The Stone Brothers: A Complete Romance Series (3-Book Box Set)

by Samantha Christy

  He cringes. “Shit, Charlie. I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what to say.” He runs his hands through his hair and as he turns away from me, I see him wipe a thumb under his eye as he tries to get his own breathing under control.

  He reaches over and takes my arm in his, pushing up the sleeve of my hoodie. “And these?” he asks, his eyes bleeding emotion as they rake over my scars. “Was this your mom?”

  I look at my lap and nod.

  “When did it stop, Charlie?”

  “When Piper and I left the country after graduation.”

  “My God,” he says, looking repulsed.

  I point to his face. “See that. That’s why I didn’t tell you. You’re disgusted.”

  “I’m not disgusted, Charlie.” He turns in his seat so that he’s facing me head on. “I could never be disgusted with you. Quite the opposite, in fact. Those horrible things, they happened to you, Charlie. And the person you became after was a result of all those things. You shouldn’t be ashamed of the way you are; you should be proud that you survived.”

  I nod, feeling tears burn the backs of my eyes. “Why did you follow me?” I ask.

  “A hunch, I guess. You turning up injured. You wearing a hat and hoodie to Morgan Tenney’s place. So I did some more digging into the names you gave me. Some of them were drug dealers. It scared the shit out of me to think of the danger you were putting yourself in. And after I saw the scars. I just knew something bad had happened. So today, as soon as I had Gretchen email you the names, I started following you.”

  I sigh. “I guess I should thank you for stopping me from killing him.”

  “I think you’ve had enough drama in your life. You don’t need to add a prison sentence to it,” he says.

  I study him, thinking about something he said back at Karl’s house. “You said you know what it’s like to want to kill someone who took something from you.”

  He nods, bringing his hand up to rub the back of his neck. Right over his tattoo. “Do you have time for a ride?” he asks.

  “A ride?”

  “Yeah. I think it’s time I introduced you to Cat.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Where is he taking me, I wonder? I’m curious. I’m terrified. I’m jealous of a woman named Cat that he loved enough to brand her name into his flesh.

  Ethan breaks the silence. “You asked about the tattoo on my neck that day at the pool. But how come you never asked about the one on my chest?”

  I think of the times I traced it with my finger, wanting to ask him about it, but not wanting to hear the answer. He knows everything about me now—the worst things about me. There is really no reason for anything but candor at this point. “I was afraid it might be a woman’s name. And if it was, I didn’t want to know.”

  He takes his eyes off the road for a second so he can look into mine. “It’s not.”

  I let out a relieved breath. “Okay, then what is it?”

  “It’s the Chinese symbol for forgiveness.”

  I cock my head, staring at his profile. “Does this have anything to do with wanting to kill the person who took something from you?”

  He nods. “It has everything to do with it.”

  “So, you just forgave him? Or her?”

  “Well, it’s not that easy, Charlie. Forgiveness is a long road.”

  We’re heading back towards the city, but not into the city. He turns off the highway and we make our way through several residential areas. We pass a church. We pass a large cemetery. I’m hypnotized by watching the endless sea of headstones, but then I realize they aren’t going by as quickly. We slow down and turn, driving under a curved wrought-iron entrance sign that reads: Fairmount Memorial Gardens.

  I look over at Ethan but he is stoic as we drive along the roads that weave through the maze of headstones, grave markers and crypts. The car comes to a stop and he turns off the engine.

  He takes a very deep, very long calming breath. Then he reaches over me to grab a small box from the glove compartment before he gets out of the car. I let myself out and join him as he walks along a paved path. I walk next to him in silence. With every step, I know what he’s going to show me is horrible. With every step, I know he’s trusting me enough to see it.

  Ethan stops walking and sits on a concrete bench. I sit down next to him.

  “When I was in high school, I got a girl pregnant,” he says. “We’d only been dating for a few weeks. It was still casual. We weren’t in love or anything. But we knew we were too young to become parents. Too young to make adult choices and live adult lives.”

  I nod in understanding. “I’d have done the same thing,” I tell him.

  “No,” he says. “We didn’t have an abortion. It was hard. Really hard, but we went through with it.”

  I gasp. “You have a child?”

  He smiles a sad smile. “I do.”

  Another deep breath comes from far within him and I know he’s about to tell me his darkest secrets. Just as I’ve now told him all of mine.

  “My girlfriend’s name was Cara,” he says, pain evident in his voice as he speaks of her. I have the urge to look around us, look at the gravestones to find her name, but I keep my eyes focused on his.

  “We tried to make a go of it as a couple, but we were just too young and we ended up fighting all the time. We had different goals. Different dreams. But what we did have in common was we both loved our daughter, so we put our differences aside so we could co-parent her. And before long we realized that although we didn’t make a good couple, we did make good friends. In fact, she became my best friend.”

  He has a daughter. My eyes close as realization washes over me. It all makes sense now. His being uncomfortable giving me family information from the list. The fight with Nikki about her roommate’s daughter. How he can’t be in a relationship. Suddenly, all the pieces start coming together. He lost his best friend; the mother of his child. He has a daughter to raise. He doesn’t want anyone getting in the way of that.

  I don’t know what to say to him. How do you comfort someone whose best friend died? I can’t even imagine if something happened to Piper. And what he said about wanting to kill the person who had taken something from you? She must have died in a horrible way.

  I put my hand on his knee, letting him know I’m here but that I just don’t have the words.

  He puts his hand on top of mine. Then he threads our fingers together and nods to the headstone to the right of us.

  My heart stops beating and I die for a second. I die because what is etched into the gravestone kills me.

  Catherine ‘Cat’ Grace Stone

  November 2, 2006 – July 16, 2008

  Beloved daughter and granddaughter.

  Oh, God. His daughter died. I calculate the dates in my head. Not even two years old. I look for another headstone next to hers, one that would have Cara’s name on it, but I don’t see one.

  The hand that is not entwined with his comes up to cover my sob. “Oh, Ethan,” I cry, not even being able to come close to understanding what losing a child would feel like.

  “It was the day before my nineteenth birthday,” he says. “It was my day to pick her up from daycare. Cara hadn’t gone on to college like I had. In high school, she’d worked at a department store, so when she graduated, she stayed with the store, becoming an assistant manager. My schedule as a college student was more flexible, especially being summer semester, and I was glad it afforded me a lot of time with Cat.” When he says her name, he looks at the headstone lovingly.

  He clears his throat and I know what he’s about to reveal will gut him.

  “When I got to the daycare center, they told me Cara hadn’t brought her in that morning. They just assumed Cat was sick, or that it was another one of those days where I had a light schedule so I kept her with me all day. But I thought it strange that Cara wouldn’t call me. She always called me when Cat was sick. It was much easier for me to miss school than for her to miss work.

&nbs
p; “I knew something was wrong,” he says. “I felt it. I ran out to my car, calling Cara on my way. When she answered, I breathed a sigh of relief. She sounded normal. Happy even. I’d never been so elated to hear her voice.”

  His hand starts to sweat in mine and he grips me tighter. He squeezes me so hard it hurts. But I let him. Because I know what he’s about to tell me will hurt him far worse than he’s hurting me.

  “I asked her why Cat wasn’t at daycare. Was she sick? Did she drop her at her mother’s? Why didn’t she call me? But the whole time I questioned her, she was silent. Then, just when I thought I’d lost the phone connection, I heard her scream into the phone, just before it went dead.

  “I tried to call her back. I called her a hundred times as I raced through traffic to get to where she worked. But it was rush hour, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get to her fast enough.”

  My heart is racing along with his. I know how hard his is beating because our hands are bound so tightly together, I can feel the throbbing in his wrist.

  “By the time I got to the store, there were fire trucks and police cars everywhere. I tried to barge through the gathering crowd, but I was held back. I worked my way around to one side and spotted Cara on her knees, crying and screaming, blood coating her knees from the rocks in the pavement. Two firemen were holding onto her as she collapsed down onto her hands.

  “Then I looked in the direction of the ambulance, over to the place Cara was reaching out to. Through the spectators and the flashing lights, I catch a glimpse of my daughter’s small, pale, lifeless body on a gurney next to Cara’s car.”

  “Oh my God,” I cry out in horror, tears flowing from my eyes at his unbelievable, heart-wrenching words.

  “I busted through the police barricade and ran over to the ambulance to see paramedics standing beside her body. They weren’t doing anything. They weren’t pounding on her chest or breathing in her mouth. They weren’t hooking her up to an IV. They were all just standing there. Crying.

  “I yelled at them to do something. To help my baby. A couple of the firemen came over, flanking my sides. One of them told me there wasn’t anything they could do. She was gone. She’d been gone for some time because the heat in the car was just too much for her and she’d been in there for far too long.”

  That’s the moment I realize what he’s telling me. And suddenly everything I’ve ever been through pales in comparison to this man’s pain. I always knew there were people worse off than Piper and me. I’d just never met any of them. Until now.

  “They couldn’t keep me from her,” he says, his voice cracking in desperation. “I climbed over everyone in my way to get to her. I had to see her. Hold her once more. And they let me. They let me hold her until the coroner arrived. They let me hold Cat’s frail little body and run my hands over her soft blonde curls for the last time.

  “And after they took her away, there was another person I had to get to. I ran to her. I ran to Cara. She was broken, a shell of a girl being held onto by firemen twice her size. She saw me coming and held her arms out to me. I held mine out to her. But not to hug her. To kill her. To strangle the life right out of her because she’d taken the most important thing in my life away from me. And I hated her more than I’d ever hated any human being.

  “The firemen pulled me off her before I could do any real damage. And we were both taken to the police station for questioning. But Cara was never charged with her death. It was concluded that it was an accident. That Cara had a lot on her mind that day because she was interviewing for a higher management position. That she’d simply forgotten to take our daughter to daycare.”

  He shakes his head and repeats, “Just forgotten to take her. How does that happen? How does a mother forget about her child?”

  Then he turns to me, looking guilty. “Oh, Charlie. I’m sorry I said that.”

  “No, don’t be. This isn’t about me, Ethan.”

  “But it is,” he says. “Your quest to find these men and hurt them the way they hurt you is understandable. But you have so much pain, so much hate within you that it’s eating you alive.”

  “Don’t you?” I ask. “You just told me you hated Cara more than you ever hated anyone.”

  “I did. And she had to get a restraining order against me. And I ended up in court-mandated therapy for PTSD. It was there that I learned about forgiveness.”

  “Forgiveness?” I ask. “How could you forgive her for that, Ethan?” I look deep into his eyes and see what he’s getting at. “Uh . . . no. I know you aren’t suggesting I forgive those bastards. I could never forget what they’ve done to me.”

  “Forgiving and forgetting are two different things, Charlie. Of course you’ll never forget what happened. And I’m not saying you should show up on their doorstep with a plate of cookies or anything. I’m saying that before you can heal, you have to let go of the hatred. You don’t forgive people for them, Charlie. You forgive people for you. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. With it comes peace and a renewed sense of freedom.”

  I sneer at him. “You have peace and freedom?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could have fooled me,” I say, looking down at our hands that are still folded together.

  “I never said forgiveness would make a person perfect. I’m not perfect. I’m scared, Charlie. I loved that little girl more than my own life. I never thought it possible to feel that kind of love for another person. I’d seen it on TV. Read about it in books. But I thought it was all fantasy. Something made up by Hallmark so they could sell more cards. But the very first time I saw Cat, I knew it was real. I understood in a matter of two seconds, how one could love another so fiercely that they would give their own life for them.”

  He turns towards me, situating us so we are facing each other and not his daughter’s grave. “It took me two seconds to feel that with her,” he says. “With you, it was more like two weeks.”

  My mouth falls open at his words that I’m sure I heard incorrectly. I can’t speak. I can’t move. I can’t even breathe.

  “I swear to God, Charlie. It was like a punch in the gut when I met you. When I saw you that first time, something inside me shifted. And when you ripped your shirt off, I knew I must be dreaming. I tried to fight it. I tried to fight it every time I saw you. I tried to fight it every moment we were apart. I knew I couldn’t fall for you. I couldn’t risk loving someone again and then having them taken from me. But these past three weeks have been hell. You were taken from me. But by no one’s fault but my own. I pushed you away. And the pain is excruciating. Knowing you are out there and I’m not with you is torture. I know I have no right to ask for another chance. I know I don’t deserve another chance, but I’m asking anyway. Because if I don’t, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  I have to make a conscious effort to close my mouth that’s been gaping at him for the past thirty seconds. Did he just forget everything he saw today? Everything he heard? “How could you live with what was done to me? With the things I’ve done?”

  “That shit doesn’t matter to me, Charlie. You matter to me.” He takes both my hands in his. “I can’t promise you anything. Except that I’ll try. I’ll try to be the man you deserve. I promise I’ll spend every day trying to be that man. I’m going to fuck up from time to time. I’m not going to be perfect. But if you’ll give me the chance, I swear I’ll do everything I can to make you trust in me. Trust in us.”

  He wants me? After everything he knows about me. I take a minute to let it sink in. Everything he just said was perfect. He is perfect.

  Alarms go off in my head and I can’t help but think of Jan Mitchell and the talk she once had with me and Piper about our heart and our head. And right now, my heart wants him. My body wants him. I want him so badly it hurts. But my head reminds me of how hurt I was after that time in the pool. And the time at the concert. And the time on his couch. All the feelings I had those times come rushing back. All those feelings come back in this moment and tru
mp the other feelings I’m having. The ones that want me to put my arms around him and throw caution to the wind.

  “I’m not sure I can trust you, Ethan. You hurt me. You know I wanted you. I offered myself to you. I offered my heart to you. How will I know you won’t just toss me to the curb again? How will I know you won’t get scared? How will I know you won’t break your promise?”

  “Rule number nine, Charlie. A promise is a promise. And I won’t break it. Ever. Please, give me another chance.”

  “Ethan . . .”

  “I tell you what. You don’t have to give me an answer right now. It’s been an emotional day. Just let me start swimming with you again. Let me start building that trust. Let me take you to lunch, and to the movies, and on walks through Central Park where we’ll talk about anything and everything. We’ll do things friends do. Because I want that with you, Charlie. I want so much to be your friend. I want that and more. But I’ll take what I can get for now.”

  I nod. “I think I can do that. I can be your friend. But I can’t promise you anything more than that right now, so you’ll just have to be patient with me.”

  He smiles. “I’m not going anywhere, Charlie. Except maybe ten feet over there.” He gets up, pulling something out of his pocket. “Just wait here for a few minutes, okay? There’s something I have to do.”

  He walks over and perches himself on Cat’s headstone, then he opens the box and pulls out a shiny metal harmonica and starts playing it. The song he plays is a lullaby. I can’t recall which one because my mother never sang them to me, but I recognize the tune. And he plays it expertly, like he’s done it a thousand times before this time. I stare at him, mesmerized by him. By his music. By his emotion. By his beauty.

  He finishes the song and puts the harmonica back into the case. “I used to play for her when she was sad or colicky. Sometimes it was the only thing that would calm her down. So now I play every time I visit her. It makes me feel connected to her. And I like to think that somehow, she hears me playing and it brings her peace.”