“You should have fucking told me, man.”
Rhys rubbed his jaw. “Can I get up without you trying to break my jaw?”
Cullen stepped back.
Rhys stood. “I’m assuming she told you.”
“Yes. She was in the hospital for three months, and I didn’t know. What if she had died, Rhys, and I hadn’t been able to be with her?”
“She talked about that. She just said if she died, she didn’t want you to remember her sick but how she was when she left. Man, I kept pleading with her, but she just said she loved you too much to put you through it.”
Cullen sat down and put his head in his hands. “It must have been hard on you.”
Rhys sighed and nodded. “I don’t know how often I sat in their chapel and cried. It was the worst thing I’ve ever gone through. Worse than when we lost our parents. She’s the only family I have left, and she’s my baby sister. She kept me going after Mom and Dad died. I knew I couldn’t break down, and I had to be tough because I had her to raise. I know she was already fifteen, but she still needed me to keep it together.”
“She’ll always need you,” Cullen said.
“Where is she at now?” Rhys asked.
“My house.”
Rhys leaned his ass against the front of his desk and crossed his arms. “You have every right to be angry, but please try to look at it from her side. She didn’t feel good and was in pain, but every time she saw me, she apologized to me like it was her fault she got sick. I can’t imagine how stressed she would have been having you there and knowing she was taking you away from something you worked years for.”
Cullen nodded. It didn’t help, but he hoped that he’d be able to see it from her side later.
“What are you going to do?” Rhys asked.
Cullen shook his head. “I have no idea. Right now, I just want to shake her.”
“Do you want me to go get her and take her home? It will give you a chance and the time to settle a bit so you can think straight.”
Cullen thought about it and then nodded. “Yeah. I don’t want to upset her any more than she already is, and I won’t worry about her if she’s with you.”
Rhys straightened and slapped his shoulder. “I’ll go now. Call me later if there’s anything else I can do.”
Cullen stood, nodded, and started to walk out. He stopped at the door and turned back. “I’m sorry about the sucker punch.”
Rhys smiled and raised his hands. “Don’t be. I would’ve done the same thing if it were me.”
Cullen walked up to the top floors that he and his partners hadn’t started on. It was extremely dirty and mostly empty except for some broken furniture, loose papers, and boxes. The windows were so dingy he could barely see out of them, and the sunlight hardly managed to make it through.
He sat off to the side with one of his arms resting on his bent leg and his other leg straight out in front of him. His reflections kept going around in circles, and he couldn’t concentrate on just one thought.
He knew it was best to separate himself from her now, but his gut told him it was the worst thing he could do. He’d give himself a few more minutes and then go back to her, and they would sit down and talk some more.
It would take time to get over the shock, but he wasn’t going to spend another moment away from her. They’d already lost so much time, and he wasn’t willing to lose any more.
Chapter Twelve
Hannah watched him storm out of the bedroom and felt her world shatter. She’d never seen him look so angry or have an expression close to hatred on his face when he looked at her.
She tried telling herself that she knew there was a possibility he would never forgive her, but she prayed so hard that he would and that he’d understand.
She discounted the fact he said he would be back. She just needed to leave because she couldn’t handle seeing that expression on his face again.
After pulling herself out of bed, she got dressed in her dirty clothes, looked around one more time, and walked out of the house. She had no idea where she was going. She just needed to be away from everyone, and there wasn’t a place anywhere in the world she could call her own.
The pain was so deep she couldn’t even cry, and her chest just kept getting tighter.