I grabbed the first bottle of whiskey I found and snatched one of several corkscrews from a drawer. I didn’t bother going back upstairs for a glass – I just took several swallows, one right after the other, and let the burn roll through me. I had no doubt the alcohol had cost Seth’s father a fortune, but I barely noticed the taste. But as much as I would have liked to get drunk in the hopes of obliterating the sight of Seth struggling beneath the weight of the other man, I knew he might need me to be at a hundred percent mentally, so I closed the bottle and put it away before going back upstairs.
In the six years since Michael “Hawke” Hawkins had helped me get justice for Trace, I’d taken more lives than I’d saved in all of my years of practicing medicine. No, they hadn’t all died by my hand directly, but I’d given the order on every single one. But none of those deaths, no matter how vile the criminal, had ever brought me pleasure. Only watching every single one of Trace’s killers die had ever done that for me. And I knew without a shadow of a doubt that taking Barry’s life would have come a close second. That fact should have bothered me more than it did, but the only part that I was struggling with was the fact that Seth had seen the real me in that study.
For all the times I’d worried that Seth’s hero worship of me would turn to something more when he’d been younger, I hadn’t expected to now feel the loss of that last link between us so keenly. Maybe because I didn’t want Seth to have to lose yet another thing from his past. More selfishly though, I wasn’t sure what would happen when I lost that last link to myself.
Once I was back upstairs, I paced the kitchen restlessly as I waited for Seth to return. When I checked the time on my phone, I realized a mere fifteen minutes had passed since Seth had left so I kept myself busy by going up to my room and changing out of my pants and into a pair of jeans. I left my dress shirt on but got rid of the jacket and the shoulder holster. I tucked one of my Glocks into the back of my jeans and then went back downstairs. I glanced out the back door again but still saw no sign of Seth, so I busied myself with changing the security code on the front door. I’d have to do the security gate at the end of the driveway at some point too but since Seth’s house had nothing protecting the perimeter from intruders, the gate wasn’t much of a deterrent.
By the time I was done, Seth had been gone for less than a half an hour, but I was too restless to give him any more time or space so I went out the kitchen door and started walking towards the beach. But I stopped when I saw Bullet lying next to one of the lounge chairs on the far side of the pool. The chair was turned away from the pool and facing the dark blue waters of the Sound and the Olympic mountains beyond.
I didn’t bother grabbing a chair as I moved to Seth’s side and I was pleased that even though he didn’t look up at my approach, he moved his legs out of the way when I sat down on the end of the lounger.
“I didn’t see it,” he whispered.
“What?”
“That thing that made him dangerous,” he said. “I knew something was off the last few months but I thought I was overreacting. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings if I was wrong. He…he helped me.”
“He took advantage of you,” I corrected.
Seth shook his head. “Why did you come back, Ronan?”
“I didn’t leave, Seth,” I said. “I ran some errands today,” I hedged, not wanting to admit I’d been following him. “I left my stuff in the guest room.”
A raw, ugly chuckle found its way out of Seth’s throat. I could tell he was close to losing it.
“You go when I need you to stay and you stay when I tell you to go.” Seth shifted and swung his legs over the side of the lounger but didn’t get up. “You won’t let me touch you but you won’t stop touching me. You want answers but you won’t give them.”
Seth rose as he said, “I can’t figure out what’s more fucked up – wishing you’d stop seeing me as Trace’s little brother or being terrified that you already have.”
I let Seth go because how could I tell him that the only thing fucked up about this whole thing was me?