I watched as Edie ran up to her dad. He’d seen her coming, hunching down to pick her up. Love washed over his face. It was beautiful. Then those eyes looked across the room to Thea. I knew that look, had been on the receiving end of it, often enough, in the last couple of months. “I don’t think she’s his only Achilles heel,” I said. My focus shifted to see Killian watching me, giving me the same look.
“Looks to me like you’re his.”
I turned to her and smiled. “He’s mine, too.”
She took my hand and squeezed. “I can see that. Let’s get something to drink. I could use something to drink.” We walked into the kitchen, the only place that was kind of quiet. She poured two glasses of wine and then drank half of hers. “I know this is what he does, but damn. Every time, I just…”
“This was all kind of thrown at me on the plane,” I confessed.
Thea’s head jerked to me then she topped off my glass. “Then you need this more than me.”
“They’re really going to confront the mob?” I asked.
“Yeah, but I’m not as worried about that.”
My wine went down the wrong pipe; I coughed it out, then looked at Thea like she’d lost her mind. “You’re not worried about the mob?”
“Not really.” She took a sip, saw my expression, then clarified, “We’ve got Anton.” When I continued to look confused, she added, “He’s connected.”
“To the mob?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I drained my glass.
Thea chuckled then finished her own. “I’d like to say you get used to it, but you don’t.” On the surface, she looked calm, but just under the surface, she was struggling. I touched her hand. “It’s going to be okay.”
Her eyes were bright. “I know. I just hate this part.” She smiled. “Let’s go see if Edie convinced Damian to let her dance."
We walked back into the living room, and my feet would carry me no farther when I saw the leather cuts and the man in the middle of them.
“Who are they?” Thea asked.
Just then, Brock’s shoulders tensed, before he turned, and those gray eyes found me, warming slightly.
My past and present collided; my two paths intersected. The first boy I loved and the last man I’d love, hopes and dreams crashing into survival and second chances. My whole life summed up in the two men who stood on opposite sides of the law. Both prepared to go down a road they may not come back from because, despite what side of law and order they were on, evil was evil. I’d already lost so much, but I still had so much more to lose.
Thea was looking at me expectantly, so I whispered, “Brock, my first love.”
“Oh,” Thea said and then it sank in. “Oh….”
I spent the night helping make food, cleaning up, playing with the dogs, anything to keep myself distracted because, though, I knew what the plan was, it was settling in that they were really going to do this, they were really going to walk right into danger. I understood how Thea felt in the kitchen, what I didn’t understand was how she wasn’t more freaked out. I couldn’t handle Killian putting himself in danger all the time.
Edie and I had been coloring. She was a beautiful child and so much like her mom. She reminded me of me, too, at her age, another who went to the beat of her own drum. I had an idea, so when she fell asleep, curled up in a pile of dogs, I started sketching, a line of clothes for kids like Edie and me.
I didn’t know how long I sat there, but I had sketch after sketch, my fingers flying over the pages. I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone until a shadow fell over me.
“Designs not intended for unimaginative sheep.”
My eyes closed as pain washed through me at the reminder of what could have been. I looked up, but the man who looked back wasn’t the same Brock who had said those words once upon a time. His arms were covered in tattoos, his body hard and scarred, but it was his face that had changed the most, closed off, cold, but there was a little bit of the boy I knew looking back.
“Edie reminds me of me.”
He hesitated, before he settled on the sofa next to me. “Cupcakes,” he said.
I smiled, even as tears burned the back of my eyes. “Yeah.” I looked down at my sketchbook. “We’re not the same people, and we can’t go back….” I turned my head to him, touched his leather. “But we are family. The only family I have left.”
Pain swept his face, his jaw clenched.
“I know you did what you had to do, but I could lose you again. That’s not acceptable.”
He glanced at me, and there was my Brock.
“We’ll never be the same, but we can move on, still be involved in each other’s lives. I don’t accept that you’re going to walk off into the sunset. From the minute I walked into that fort, we were bound. You know it as well as I do. We aren’t where we thought we’d be, but we are connected. And I refuse to continue living a life where I’m missing part of myself.” I didn’t realize I was crying until Brock wiped my tears away.
He studied me; his lips tipped up on the one side. “You’ve gotten bossy.”
I had no reaction, at first, and then I laughed, out loud, because what a ridiculous thing to say.
“You can’t walk out of my life again, Brock. I know your life is on the fringe now, but I live in the woods, and I have connections with the law.”
He looked down; his jaw clenched again. “It’s not that easy.”
“It is.”
His head tilted to me.
“It is that easy. We survived before, we’ve been surviving, but it’s time we live truly live. And
