The store was closed. It wouldn’t open until ten, but it looked the same as it had the last time I’d been there. I skirted the front entrance for the back door leading to the corporate offices. I punched in the key code at the door―almost surprised when it stilled worked―and entered the main lobby. It was full of antique furniture, enormous vases loaded with flowers, and landscapes of the estate.
The art had been done over several centuries by some of the best artists of the time. It made me think of Tristan and the painting in her studio. The one of Dani that I’d known wasn’t quite right even though I’d been unable to tell her how to fix it.
The receptionist’s desk was empty; it was far too early for anyone to be in. I didn’t even know who sat behind the desk these days. I hadn’t cared ever. Not even when I was small and the bus dropped me off at the store. All I’d cared about then was running to find Mom, or Dad, or Carson to tell them about my day.
Mom and Dad had shared an office until his death, and even after, Mom had refused to let his belongings be taken from the space. When I got to the door that had been theirs, it had no nameplate on it, and when I went inside, it felt unused, the air stale like it had been at the mausoleum. Only Mom’s desk remained, but it was cleaned off, empty like the cabinets and shelves which filled the walls. The wooden shutters on the windows were closed. I opened them, letting in the light and sending dust motes shimmering into the beam which filled the room.
I sat down in her chair made of soft, brown leather. It was tucked and pleated, making an office chair look as feminine as possible. Mom had been very feminine. Like the flowers we grew, dainty and frail. But like the Amethyst Falls wisteria she’d seeded and grown, she’d been deceptively hardy. At least until she’d lost Dad. Then she’d withered on her vine.
Thoughts of her stabbed at me viciously in this place.
I hadn’t been enough to keep her.
I hadn’t been able to save her.
I hadn’t been able to save Darren.
I hadn’t been enough for Tristan.
A vicious cycle I didn’t want to repeat. Could I be enough for Dani? Would I be able to keep her safe? I didn’t have a great track record with the people I loved most. If I continued in this direction with her, a path that felt like pure joy and rapture, I’d have to be different. Stronger and softer all at the same time. We SEALs weren’t known for our gentleness, just the steel we were cut from.
“Do you remember the time she raced you down the hall in that chair?” Carson’s voice cut into the silence, jerking me from my thoughts. I hadn’t heard him come in. A natural hunter himself, he was quiet, but I didn’t give myself any slack for it. I would have failed out of training these days. Too much on my brain dimming my natural senses instead of enhancing them.
“I remember you were pissed when I broke the wheel of your chair trying to catch her,” I said, but there was no bitterness in my tone like there used to be when talking to him about anything related to Mom.
He leaned against the doorframe but was looking down at the wooden planks toward the receptionist’s desk as if he could still see Mom and me, feet curled up, using only our arms to push off the walls as we went. He brought himself out of his reverie, coming into her office, and sitting on a chair across the desk from where I was.
“It’s been a long time since you’ve come here,” he said, but there was a question in his voice that I didn’t know how to answer. I wasn’t sure why I’d come. I wasn’t sure what I was doing. To my surprise, he didn’t jump right into the age-old argument of my place being there. With the family business. It had been our quarrel for so long I wasn’t sure either of us knew how to give up on it.
When I didn’t respond, he continued, his tone kinder than ever before. “I heard about your team.”
I looked up, surprised not only by his words but by the change in the direction of the conversation. I hadn’t contacted either Maribelle or Carson after the blown mission. I hadn’t spoken to them when I’d come back to the States or after they’d stitched me up. I hadn’t told them about fighting at Mac’s side as we brought the assholes to justice who’d approved the op for all the wrong reasons.
And I couldn’t tell him about it now.
It was Carson who continued. “I guess I’m still listed as your emergency contact. I knew you were missing, and then…” His voice seemed to clog with emotions I didn’t expect Carson to ever have. “We―I―thought you might come home to heal.”
There wasn’t a reprimand in his tone; it was more like sadness or hurt. I’d been good at feeling nothing for Carson for twenty-one years, and I wasn’t sure I could continue to do that if he revealed feelings I didn’t know he owned.
“You can’t have it both ways,” I said dryly. “You can’t send me away when you didn’t want me and then honestly expect me to come running back as if I owed it to you to do so.”
His wild and bushy eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “I didn’t send you away because I didn’t want you. I sent you away because it was Suzannah’s wish.”
“What?” The heart that Dani was slowly starting to push back to life curled up at his words.
“Your mom wanted more for you than the local public school and the skater friends you’d been hanging out with. She wanted to
