I physically recoiled from words that felt like a slap in the face. “Don’t you even go there.”
“Why not?” Jackson barked a harsh laugh. “You have hidden truths from me like rotten fucking Easter eggs since we met. Hey, I was a soldier! Hey, I’m almost a doctor! Look at this, I’ve got a shitton of fucking degrees! Oh, yeah, I’m a Van Horn! And, by the way, my ex has been trying to stalk me.”
He looked at Laramie, who stared back, amused. “I have to admit, that was a good one. Great way to sweep up if you ever caught him with her. Too bad for him he didn’t know about me.”
Rage clawed its way higher. “Laramie, could you possiblyfuck straight offso I can talk to my husband?”
Laramie leaned back into the loveseat’s cushions and swiveled his head to look at his brother. “What do you say, Jackson? You want me to fuck off?”
“Hell, no. You’re the only one who’ll tell me the damn truth.” Jackson’s attention fixed on me, daring me to make something of it.
The rules of engagement laid themselves neatly in front of me. I could ask Laramie to leave. Jackson would leave with him if I did. If I had a case to make, I could do it in front of both brothers or not at all. Laramie would do his damnedest to twist whatever came out of my mouth. It was a kangaroo court with a boxing marsupial intent on bloodying my nose.
A bone-deep hurt fed the wildfires of anger. The flames of rage burned the pain so it intensified. Fear seared hot in both. I loved Jackson more than I had ever loved a person, needed him and longed for him and yearned to grow old with him. Losing him would tear out a piece of me that would never recover from the loss.
But he had never trusted me. Not really. He’d shared pieces of himself, and at times, we had edged so close to a breakthrough I had felt nothing could stop us. Perhaps we would have made it, had his brother not known every button to push. Had he not mashed those buttons like a child flailing away on a piano, creating discord and disharmony.
“I can’t disprove any of this,” I said at last, dropping my words into the heavy silence. “You refuse to hear me when I say I’m innocent. My day was terrible. I filed a complaint against Dana, my phone died, and Joan assaulted me in front of a bagel shop so your brother could take pictures. I’d like to think the time you’ve spent with me has showed you I’m not a man who would do what he’s accusing me of, but you won’t see it. Not when Laramie is screaming ‘you can only trust family’ in your ear, and you can’t even bring yourself to count your own husband as your family.”
“Don’t turn this around on me.”
“Why not? It’s all about you, Jackson.” I spread both my arms wide. “Owen hurt you. I get that. You know what, though?I’m not Owen.I havenever beenOwen. I’m a man who’s made mistakes as I learned to trustyou. That’s right. Here you’ve been, armoring up your heart, learning to trust me, and you want concessions for that. Concessions yourefuseto give me. I don’t get to throw your distrust in your face, but oh, you can use mine against me. All because someone hurtyou, and no one else’s pain matters.”
Jackson shoved himself to his feet. “Fuck off with that! I have done nothing but forgive your damn secrets!” Behind him, Laramie stood, a quiet and menacing presence.
“Until now.” I pointed at the ground and let both hands drop. “Until you need to use them against me. You want me to tell you everything. To be patient with you. You want me to think it’sfineanddandyto cut myself over and over again on your distrust. It hurtsevery single timeyou question my character.Every single timeI wonder what I did to earn your disrespect. The truth is? I didnothing.Owen did it for me, and now,Ihave to pay forhissins.Iam the one doing penance. And I amtiredof footing that bill.”
Laramie put his hand on Jackson’s shoulder. “If anyone’s disrespecting someone, it’s you, Van Horn.”
“Fuck off,” I snarled back. “You’ve done enough today. For someone who supposedly has his brother’s back, you cause him alotof grief. I have never done anything but love Jackson. Love him, comfort him, and try to make him a home. You’ve torn that down whenever you could get your claws into it. I can say with one-hundred-percent certainty, as someone whose family was so bad I had to leave them behind, that you are theworstbrother anyone could ever have.”
Laramie started to stride around Jackson’s side, incensed and ready to front up, but Jackson held out an arm to stop him.
I seized the moment. “Jackson. I love you. There is no one else I could ever want. Please. Let me keep loving you. We’ve hurt each other, but I believe in what we are. We can heal from this and come back stronger. We just have to fight for it.”
An entire conflict played out over the battlefield of Jackson’s expression. The advance, the retreat, the doubts and regrets and sorrow. The shame, as the siren song of his painful past wailed at him, and the knowledge that he should lash himself to a mast and fight through it. As he stared at me, I sawmyJackson behind his eyes, looking out the window like a lost child praying for salvation. Hope welled up in me, a desperate, fragile hope that I had broken through.
Then his expression slammed closed and crushed that hope into dust. The regret remained, bloody and bruised and too exhausted to continue the fight against the fear. His ship dashed against the rocks, and the sirens won again.
His voice was soft but determined. “Do you remember the promise you made me when we got married? You said, if I ever had doubts, all I had to do was say the word. I’ve got doubts, Bastian. I’ve got so damn many doubts.”
Ice shot through my veins and chilled me into a statue’s stillness. I remembered the promise I’d made, one as solemn as a sacrament then and one I still held sacred now.I promise, I will do all I can to be the best accidental husband you could hope for. And if you ever feel like I’m not what you want, or I’m not good enough, or that you have doubts about me? All you have to say is that it isn’t working. That’s it. Say the word, and I will go down and file the papers to dissolve the marriage. I’ll take the blame. No fighting. No bullshit. Just over.
Jackson was calling in my promise. No more discussion. The end of all cases I could make. He had made his decision and murdered the last hope I had.
“I’ll go down to Mail Call Mates tomorrow,” I said, my voice as broken as I felt. All my emotions had drained away to leave me empty and defeated. “They’ll take care of the rest.”
“Thank you.” Again, for the time it took for blood to rush into a heart, the regret flickered over his face. I thought he might step toward me, begged fate for him to reach out to touch me. His weight shifted.
Then Laramie touched his arm. “Let’s get going. We gotta get a storage room on base for your stuff, and get you a room assigned.”
Jackson turned away to pick up his bag, and I knew I’d lost him. Whatever desire he had to stay and work this through ran up the white flag as Laramie mowed it down. The younger Sadler crossed over to the hall to pick up a box of pictures and mementos they’d left there as they packed up.
He lingered there until Jackson had reached the doorway. Then Laramie turned, box in hands, to “accidentally” knock my house phone off the table. When he took a step forward, he went out of his way to step on it, kick it, and scatter the pieces with his foot. I caught the message in his marble-hard eyes.
Don’t try to contact my brother again.
The door slammed closed behind him. It sounded so final, a door slamming closed in my life as well as my home.