“Shall I wait?”
“No. Thank you for the lift,” I said, shaking my head as I exited the car, pulling my suitcase out as well.
“I wanted to say that I’m sorry about your loss.”
I could only nod, the loss too fragile, the pain too fresh. After he gave me a nod, he pulled away, and I watched until his taillights disappeared over the hill. Turning, I walked up the steps of the porch and, without hesitating, opened the door and stepped inside. Setting my suitcase down, I walked through the parlor and down the hall.
On any normal day, the men would be out of the cabin unless the weather was bad, but this wasn’t a normal day and I could hear voices coming from the kitchen. A few feet from the threshold, I paused, wondering if I was about to do nothing more than make a fool of myself. Rye had been pretty clear in the letter that I was to go home, that they were finished with me. With Kit gone, I was no longer bound by any agreement I’d made, forced or not.
Well, I wasn’t done… not by a long shot.
Lifting my chin, I didn’t walk, I marched right into the lion’s den, which immediately grew silent at my appearance.
“How dare you lie to me,” I said, continuing to walk across the floor to where they were beginning to rise from chairs around the kitchen table.
“Goldie? What are you—” Rye began, but I held my hand up to silence him.
“No! Though I never thought you’d be a chickenshit and do it by some fucking Dear Jane letter, you’ve had your say. It’s my turn, now.” Walking up to him, I poked my finger into his chest. “You lied to me. You all did,” I said, making eye contact with each one of the brothers. “Every one of you told me you didn’t consider me a slut… a whore. That I’d become more than just a companion to Kit—”
“You are. We never considered you as anything other than—” Banks cut in, silencing when I waved my hand in the air again, this time with the letter clutched in my fingers.
“Telling me to go home, to forget any of this happened? How in the hell am I supposed to do that? There is nothing for me back there—”
“We told you in the letter that we’d pay for whatever home—” Jay began only to find my finger poking his chest.
“I don’t want a house,” I shouted, “I don’t want a store or a car or a bank account. Don’t you know all I want is you? All of you? You’re my family!” I had to pause, take a breath, fight against my throat closing up, to fight against the tears that threatened.
“Goldie, we don’t deserve you,” Rye said. “No matter how much Kit liked you, we had no right to kidnap you, to bring you to our mountain, to force you into all of this.”
“This isn’t about what is right,” I said. “Hell, nothing about what happened is right. This is about what started happening that first day I walked out of that woodshed. It is about all the days between the moment you took me from my home—my past—to bring me here, to start my future. A new life. Abetterlife—”
Banks shoved his chair back so hard it banged into the wall. “That’s just it. There is no better life. We couldn’t even keep our baby sister alive! You almost died in the barn!”
“But I didn’t die!” I shouted back. “Yes, we lost Kit. But that wasn’t your fault, or any of yours. You aren’t gods, you are men. You couldn’t know Cook would show up that day. You were doing all you could to keep her safe, to keep all of us safe. And, yes, it’s horrible, it hurts like hell. She’s gone and we will always miss her. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you keep me from fulfilling the promise I made to a woman I considered my sister, too.”
“Goldie…” Jay said, but I just shook my head.
“I-I love you. I love you all so much. Please… Oh God, please don’t send me away. Please let me stay. Even if-if you don’t love me back, please let me love you.”
I had no idea I was sobbing, shaking, until I was suddenly surrounded by the brothers. Arms wrapped around me to hold me up, to press me to Rye’s chest, hands stroking down my arms, my back, through my hair, as each of them attempted to soothe me.
“We didn’t mean to hurt you, Goldie,” Rye said, bending to place a kiss on top of my head.
“We just wanted to set you free,” Jay said from my right, kissing my cheek.
“To let you know how sorry we were for scaring you,” Banks said from behind me, before he bent forward to brush my hair aside to press a kiss to the nape of my neck.
“Kit was right,” Rye said. “You are a very special woman.” He kissed my head again. “She’d have been so mad at us if she’d known what we did,” Rye offered. “She never would have agreed to any of this. But… well, she really liked you and… after that day we all met you in your store and that time in my truck… well, we decided we wanted you.”
“You did?” I asked, a little baffled. “Then why didn’t you just tell me instead of kidnapping me?”
Jay answered for them all. “Because you’d be a fool to agree to be with us. We aren’t good men.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “You might have done things outside the law, but that doesn’t make you bad men. Kit knew that. I not only liked her, but I also loved her. She was a special young woman and a wonderful friend.” It was my turn to pause, tears threatening to spill yet again. But these men needed to know, needed to hear. Clearing my throat, I looked at each one of them. “She loved you so very, very much. God, she was so proud of each of you. She knew you weren’t perfect, but it didn’t matter. You were her whole life.”
“It should have been us, not her,” Banks said, the man who was normally so cocky, so confident sounding so forlorn.
I turned to face him. “But that just proves how very much she loved you all,” I said, reaching up to place my palm against his cheek before turning to look at Rye. “You were willing to give your life for her, but she chose to give hers for yours.” I could see the pain in his eyes and placed my hand over his heart while looking at each of them again. “And while you couldn’t save her, you avenged her. You avenged your parents. All she wanted was for you to find the happiness you’d given her for her entire life. If you truly wish to honor her, to make her sacrifice mean something, then truly start over, put the past behind you, and build a new life.”