might have been.
"I just did it, okay? We got into a fight, and by the time they pulled me off the other guy, he was dead," he said, finally looking her in the eye. "If you were expecting some pretty story, you're not going to get it. I told you, dammit. I told you what it was like. I told you that you didn't know me, and you just wouldn't listen."
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Yeah, well, so am I."
"What's going to happen to you?" she asked.
"I don't know, and I don't want you to even think about it. I want you to forget about this. Go back to that pretty little life of yours. Find some boy and..." He was pacing then, fuming. "God, Emma. You're really eighteen?"
"I'll be nineteen in February," she said.
He laughed then, a disgusted sound. "And you think that makes a damned bit of difference?"
"You care about me," she said. "I know you do."
"Emma, you're a child. Sam is ready to kill me for ever laying a hand on you, and honestly, if I were in his place, I'd feel the same way."
"I am not a child," she insisted.
"Well I'm thirty-three, thirty-four in April. It's indecent."
"You didn't think so a day and a half ago," she reminded him.
"Okay, so you don't look eighteen and I sure didn't think you were. Believe me, if I'd known, I never would have laid a hand on you."
He was fuming then, and he looked a lot like Sam. If her heart wasn't breaking, she might tell him so. But her heart was breaking. She hardly had any words left, hardly had anything left inside of her at all.
"I'm sorry," she said, in complete and utter despair.
"Oh, God, Emma." It was a ragged sound, the sound of a man dragging the bottom, every bit of energy and hope gone, which was exactly how she felt.
Empty.
Spent.
Lost.
She walked up to the bars then and hung on to them, leaning her forehead against them. In the short time they'd had together, she'd come to crave his touch. Not just his lips, but his hands, his arms, the curve of his shoulder, the shelter of his embrace.
He came to her, just stood there for the longest time, then bent his head, too, so that, if not for the bars, their foreheads would be touching. He slipped his hands through the bars. They slid along her forearms and cupped her elbows in as much of an embrace as this place would allow, and it was just as she remembered it, every bit as powerful, every bit as necessary as breathing.
"You do care about me."
"Not the way you're thinking," he insisted.
Was that true? She didn't want to believe it. So what if she was not quite nineteen and he was thirty-three. She was still the s
ame person he'd met six days ago, a girl who'd never really been young in her whole life, and he was...
He'd killed someone.
How could that be?
"Go on," he said. "Get out of here."
"I can't just forget about you."
"You will, in time. You have to. I want you to be happy, Emma."
"I want you to be happy, too."
"Well I just don't see how that's going to happen for me. But that's my problem. Not yours." He kissed her forehead and then backed away. "Go home. And don't come back."
Chapter 12
Emma stayed stubbornly right there, but Rye wouldn't say another word.
Fine, she thought. It wasn't like he was going anywhere.
Emma went back to find Joe, who took one look at her face and swore. "What did he do to you?"
"Told me to go away and forget about him," she said.
"Good for him."
"Joe—"
"You know what he did. He killed someone."
"I spent six days with him, Joe. He's not—"
"What? Not your idea of a killer? An ex-con?"
"Don't call him that," she insisted.
"That's what he is."
"Surely he's more than that," she argued.
"Come on." Joe took her by the arm and steered her down the hall. "You need to understand some things about this."
"No, you do. He's Sam's brother, and he was kind to me. He was gentle and considerate, and he protected me. And as for what happened when he was seventeen... Do you know what happened?"
"A fight in a juvenile detention center. What's there to know?"
"There has to be something more. It's not... I don't want people to look at him and see just that." She wanted them to know the man she'd spent those six days with. "Can you look into it, Joe?"
"I guess I could," he said, pushing open the door to his office.
"Thank you." She followed him inside and then got to the really hard question. "What's going to happen to him?"
"I don't know. It's up to the county attorney to decide what to charge him with, and from there, it's up to a jury. But he's still on probation from the manslaughter conviction, Emma."
She sat down, afraid of what was coming. "What does that mean?"
"They sentenced him to sixteen years. He served a little more than half before he was paroled on the condition that he stays out of trouble. A conviction for assault, and he may well go back to prison to serve the rest of those sixteen years."
"Oh, my God." Emma sat back, feeling winded. "Does he know?"
"Oh, yeah. He knows."
And there he was, calm as could be, telling her it wasn't her fault. Telling her to forget about him.
"We can't let that happen to him, Joe."
"I told you, it's not up to me."
"Do you think he deserves to go back to prison for this?"
"I think it's hard to know what's inside of a man, what he's capable of, and I've misjudged people before, Emma. I know you think you know him. But you saw what your ex-boyfriend looked like when Rye was done with him."
"And if Rye hadn't been there?"
Joe frowned. "If you'd had to depend on the law and not an ex-con to protect you?"
"That's not what I meant, Joe."
"I know, but it's what I'm thinking. I'm sorry. I should have done more. Couldn't have stood it if that guy hurt you. Either one of 'em."
"Rye wouldn't hurt me," she said.
"So you say. I'm still sorry."
"Then make it up to me. Do it by helping Rye now."
* * *
Sam felt sick, literally.
He stood in the cold on the back porch of his house because he wasn't sure what he could say to either Rachel or Emma, and when he couldn't stand it any longer, he reached for the door to go in.
There'd been a time when his little brother had been all he had left in the world, and losing him had felt like the last straw, like losing everything. He'd wanted Robbie back in his life so badly, and now here he was.
Sam pulled open the door, coming in through the combination utility room/laundry room in the back of the house.
Rachel was there pulling a load of clothes out of the dryer. She stood up straight, a bundle of clothes in her arms, frowning. "It was bad?"
"Worse than I ever imagined," he admitted, toeing off his boots on the mat by the door. "I should have listened to you. I should have found him and told him everything. I could have brought him back here to stay with us, before anything happened."
"You know why you didn't." She dropped the bundle of clothes onto the top of the washer. "You didn't want to tear his life apart. You said he was happy then, that everything seemed fine with him."
"It did."
"So what happened?"
"I don't know." He watched as she started to fold the clothes, then went to help her, pulling an old, worn sweatshirt from the pile of laundry. It was still warm, and he shook it out and folded it. They'd had a million conversations right here in this room, her folding clothes and him helping her. He'd never thought they'd have this particular one.
"Emma might know what happened to him," Rachel said.
Sam took a breath and let it out very, very slowly.
Emma.
Emma and my brother.
He was torn completely, between bone-deep sorrow over the mess that was his brother's life and fatherly outrage over anything that might have happened between Rye and his daughter.
"I told him she was eighteen, and if I hadn't been so damned mad at him, it might have been funny," he admitted. "The look on his face..."
Rachel shook out a shirt and held it against her chest to fold. "He really didn't know?"
Sam shook his head, then got mad again. "Hell, he could have asked."
"Do you know that he didn't?"
"I know that he's a grown man, and he damned well shouldn't be putting his hands all over a girl without knowing how old she is."
"Sam"—Rachel left the laundry alone and turned to face him—"I hate telling you this, but Emma thinks she's in love with him."
"Shit," he said, staring down into the face of the woman he'd loved since she was even younger than Emma. Of course, he'd been nearly as young himself. He'd fought and lost a long, raging battle with himself to try to keep his hands off Rachel for years. So he knew what that was like. But he hadn't been nearly fifteen years older than she was.
"What the hell happened between them?" he growled.
"Nothing." As always, Rachel soothed him. She put her hands on his arm, running them up and down for a moment. "She said nothing happened."
"She doesn't think she's in love with him over nothing."
Rachel's mouth twitched at that, the corners curling, and then her soft lips stretching into a smile.
"What is so funny?" Sam asked, putting his arms around her and hauling her to him.
"You, like this. Better be careful. You might remind me of my own father when he was so mad about you and me."
"I wasn't thirty-three when you and I got together."
"No, but you can't tell her she's too young to know what love is. She knows I was married to you and pregnant with your child before I was eighteen."
Sam choked back what he'd been about to say: Hell, yes, she's too young. Instead, he said, "How did she get to be eighteen anyway?"
Rachel kissed his cheek, whispered, "I don't know. One of those mysterious things. You turn your back, and they're grown."
They hadn't had enough time with her. She'd been almost twelve when she came to them, and a little grown-up even then.
"She has her whole life ahead of her. We'll start there," he reasoned, then remembered something else. "Oh, hell, it's not like Emma's going to have a choice. He's still on probation for the manslaughter conviction years ago. If he gets convicted of assault here, he's going back to prison for a long time. That'll keep him away from Emma."
"And away from you," Rachel reminded him.
"Shit."
<
br /> "I know. And I don't think Emma would ever forgive herself if either of those things happened." Rachel held on tighter.
Sam stood there, still stunned sometimes by how very much he needed his wife. He'd always believed she had saved him. He'd been as lost and as angry as he thought his brother must have been, and who was to say what might have happened to Sam if not for Rachel. She was every bit of softness and love he'd ever known, except for those very early years with his parents and the last seven years they'd had with the kids.
He thought of all he had now, Rachel and the kids, his work and the home they'd built here. It was more than he'd ever imagined having, more than he thought he deserved. Life had been very, very good to Sam McRae and just lousy to his brother.
"I could have been just like him," Sam said, holding her tighter, pushing her face to his chest and kissing the top of her head. "It would have been so easy. I could be sitting right where he is now."
"I'm not sure I believe that."
"I do. Emma probably thinks she can save him from himself."
Her head came up at that. "Maybe she can."
Sam let her go. "Don't tell me you're okay with this."
"I'm not crazy about the idea of Emma growing up, but I think parents have been trying to stop it from happening for thousands of years, and as far as I know, it's never worked."
"She's eighteen," he said, totally unable to connect his daughter now with the age his wife had once been when they'd gotten together.
"And she's not foolish or reckless. She's careful and smart."
"And the last guy she got involved with smacked her around." Sam groaned. "How the hell can I condemn my brother for doing something I'd really like to have done myself. I'd like to tear that little bastard who hurt her apart limb by limb."
"I know that, too." She understood him better than he did himself.
He took her hands in his, holding on. "I don't know what to do," he confessed. "I have absolutely no idea what to do."
"Sure you do. We'll try to help your brother. There's no reason to get crazy about him and Emma, especially when he's in jail. Nothing's going to happen between them as long as he's there."
"Okay." He could do that. Sam was just afraid it wouldn't be enough. That nothing he could do at this point would be enough. But Rachel was here. They were in this together. He could do anything as long as he had her, couldn't he?
