Jill had heard about the loyalty and fierceness of the Afghan fighters, and she couldn’t believe they had betrayed Xavier and his men. “What happened next?”
“Since Xavier and Tom were a sniper team, they made their way back down the hill and started to pick off the Taliban, but then they started getting shot at from the enemy at the top of the hill. It was a bloody mess. A medevac couldn’t come in with all the Taliban snipers. Xavier and Tom kept them at bay for five hours. During a lull at three a.m., Xavier went hunting. He climbed up the hill and took out the four men on the top of the hill. When that was done, he and Tom made their way to the rest of the team who had been trapped. Tom started giving aid to the wounded and called in the medevac, while Xavier and two others took off to finish off the men who’d ambushed them from below. By the time the helicopter arrived, all members of the Taliban were dead. So was half of Xavier’s unit. All because they were sold out.”
Jill thought she might throw up.
“He never talked about it. Rumors spread all through the Spec Ops community that it had been a goddamn massacre. Xave came out without a scratch on him. It was a goddamn miracle, and I know, I just know, it made him feel so much worse. It didn’t matter that he was responsible for saving his team members who did live.” His voice trailed off. Once again, he was staring off into space. He shuddered.
“Then it got worse for him,” he whispered.
“What happened?”
“Ash and I insisted on a deep-sea fishing trip in the Gulf. Some of his team came along. Ash and I thought that would be good. It wasn’t. Xavier never got a chance to pay for one drink. They treated him like the second coming. I remember thinking how cool that was that they were so grateful to my brother the hero.”
His voice was bitter.
“Now I realize he was distanced from the very men he should have been able to look to for support.”
Jill could feel the tension in Law’s muscles and the anger in his voice.
“There’s more, isn’t there?”
Law took a moment, then his electric blue eyes were staring down at her. He nodded.
“I was the last one to talk to him.” His whispered words were anguished. “Jill, I’ve researched it. He did all the classic shit. He was mirroring what he needed. He kept picking at me, wanting to know if I was okay. Wanting to know if there was anything wrong, if there was anything I needed to talk about.”
His eyes shimmered with tears. She cupped his face.
“And?”
“I actually laughed and flipped him shit. I said I was fine and told him to get a life.” He choked out those last words. “I told him to get a fucking life, can you believe it?”
Jill thought her heart would break. She pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. To his cheek. On his brow. Then she pulled back and looked at him.
“Love, you didn’t know what you didn’t know. Would you want Xavier hurting this badly for something he didn’t understand?” She gripped his big shoulders, her fingers digging in. “Would Xavier want you in this much pain? Would he want you holding onto this much guilt?”
“I don’t care what he would have wanted.” Law’s voice shook. A tear broke loose. “I want him here so I can kick his ass.”
Law took a deep breath, and gave a semblance of a smile. “That’s so not true. I just want him here and happy. Or I want him somewhere, happy and at peace. Jill, there was nobody better, and he deserved to have the best life had to offer.”
Law’s shoulders sagged and his head dropped. Jill had a tough time hearing his words. “He deserved to have a better brother.”
She pushed his chin up. “Have you ever thought that maybe his last thoughts were with you? Maybe instead of a cry for help, his conversation with you was exactly what it was, a big brother who was checking up on his little brother. An act of love and caring. He loved you, Law. You know this, don’t you?”
His jaw clenched and he nodded.
“Ash said Xave never knew how to bend, so the winds just kept coming at him until that day he shattered. Ash didn’t think he ever saw it coming, it just got to be too much for him one day.”
“What do you think?” Jill asked.
“I think Xavier was fighting and was in a lot of pain, but at his core, he was a protector. If he had an idea that he was coming to a point that he would kill himself and leave all of us this hurt and devastated he would have done anything to get himself help. He would have wanted to save us from this hurt. But his demons blindsided him.”
She waited for him to hear what he just said. It took him long moments.
His head slowly shook back and forth. He looked like he was coming out of a daze.
“Let me tell you something,” Jill started. “When Lorraine got cancer, she spent months trying to figure out what she’d done, what lifestyle change she could have made that would have prevented it. She beat herself up for months, blaming herself for having cancer. I talked till I was blue in the face telling her she wasn’t at fault. Finally, a really wise nurse told her to stop
