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  He gave me a hooded look as he crossed his arms over his chest. “She doesn’t hate you. She’s just protective of me, and it’s been a long time. I don’t think she was ready for the actuality of me being grown and having lived an entire life she had no part of.”

  “One of these days do you plan on sharing why she had no part of that life?” I tilted my chin back so that I could look him in the eye. “I think that’s a story I would like to hear. Also I’m not at all surprised you were scared to go see her on your own. She’s something else.”

  His eyebrows shot upwards so fast I was amazed they didn’t go flying off his forehead. His gorgeous eyes widened and colored with disbelief. “I wasn’t scared to go into her room alone.”

  I made a face at him and pushed past him so I could get out of the elevator. “Oh right. You’re a big, badass soldier, you aren’t scared of anything. That’s why you were pale and shaking at the door. I get it, she talks to you like you’re five and you clearly adore her and don’t want to let her down. I would be nervous about my reception, too.”

  Once we pushed out the front doors and back into the idyllic scenery that made up his hometown he grabbed my arm and hauled me around so that we were nose to nose. He was breathing hard and there was an unhinged panic in his eyes that I had never seen before. This was Church close to the edge. The edge of what, I had no clue, but I was smart enough to recognize that I needed to shut my mouth or else there was a real risk I would end up pushing him over.

  “Elma Mae loves me and nothing I could do or have done would ever make her stop. I wasn’t nervous or scared about how she would handle seeing me after all this time.” His eyes flashed a million different emotions at me and his lungs pushed out breaths as rapidly as he could pull them in. “I didn’t want her to be dead.”

  He dropped the bomb at the same time he let me go. I rocked back on my heels and put a hand over my chest where my heart was racing, trying to keep up with his erratic behavior.

  “Why would you think that? You knew she was doing fine other than her injuries. Why would you think that she would be dead just because you finally made it to see her?” He wasn’t making any sense but I could see he was as serious as could be.

  His eyes drilled into me and his voice was icy cold and devoid of all emotion when he flatly responded, “Because the women I care about don’t make it. I get a good thing in my life and it goes away before I realize just how good it is. Bad can always get worse and there isn’t a damn thing I can do to stop it.” He pulled his eyes away from mine and turned his back on me as he started walking towards the motorcycle. “Why do you think I refuse to let myself think about there being a me and you, pretty girl? You’re all good and I don’t want to bring you into the kind of bad I can’t seem to shake.”

  His words floored me. They left me frozen on the spot and unable to think straight. He started the bike and refused to look at me while I stood stuck and immobile a few feet away.

  We needed to talk. I needed to understand. He needed to make what had just happened here make some kind of sense, because I knew for a fact Church was a lot of things, some I liked more than others, but none of those things was bad.

  I was starting to see what all those dark clouds and shadows that hovered over him were made of.

  Memories and regrets and a whole lot of loss that he couldn’t stop. He was still feeling old wounds like they were freshly sliced into his soul. I didn’t know if there was a sunny day bright enough to shine through all of that but I’d be damned if I didn’t try to find one for him.

  Chapter 10

  Church

  I’d spent the last ten years of my life putting myself in dangerous situation after dangerous situation. I’d lost friends and come close to losing myself on more than one occasion. I’d been injured and broken down. I’d been exhausted and pushed to the limit, but in all of that time I’d refused to let fear be a factor in how I did my job. It was there, always hovering on the periphery of my consciousness, but I tuned it out and ignored it. I focused on the task at hand, on the mission, and I never froze. I believed I was bigger, badder, and my mission was more important than the things that scared me and I brazened my way through every situation I found myself in, even the ones that should have terrified me. I went into the army with a purpose.

  Today all of that long-practiced bravado fled.

  Today I couldn’t wrestle back the fear and camouflage it with bluster and balls.

  Today my hands shook so badly I couldn’t even hide my fear that another person I cared so deeply about had left this world for whatever was beyond.

  There was no hiding the stark terror that had made it almost impossible for me to open the door keeping Elma Mae from me and there was no stopping the truth from rocketing loose from the jagged place in my soul when Dixie questioned my obvious hesitation. It ripped free from the place inside where I kept it perched high and visible to constantly remind me why I refused to let myself care about anyone in a deep and meaningful way. I couldn’t withstand the loss of another vital, beautiful, loving, and generous woman. I already carried around the weight of the loss of both the women Jules had loved, and if there was any more added to the load I would buckle and never be able to get back on my feet. Senseless and wasteful. There was no rhyme or reason to why we couldn’t keep the women we loved safe and that shredded me, especially when I thought about the way I squandered time with one of them and wasted days being mad at the other because they both chose to love a good man. I should have done better, been better.

  I knew Dixie wanted an explanation. I could feel her tiny frame practically vibrating behind me and it had nothing to do with the rumble of the motorcycle and everything to do with the conversation she was waiting to have. A conversation I wanted to have about as much as I wanted to spend another year eating nothing but MREs. Telling her about my mother passing far too soon had been hard and had forced me to be far more honest than I wanted to be with anyone. If she pinned me down and made me tell her about how I knew things could go from bad to worse especially when it came to Caroline there would be no more softening of her eyes when I asked her if she was okay and no more little grins when I told her I wanted to keep her safe. She looked at me like I was a hero and I selfishly wanted to keep it that way. The truth was anything but heroic.

  Taking her from the hospital to the house I grew up in was a literal trip down memory lane. I absently catalogued all the things that were the same in the sleepy suburb where Jules’s sprawling brick ranch home was located, but it was all the things that were different that really stuck out. I forced myself to believe that home was better off without me, and me without it, but I hadn’t really prepared myself for home to go on and grow and prosper without me. The streets were lined with new homes and happy families playing in the perfectly landscaped yards. There was a park on the corner that hadn’t been there years ago, and instead of a single stoplight in the center of town there were now three—and a slew of convenience stores and a new chain superstore that felt woefully out of place in the memories I had of my hometown.

  Luckily when I pulled into the driveway of my childhood home, Jules was just pulling in as well. That meant I could put the conversation Dixie was chomping at the bit to have on the back burner for a little while longer. She liked me too much to strip me bare and drag me over the coals in front of a man I obviously respected and admired. My relationship with Jules was complicated at best, and I knew the spunky redhead well enough to know that there was no way she would want any part of driving the wedge any further between me and the man in the sheriff’s uniform that greeted us with an easy smile and a warm, fatherly glint in his dark eyes.

  “How was Elma?” Jules offered Dixie a hand as she clamored off the back of the bike. When she grinned up at the man her smile was so easy, so bright I was surprised Jules wasn’t temporarily blinded by it. I knew that when she looked at me like that I felt like I couldn’t see anything but the sunshine that glowed out of her too-big heart.r />
  Dixie took her helmet off and shook out her hair. I wanted to comb my fingers through her rowdy curls and bury my face in them. They always smelled like fresh air and sunbeams. They felt like warm silk and luxurious satin. She was like the perfect day if the perfect day was a human being.

  “She looked good to me, but she did not hide the fact that she thinks it’s my fault Church didn’t come home as soon as his discharge papers were signed. She was not a fan of this particular Yankee.”

  Jules threw his head back and let out a laugh that made his entire body shake. “The old bird did not call you a Yankee.”

  Dixie laughed. “She didn’t, but I was waiting for her to.”

  Jules laughed again and reached out for the backpack that she had been hauling around with her for the last few days. I growled a little under my breath. It was such a simple gesture, a basic act of chivalry, and I hadn’t thought to do that for her the entire time we had been together. I’d been home for less than a day and already I was being reminded of the ways I wasn’t ever going to live up to the example Julian had set for me.

  “Did you tell her your name is Dixie? That might have softened her up a little bit. You can’t be a Yankee when you’re named after the south.”

  Dixie smiled up at him and shook her head, which sent her curls bouncing. “We didn’t get that far. She gave Church the what for and told him that she would throw herself down the stairs a hundred more times if that’s what it took to finally get him home. She was equal parts impressive and terrifying.”

  Jules nodded in agreement and paused at the front door. It was like stepping back in time. I remembered the first time we walked across that doorstep as a family. I also remembered the first time Jules and I walked over it grieving my mother, both of us at a loss as to what we should do with a newborn. I remembered him bringing Caroline over for the first time and refusing to come out of my room to say hello to her. I remembered her tripping and stumbling, sick from chemo and still trying to reassure me that she would be all right. All the memories raced around, the good colliding with the bad. The happy getting shredded by the sorrow that was so much sharper.

  “She’s protective of both my boys. She never wanted Dash to leave, none of us did. She’s going to be greedy and possessive now that he’s back. She’ll warm up. Just give it some time.” Jules talked like Dixie was going to be around forever. She cast a look over her shoulder at me and I silently wished that was the case. Forever and her right in the center of it weren’t the worst things that could happen to me even if I was pretty sure I was the worst thing that could happen to her.

  “Dixie has a life and a job back in Denver she has to get back to, Jules. She agreed to ride down with me so we could extend our good-bye, but she isn’t staying.” I was surprised that the thought of letting her go of my own free will hurt almost as much as letting go of a loved one when I had no choice in the matter.

  Jules gave me a hard look as he unlocked the door and pushed it open. He shifted his attention back to Dixie and his expression softened because it was impossible to be anything but soft with her, well, impossible for everyone but me, but luckily she seemed to like it when I was hard. “Well, if that’s the case I suggest you make the most of the time you do have while you’re here together. Let Elma fawn all over Dash. Help her out, but don’t make her feel like she’s an invalid, and make sure she gets her tea in the afternoon. Take a minute to make sure her garden is watered and her flowers are tended and you’ll have a fast friend. She knows how to Skype now so don’t be surprised if she wants to keep in touch after you head back to the mountains.”

  “I’ll keep all of that in mind. Thanks for the tips.”

  Jules said something else but it was drowned out by the rush of blood into my head and the whoosh of it in my ears as I was engulfed in memories and history when I finally stepped into the house.

  The neighborhood and the surrounding city might have changed but the home where I had grown up hadn’t. Sure, there was a new couch and a massive flat screen in the living area but the pictures on the walls that showed a happy family and then another happy family were all the same. There were no signs of either of those families being ripped apart and tattered. There were smiling faces and joy. No signs of everything that had been lost and buried. Jules was focused on what he’d had, not on what he’d lost.

  There were new additions as well. Pictures of me in my football uniform and pictures of Dalen in his. Even with me being gone and communication between the two of us sparse and stilted it was obvious Jules wanted reminders of both his children front and center in his home. That knowledge hit me like a punch right in the center of my chest. It hit me so hard that I had to put a hand on the wall to brace myself as I stumbled over my feet. All this time I thought he would be disappointed in the way I left, in the way I abandoned him and Dalen to deal with the same grief we shared on their own. Those pictures made it seem like he was as proud of me now as he was when I stood by his side both times he married the women he loved.

  “You all right, son?” I was going to nod in response when a teenager that was almost as tall as me came around the corner. Tall and lanky, Dalen in person bore a striking resemblance to me when I was the same age. He had the same darker than gold skin tone and the same not quite brown or blond hair color as I did. His features took strongly from his father, but his eyes were like mine, a hazel that borrowed heavily from the ocean blue that his mother had been blessed with. He wasn’t a baby or a little boy anymore. He was a young man, a teenager with an obvious chip on his shoulder if the way he narrowed his eyes at me and tilted his head in blatant challenge was any indication. I’d missed watching my little brother grow up, missed watching him become someone that I knew I would be proud of, and while the desert was an easy place to forget about that, here in this house where I had grown up it was impossible to ignore.

  I felt my mouth open, but no words came out. My brother and I stared at each other, me stunned and in shock as the real ramifications of my disappearance slammed into me hard enough to knock me over. Dalen didn’t look happy or relieved to see me, and I couldn’t blame him. I was a stranger . . . made one through my own bad choices.

  “Hi. I’m Dalen.” He took a step towards Dixie and extended a hand. She gave the massive paw a shake and smiled at him. His voice was deep like Jules’s and echoed the same strong southern tones that colored all of our speech. The boy was good-looking and polite. I had a pang of worry that this town couldn’t appreciate everything he had going for him the way they had squandered my distinctive contributions. I never felt like I belonged anywhere until I joined the army and I didn’t want that for him.

  “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Dixie. I’m a friend of your brother’s.”

  Dalen shot me a look from the corner of his eye as he let Dixie’s hand fall. “I would say I’ve heard a lot about you but that would be a lie. We haven’t heard much about anything where Dash is concerned in a long time. I had Calvin’s mom stop so I could pick up some barbecue for dinner when she picked us up after practice.” He turned so that his back was to me and asked Jules with scorn clearly threaded into his tone, “I already ate. Is it cool if I go do homework in my room?”

  He didn’t want to be around me. I sucked in a sharp breath and gave Jules a little chin lift when he looked at me over his other son’s head. I wasn’t about to force the boy to endure my company or any kind of brotherly bonding.

  “That’s fine but you aren’t going to make a habit of hiding out while your brother is home. I haven’t had both my boys under the same roof in way too long. You’re going to indulge your old man and let me enjoy having my family all together.” He clapped the teen on the shoulder and gave him a little shake. “We’ve got to get Dash out to one of your games while he’s here.”

  Dalen snorted in a very teenaged way and stepped away from Jules. He shot me a scathing look and turned on his heel. “Like he suddenly cares what’s going on in our lives. He’s more worried about what�
��s happening to strangers in a different country than he is about what’s happening here. He wouldn’t have bothered to come home if Elma Mae hadn’t hurt herself.” The words were sharp and cutting. They were also far too cynical to come from someone so young.

  “Dalen.” Jules didn’t even bother to sound like he was going to lay into the boy for putting the truth out there but he did sound exasperated, which let me know this wasn’t the first time my little brother had mentioned how he truly felt about my absence in his life.

  I held up a hand before Jules could launch into dad mode. “It’s cool. Dalen doesn’t have to hang around if he doesn’t want to. He’s old enough to decide who he invests his time and energy in. I made some hard choices when I was close to his age and I can’t stand here and say I don’t regret most of them. I’m not going to force my company on you, Dalen, and I’m not going to ask you to pretend like you’re happy to see me if you aren’t.”

  The kid gave me a look over his shoulder that spoke volumes. I had secret fears and insecurities that I struggled to keep at bay, so did my little brother, and me being home had more than mine rearing up and fighting to break free. He left us standing in the entryway locked in an awkward silence.

  Jules sighed and lifted a hand so that he could rub it over the top of his head. “Sorry about that. I guess I shoulda warned you that he’s been a little out of sorts since I told him you were on your way home. He was so young when you shipped out . . . I don’t think he remembers that he used to look at you like you hung the moon and the stars.”

  I grunted and reached for Dixie’s bag that he was still holding on to. “Can’t say I blame him. I did a shit job trying to be a part of his life these last ten years. I’d be pissed if I was in his shoes. You want this stuff in my old room?”