She couldn’t work up the energy to find it in herself to care. But if she kept standing there, staring at Danielle’s empty house, he’d just keep hovering. Turning away from the window, she gave him a vacant, halfhearted smile. “I think I’m going to lie down.”
She passed by him, and from the corner of her eye, she saw him reach out to touch her. She paused, froze inside, and then shame flooded her as he closed his hand into a fist and let it fall back to his side. “Try to get some sleep,” he said hollowly.
Sleep. No, she didn’t want to sleep.
When she slept, she dreamed. And only in her dreams did she really remember much of what happened.
It eluded her almost the moment she surfaced, but whatever happened in her dreams was enough to have her fearing sleep almost as much as she feared everything else.
LUKE dropped into a seat across from Quinn and signaled the waitress for a beer. The steakhouse was as crowded today as it had been the night he’d run into Devon, and for a few minutes, he was glad of the noise, glad of the distraction. It drowned out the ugly, ridiculing voice in his head.
You failed her.
Yeah. He’d failed her, thanks; he didn’t need the glaring neon reminder. It was a fact he was going to have to live with—and worse, one that Devon had to live with.
“You look like shit,” Quinn said without preamble.
Luke didn’t bother with a pretense. With Quinn, it wasn’t necessary. “I feel like shit.” When his twin had called that morning to say he was in town, Luke had to admit, he was a little put off. He couldn’t leave Devon alone; he knew he was hovering, as she called it, but he couldn’t stop.
But then Devon’s mom had shown up and browbeaten Devon into some Christmas shopping. It was interesting, the way a mom could make her child do something she definitely didn’t want to, even as a grown-up. Luke’s experience with having a mom was nonexistent, and he’d watched the exchange with something akin to fascination and envy.
Liz alternately bullied, chided, and dared Devon, until Devon gave in and agreed to do some shopping. On their way out, the older woman had paused beside him, patted his cheek. There was a world of understanding in her eyes, even though she didn’t say a single word.
So while Devon was out shopping, or pretending to, Luke called his brother and asked where they could meet up. The restaurant wouldn’t have been his choice, because Devon might end up at that mall. But Quinn was already at the mall, checking out the bookstore, and Luke wasn’t about to explain why he didn’t want to be there.
“What do you think about Dad heading down to the Bahamas with Carrie Moorehaven?” Luke asked, trying hard not to think about Devon and failing miserably.
His brother shrugged, but there was a ghost of a smile on his face. “Figure it’s about time. She’s only been trying to get his attention since I met her.”
Luke laughed. “She’s been trying to get his attention for as long as I can remember.” Closing his fingers around his beer, he lifted it, but instead of taking a drink, he just stared at the brown bottle.
Feeling Quinn’s eyes on him, he lowered the beer back down and tried to focus on his brother. Focus wasn’t his strong point lately, and he couldn’t make himself relax worth anything. “You going to be around here for Christmas?” he asked, even though he hoped Quinn said no. He wouldn’t let his brother spend the holiday alone, but maybe Quinn had plans . . .
“Nah. Jeb called me a few days ago, asked me if I wanted to meet up with him, do some skiing. Might do a little hunting.” Quinn rolled his eyes, smirking. “I still don’t see the appeal of shooting deer, but I could go for some peace and quiet.”
“His cabin in Vermont?”
Quinn nodded. “Yeah. Thinking I might try to find some work in the town near the cabin, maybe spend a while up there. Jeb’s talking like he might be up there for a few weeks at least.”
“Weeks?” Luke repeated. “Why weeks? He didn’t get hurt, did he?”
“Nah. Just taking some downtime.” He shrugged and added, “God knows he probably needs the downtime.” Pausing, he took a drink of his beer. “Actually, I think he’s pulling out. Not altogether, but . . .” Quinn stopped in midsentence, blew out a hard puff of air. “Jeb said they disbanded the unit. Reassigned Brandon and the younger guys to different teams. Offered reassignment to Jeb, but he didn’t want to start over again. Said he might think about teaching or training or some shit.”
Brows drawing together over his eyes, Luke said, “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
“Damn.” Then he cocked his head, eying Quinn curiously. “You said Jeb and the younger guys. What about Tony?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” Quinn said, his voice sharp as a blade. Anger throbbed there, but it was an icy-cold rage. His eyes cut to Luke’s, and he shook his head before Luke could even form the question. “Don’t. Okay? Just don’t.”
Quinn lifted his hands, scrubbed them over his face. When he lowered them, the harsh, angry features had softened just a little.
“Everything okay, Quinn?”
Smirking, Quinn lifted his bottle and saluted Luke with it. “Right as rain.”
Leaning back, he studied Luke. The look in those familiar gray eyes was one that Luke knew spelled out trouble. “So when do I get to meet this girl of yours?”
He’d wanted to have his twin meet Devon on Christmas, but now . . . now it didn’t seem like such a good idea. Quinn wasn’t the easiest person to handle under ideal circumstances. The past few weeks? Not ideal in any way, shape, or form. “Sometime.” He shrugged. “Soon. Maybe.”
“Why not now?”
Thinking back to the past few weeks, Luke shook his head. “Bad timing, Quinn.” Seriously bad timing. Hell, he had his concerns about introducing them period, although he knew he needed to. But Quinn would home in on Devon’s past; somehow or other, something she did, something she said would clue him in, he’d see her scars, and Quinn would make a quicker jump than Luke had. Luke needed to prepare Quinn first, but now was definitely not the time.
“Yeah, I figured something like that. You’ve been in a bitch of a mood the past few weeks.” He lifted his beer to his lips, took a drink. “Been waiting to hear why, but you ain’t called me. It’s about her.”
Luke heard the undercurrent, heard Quinn’s need to know what was going on. Sighing, he rolled his shoulders, tried to ease some of the tension inside him. “Devon was attacked a few weeks ago,” he said quietly, passing his beer from one hand to the other. “He hurt her pretty bad, scared her to death.”
Luke trailed off, his mouth going dry as he remembered rushing inside Danielle’s house to see the paramedics hovering over Devon’s still body. The hours that followed had been the most awful hours of his life. She’d briefly come to in the ambulance, but her battered throat had made speech impossible.
Even now, her voice had a husky, rough quality that Luke wasn’t sure would ever go away. A permanent reminder of his failure. “Some bastard had been stalking her,” Luke said brusquely. “You remember that guy I told you about?”
“The one you wanted to kill that morning. Yeah.”
“He’d been stalking her. I didn’t want her home alone.” His voice cracked, and for a moment, Luke didn’t think he could do this. Shit, shit, shit. Squeezing his eyes closed, he whispered, “I asked her to wait across the street at her friend’s. But he’d been over there, waiting for her. Just waiting. He beat the shit out of the girl, and then he went and did it to Devon.”
Quinn was silent.
For that, Luke was thankful. Words were pointless by then. They did nothing to ease his guilt, and they did nothing to bring him comfort, either. But Quinn slid his hand across the table, closed his fingers around Luke’s wrist. Like grabbing onto a lifeline, Luke turned his hand over and clutched his brother’s. “I failed her. I knew something would happen, kept telling myself I should call you, have you come watch her for me while I was at work, but when I mentioned d
oing something like that, it freaked her out. I didn’t want her more nervous, figured that wouldn’t help, but I knew I needed you there, and I didn’t call you. I fucked up, and she damn near died because of me.”
“That isn’t true,” Quinn said. He glanced around the crowded steakhouse with a scowl and then slid out of the seat, threw a twenty on the table. “Come on. You and me don’t need this shit right now.”
On stiff, wooden legs, Luke got up and followed Quinn out of the steakhouse. Quinn walked in silence, and Luke followed aimlessly behind him, uncertain where Quinn was going and not really caring.
“How do I live like this, Quinn?” he asked raggedly. “How do I live knowing that I failed her? I was supposed to protect her.”
Quinn took his time answering. “How did she get away?”
“Get away?” Luke shook his head, not understanding the question at first. “She didn’t . . . She—the cops think she killed him when he tried to come at her. He’d already beat the hell out of her, kept choking her until she passed out, then letting her go until she woke up and he could do it again. Looks like he was getting ready to rape her, and she got ahold of some bookend, brained him with it. He was dead, and she was unconscious when the cops found them.”
“How did the cops know to go check things out? Neighbors?”
Shoving a hand through his hair, Luke answered, “I was worried. She didn’t answer her phone. So I called—”
“And they found her. Even if the guy wasn’t dead, they would have found her.”
“Not soon enough,” Luke said harshly.
They stopped in front of a big, mean-looking Harley. It had lots of chrome and lots of black paint. Quinn rested a hip against it, folding his arms across his chest and leveling a steady gaze at Luke’s face. “They found her alive, didn’t they? Luke, that’s better than what could have happened.” A grimace twisted his lips, and he muttered, “Believe me, I know.”
“That’s not good enough.” Luke shook his head, his eyes burning. “It’s not. I can’t live with that.”
“You have no choice,” Quinn said, in an oddly gentle voice. “You can’t undo what’s happened.”
“You think I don’t fucking know that?” Luke demanded. He spun away and started to pace, ignoring the ebb and flow of holiday shoppers who rushed out of the mall to shove last-minute gifts into their trunks and then go back inside for more. A car paused by the spot where Quinn sat on the bike, waiting to see if they were leaving, but the twins ignored him, and the man finally drove off.
“It’s over. It’s done. I get that. What I don’t get is how I’m supposed to live with this guilt choking me. I don’t know how I’m supposed to act around her, if I’m allowed to touch her, if I should hold her when she’s having nightmares. I don’t know what to do, Quinn.”
Quinn waited a beat and then drawled, “Well, that’s gotta be new territory for you.” Shoving off the bike, he moved to intercept Luke, blocking his brother’s ceaseless pacing. “You really think you feeling guilty is helping her at all?”
Luke shook his head, hardly able to breathe past the knot in his chest. “I can’t not feel guilty, Quinn. I sent her over to that house, because I thought she’d be safer there.”
“Since when were you a fortune-teller, Luke?” Quinn shook his head. “Safety’s an illusion half the time anyway. We both know that. But whether you get it or not, you did save her. Now finish the job; save her from letting this destroy the rest of her life. And yours.”
“Finish the job.”
“FINISH the job.”
Luke paced the living room floor for the hundredth time and then stopped, swore out loud. Quinn made it sound so damn easy. “Finish the job.”
Never in his life had Luke left a job unfinished, but Devon wasn’t a job. She was the woman he loved, a woman he hadn’t protected.
Stop it. Coming to a halt in the middle of the floor, he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and muttered out loud, “Just stop. You can’t help her with this if you let the guilt eat you alive.” Logically, hey, he knew that. But putting it aside was going to be harder. Luke knew he’d be fighting this guilt for the rest of his life.
But if he didn’t do something, he’d be spending that life alone.
In his gut, he knew it.
Devon was drifting away from him, slowly, bit by bit. Every day she became a little more distant. He had to get her to forgive him for failing her, had to convince her that she could trust him to take care of her. Had to convince her that he loved her more than anybody else ever would.
“Finish the job: save her from letting this destroy the rest of her life.” Damn Quinn. His twin had a knack for pointing out what should have been obvious.
There were times when it astounded Luke just how clearly Quinn saw things. Quinn kept himself so far apart from people, and most people were more than happy to let him keep that distance. Including Luke, at times. As much as he hated it, there were times when the storms he sensed raging inside his twin left Luke feeling so damn tangled inside, it was a relief when Quinn pulled back.
Maybe it was that distance that let Quinn see things so clearly. Whatever it was, Quinn was right.
If Luke let this take over, then it wouldn’t matter all that much that Devon had escaped with her life, that Curtis Wilder or Waller or whoever in the hell he had been, it wouldn’t matter that he hadn’t raped her, hadn’t killed her.
She’d retreat back inside her shell, that safe, lonely place where people couldn’t hurt her and where she’d slowly die inside. Where nobody could touch her—including Luke.
On leaden legs, he moved to stand in front of the window, staring across the street at Danielle’s house. He wanted to burn the place down. Wanted to get rid of any physical reminder of what had happened there, but he knew it wouldn’t solve anything.
Physical solutions weren’t going to fix emotional hurts. He couldn’t erase the memories, even if he burned Danielle’s empty house to the ground, and it was nothing more than cinders and ash. Fisting his hand in the soft, thick curtains, he leaned his head against the icy windowpane.
Closing his eyes, he whispered, “God, what in the hell am I supposed to do?”
How could he help her now, when he hadn’t helped her then? Like a ghostly whisper, he heard Quinn say, “But whether you get it or not, you did save her.”
Luke didn’t get it. He didn’t see it. If he’d saved her, he would have gotten to her before she’d been beaten, strangled, almost raped.
“But you got to her before he could rape her. Before he could kill her.”
Luke shook his head, mumbled, “But she stopped him. It wasn’t me. Wasn’t the cops.”
She stopped the attack by killing Wilder. Now she had to live with the memories as well as the knowledge that she’d taken a life. Wilder deserved to die—there was no doubt of that—but Luke hadn’t ever been able to kill without feeling the loss of each life somewhere deep inside him. Terrorists, drug lords, murderers, he’d taken those lives during his time in the Rangers, but each death had marked him.
This would mark Devon, and that was another way he’d failed her.
“Stop it,” he snapped, jerking away from the window and pacing. “Put it away, damn it. Put it away.” He closed his eyes, a ragged sigh escaping him. Luke knew how to live with guilt. He’d lived with it for years, guilt that Quinn had been a punching bag for their mother while Luke was happy, safe, and loved with their dad. Guilt that he hadn’t even known about his twin until he was older. Even if he’d grown up feeling like some part of him was missing, he hadn’t known. Guilt over not being enough of a brother to Quinn, enough family to make the sad, quiet loner happy.
Luke wasn’t a stranger to guilt, but it hadn’t ever swamped him quite like this. It hadn’t turned his heart into ash and cast a gray pall over everything he did, everything he said, everything he felt and thought. Forcing himself to take a deep breath, he focused his mind, tried to distance himself.
If t
his wasn’t Devon, if it wasn’t a woman he loved, but somebody he had seen in the hospital, or the wife of a friend, somebody, anybody but Devon, how would he handle it? How would he suggest others handle it?
He couldn’t even think in terms of How would I handle this if I had shown up in time to keep her from getting hurt? He’d been playing that song and dance for two weeks, and all it did was add the weight of guilt.
No, he had to take a step back, force himself to think about this like it had happened to somebody else.
Give her time.
That would have been his first suggestion. Although two weeks wasn’t much time at all, Devon wasn’t getting better. She was getting worse, becoming more and more reclusive. Before today, she hadn’t left the house for anything except a follow-up doctor’s appointment he’d dragged her to and to go see Danielle at the hospital. She hadn’t left for work, she hadn’t left to go to the store, she hadn’t left to go to church, she hadn’t left the house to even check the damn mail.
Time wasn’t helping her.
Get back to life. That was what she needed to do. What they both needed to do. He’d taken the first week off, but this past week, he’d gone back to work. Just two days this week, and next week, he had three shifts down. Easing back into it, even though he felt guilty as hell for leaving her alone in the house.
The first few days, her mother had come by, but yesterday, Devon had been alone in the house. Alone all day and when he got home, she’d been sitting on the couch in almost the exact position she’d been in when he’d left, still wearing her pajamas and staring at the TV with a glassy, fixed gaze.
He’d gently bullied her into taking a hot bath, had fixed her a bowl of chicken noodle soup that she hadn’t touched, hot cocoa that she only sipped from two or three times, and then he helped her get ready for bed—babying her. She hadn’t said anything, hadn’t seemed to mind or care.
Hell, she didn’t even seem to really notice him.
Okay. So he’d start there. Not with making her notice him, but with the rest of it. He couldn’t keep coddling her. Even though that was what he wanted to do, what he needed to do, he had a feeling it wasn’t what she needed.
Fragile Page 23
