by Carol Caiton
"You found Michael and you never told me?" Kyle repeated, his voice quiet but strained.
CHAPTER 29
"Ky—" Michael started, but he was cut off.
"I asked you a question," Kyle bit out.
Michael looked back at Kathy. Her face was white, her brown eyes stricken.
"Kyle," he tried again, pushing away from the table.
"I spent five fucking years sitting on that goddamn porch and you didn't tell me you found him?"
"Kyle!" Derek's harsh rebuke came from behind him. "Sit your ass down at the table and I'll tell you why we didn't say anything."
Kyle looked ready to explode. Fire burned in his eyes, his hands were clenched in tight fists, and his jaw looked like it was carved out of rock. Cursing beneath his breath, he yanked out a chair and sat, the tic in his cheek jerking with controlled fury.
Derek stood in the doorway, eyes on Kyle, then he walked to the table and sat down as well.
"First of all," he said, "We sat on that porch too, for three of those five years, aching inside while you stared out at the street. I'd done everything I could think of to find Michael for you, but I knew, long before you finally gave up, that the boy you waited for was probably dead. —You've worked in law enforcement. You know the odds. But I couldn't bring myself to say anything. Kathy and I bought your old house because being there was the only thing that seemed to give you peace. We figured with time you'd eventually come to terms with what had happened, and we sat with you so you'd know you had our support, that no matter what the outcome, you had people you could turn to . . . people who loved you."
He folded his hands on top of the table, glanced down at them, then up again. "When you were about to turn eighteen, you took your SATs, applied to Drexel, and your trips to the old neighborhood began to taper off. You never said anything, but we saw the change, and we knew you were finally letting yourself mourn. You were finally letting go. You started looking toward the future, thinking about what you wanted to do with yourself, and Kathy and I frigging rejoiced to see you leave the past behind . . . but that's not why we didn't tell you we found Michael. It was a different reason."
Steepling his index fingers, he tapped them together, then stopped. "One of my contacts in the FBI faxed up a picture of him. Michael was dressed in a suit and tie, jacket slung over his shoulder, coming out of one of the federal buildings. According to the newscast Kathy and I watched, he'd been taken in by Senator John Rawson at the age of fifteen. Two years before. So I stared at that picture for a long time, trying to decide what to do. I knew, if Michael had wanted you to find him, or him you, he could have made it happen himself, months before if not sooner. His connection to Rawson would have given him the resources to do whatever he wanted."
He took a breath and looked over at Michael. "But you didn't. And that told me something. It told me a lot of things. All that unshakable love Kyle held onto for five long years—" He shook his head. "Love like that wouldn't have been misplaced. It would have been reciprocated. After serving fifteen years on the force, I knew what had happened to you, the goddamn hell you must have lived through. And Kyle may have been around the block more than I like to think about, but he'd never been around that particular block, so I don't know what conclusions he reached when he finally gave up. But looking at that picture, I knew you didn't want to be found. You wanted Kyle to remember you for who you were the last time he saw you."
He turned back to Kyle. "I know the heartache you lived with. I lived it with you, and so did Kathy. But we kept silent because of Michael. As tormenting as your pain was Ky, his was worse. So we never told you we found him. That decision had to be his."
Fuck.
Goddamn fucking hell.
Michael tried to keep every emotion out of his expression. Out of his eyes. He looked at Kyle, but Kyle was staring, just as closed-faced, at Derek.
Derek drew a breath then and said, "What we didn't expect, when you let Michael go, was that you'd leave behind everything else that mattered to you. Suddenly you didn't want to go to Drexel, didn't want to live in Philly, didn't want to spend time at home. You went to college up in Boston, and the only time we saw you was during holidays. But then you surprised us. You came back home, went to the academy here, and got a job on the force. And you were the most calm-under-pressure LEO I'd ever seen."
Unfolding his hands, Derek sat back in his chair and sighed as though released from a burden he'd been carrying for a long time.
Michael slid away from the table and stood up. He raked his fingers through his hair, then scrubbed them across the back of his neck.
Walking over to the sink, he stared out the window at the floodlit swimming pool, thinking about the past, thinking about the present. He and Kyle both had lost so much. So goddamn much. All because a fucking maggot set out to snatch a lone kid out of a park. If not for that sick fucker, that day, that park . . . . Would Kyle's mother still be alive? Maybe. He and Kyle might have been able to put their hands on some antibiotics for her. Would Joey still be alive? Maybe not. Joey knew Kyle had a hiding place in the house. He would have found those guns one day and yeah, he would have shot his fool head off.
But the flip side was that he and Kyle wouldn't be here in this kitchen if none of that had happened. Kyle would never have met these people. He never would have gotten an education, never become a cop, and never would have shot that kid during an armed robbery. Which meant he never would have come to Florida. And Michael? He never would have inherited John Rawson's millions. There'd be no RUSH, no Rachel, no future. If he and Kyle had even managed to live this long, they'd both be doing time.
Closing his eyes, he remembered the accusations Kyle had hurled at him the first time they'd talked, the bitterness in his tone. That was the one thing Derek had gotten wrong. Kyle may have known what had happened, but he hadn't accepted it down inside.
. . . we kept silent because of Michael.
He opened his eyes and rubbed at the muscles in his neck again. His goddamn chest hurt for all of them.
"You know," he finally said into the silence, "if Kyle had been the one taken and I found out what that maggot did to him . . . I would've turned into a one-man vigilante team twelve years ago. I would've gotten hold of a gun and I would've started pickin' off every child-molesting pervert I could find. Nothing would have mattered except killing off the species. And every good thing you people did for me would've been for nothing 'cause I would've ended up in prison for murder."
And that was the naked truth.
"So after listening to everything you've said, I'm thinking you did the right thing for Kyle by not telling him you found me. 'Cause he would've done the same as me. No doubt in my mind. And yeah," he finished on a long sigh, "you did the right thing for me. 'Cause I didn't want Kyle to see me then. I wasn't ready."
The self-disgust. The self-hate. The filth. The fucking filth. It had stuck to him like a stain on his skin, in his soul. It had taken a whole hell of a lot of money and a newfound skill he could take pride in before he'd been able to start climbing out of the sewer.
And then came Rachel. His princess. With Rachel he'd finally, finally felt the filth start to rinse away. He remembered the first time he'd seen her, his angel with flowing blonde curls drifting down to her waist. Just thinking about her settled things inside him.
"Yeah, you did the right thing," he said again.
Lowering his hand, he turned around. Kathy was looking at him, her eyes all soft and grateful. She didn't need to be grateful though. What he'd said was the truth.
But Kyle wasn't talking. He looked as closed-off and stony as before. Only Michael wasn't gonna bend on this. He couldn't. It was good Kyle hadn't found him before now and Ky needed some time to let that sink in and accept it. He needed to know where Michael stood on that.
"Rachel and I were talking before we fell asleep," he said, looking from Kathy to Derek, then back to Kathy. "Besides Rachel," he went on, "Kyle's the only family I have and I'm pla
nning to do everything in my power to get him to stay in Florida. For good. There's some land—on the other side of the street where I live—and I'm hoping he'll put a house on it and live there." He took a breath. "And Rachel and I want to invite you to come stay with us for a week or so, maybe get you to look around some too. See how you like Orlando and give us all a chance to get to know each other."
Because, he thought, Kyle had hit a gold mine when he landed with these people. He needed them. And Michael wanted them in his life as well. He wanted his daughter to have all the good people around that he and Rachel could gather. And fuck, Kathy had better say yes or no right now 'cause he'd said enough.
* * *
Kathy reached for Derek's hand and he leaned forward to make it easy for her. "We'd love to come stay with you and Rachel," she said. "Thank you for inviting us. And maybe we'll look around too." She glanced at Kyle. "It's important to be near family."
Then she looked at her new cherry cabinets framing Michael on either side of the sink. But there would be another kitchen and another house she and Derek would learn to think of as home. She wanted her children nearby, and her grandchildren. Because whether or not Michael knew it, as far as she was concerned, he'd become family the night he'd offered to charter a plane so that she and Derek could attend Kyle's wedding. Maybe even before that . . . he'd been a part of their lives for so many years.
And something else he might not realize yet . . . he needed them, as well.
* * *
Kyle continued staring at Derek, still angry, still bitter, feeling betrayed and unable to forgive as easily as Michael. Seventeen years had passed since Michael was abducted, but time was an abstract variable when measured against the fucking grief that had haunted him for so long. He remembered all that rage and frustration when everything had been taken from him. He remembered shouting at everyone to find Michael for him, remembered the fucking impotence of being twelve years old with no power and pounding his fists into the walls to release the guilt and the goddamned fear. Up until that fucked up week he'd never been a kid on a short fuse. He hadn't even had a fuse. He'd needed all those grownups in their warm comfortable offices to do something. Anything. Whatever it took to find Michael.
He understood later that Kimmie had tried . . . as well as Derek and Kathy and anyone else they could think of to enlist in the search. But no one produced results and in his twelve-year-old mind, all those computers and resources should have gotten the job done.
When Derek had looked him in the eye, man to man, and told him to get up off his ass and help, that had been his lifeline. Finding Michael became his anchor. If he spent a third of his life on that old porch waiting, he spent another big chunk of it sitting in front of a fax machine or going to frigging school so he could learn what he needed to know to read and write and operate a computer. He'd checked and rechecked the local hospitals, morgue records . . . hell, he knew Derek thought Michael was dead. But Kyle had looked at the photographs of every dead blond kid in six states for five fucking years. He knew Michael was alive. And that's why he sat on that porch, month after month, year after year. He knew Michael wasn't dead.
He heard Michael invite Derek and Kathy to come to Florida, heard Kathy accept, and he shifted his eyes to her. But it was like stepping outside himself and looking at a stranger. Because she'd been part of it. She'd kept Michael from him too. The betrayal . . . the fucking betrayal cut so deep.
Shoving his chair back, he saw Kathy's face crumble as he slammed the thing back under the table and stalked out of the kitchen. He needed time alone. Away from them. Time to figure things out.
Michael caught up with him at the stairs.
"Ky."
Hand on the newel post, breathing hard, he turned around.
"Twelve years, Michael. They found you twelve years ago and didn't tell me."
"Yeah."
"They should have known, whatever the hell happened to you—whatever—I wouldn't have looked at you any different, felt any different."
Michael nodded. "I know Ky. And I would've been the same if you were the one who got taken. But the thing is, I looked at me differently. I saw me differently. Once I got free, I didn't come back because I couldn't. You understand me? I couldn't. You wanted to know why I never ran a search to find you and Joey and your Mom, why I didn't send word that I was okay? That's why. I couldn't do it. Sometimes it ate at me from the inside. But I couldn't even look at myself in the fucking mirror. Until I could look at myself in the mirror and be okay with what I saw, I didn't want anyone else to see me. Not like that. Never like that. My whole damn soul was full of filth."
He shut his eyes, opened them, and the pain Kyle saw tore at him.
"If Derek had told you where I was and you'd seen me the way I was back then, I wouldn't be looking in your eyes today. I wouldn't be standing here right now. Not if he hadn't kept you away. He understood that. It took time. I needed that time and he gave it to me."
Kyle didn't know what to say. His own soul grieved for what Michael had lived through, for what they'd both lived through. But seventeen years?
"When did you know?" he finally asked, needing that information now. "When the hell did you know you were you okay with that mirror?"
Michael held his gaze. He didn't look away. "Not until about two weeks before I married Rachel."
Kyle stared.
"I'd just asked her to marry me, so I told her about my past. She's the only person I've ever talked to about it," he said. "And she cried. She said she was grieving for the boy who went after that kite, and grieving for . . . ." He paused, but he still didn't look away. "She didn't judge me, Kyle. She understood why I did what I did, why I made the decisions I made. She said she didn't know how I could've lived through all that shit and kept my humanity. —This fucking beautiful princess was looking at me like I was some kinda conquering hero. And that's when the mirror finally started to be okay." He sighed and shook his head. "So it's done. It's finished. I don't wanna talk about it anymore. I don't wanna think about it anymore. That okay with you?"
Kyle looked into his eyes, so much older and so much the same. He took a step forward, grabbed Michael by the shoulders, and pulled him into a hard embrace. "Yeah, that's okay with me. Jesus . . . fuck, it's good to have you back."
Michael returned the embrace. "Yeah, it's good to be back. So let it go now. All of it. I've got a baby coming in a couple of months and I want Derek and Kathy in her life. They're good people. Hell, look at what the fuck they did with you."
After a stunned moment, Kyle let out a choked laugh and shoved Michael away. "Fuck you, Vassek."
Michael grinned at him. "Yeah, yeah."
A muffled sob pulled their attention to where Kathy leaned against Derek's chest, half laughing, half crying.
Kyle looked back at Michael. After a minute he sighed, still not ready to forgive, but there wasn't much he wouldn't do for this man who'd been more than a brother to him, even when they were lost to one another. So he gestured with his head toward the stairs and watched as Michael disappeared up the steps of his second childhood home. Then he waited another minute, remembering the times he'd balanced on the railing, riding it down to the first floor, Kathy yelling at him every time she caught him.
Finally, he turned to face the two people who had raised him. They'd loved him, though God only knew why, and they'd fought for him. Always they'd fought for him. So with that in mind he took a deep breath and started.
"This is hard for me to say right now," he told them, continuing to struggle with those twelve years of loss, "but Michael was right. I was seventeen. I would have gotten my hands on a gun. Probably yours," he told Derek, "and I would have gone after Rawson. I would have planned it carefully, and there's a chance I would have gotten away with killing him until you caught up with me. —But I wouldn't have understood it if Michael turned away. I wouldn't have understood that mirror."
He met Derek's stare and said, "Coming to terms with twelve years isn't ea
sy. It's shit. But I grasp why you did what you did. And I know it's been a rough haul. Not just for me. I know that." He shook his head. "For a long time I didn't understand why you stuck it out. Sometimes I still don't. But I know for a fact that I'm not behind bars today because you did stick it out. And yeah," he added, "because of the decisions you made along the way. It hurts like hell just now to admit that, but there it is. You did the right thing—for Michael . . . and for me too. And hell," he drew in a breath, "I hope to God, when Jessica tells me she's ready to have kids, that I'll be as good a father as you've been to me."
Kathy started crying.
Kyle let his gaze rest on her for a minute, then he sighed, let it go, and walked over to her. "C'mere," he murmured, drawing her away from Derek and into his own arms.
She cried even harder, clinging to him. So he held her and waited it out. Then he felt Derek's strong arms enfold them both, felt the stuttered breath he took as he held them.
"I love you. Both of you." He took a breath. "Thank you for taking a chance and seeing it through."
When he felt he could talk again without a knot of emotion clogging his chest, he eased back and said, "Come to Florida. Look around. And if you like it there, I hope you'll start thinking about how much you can get for this place."
CHAPTER 30
Kyle rolled over onto his back, squinted against the sun coming in through the window, and closed his eyes again. He rested like that for another minute, gradually waking up and remembering a time when, as a teenager, the sun shining through that window annoyed the hell out of him every Saturday and Sunday morning.
After a few minutes, he turned onto his other side, opened his eyes again, and watched Jessica while she slept. He liked looking at her. Just looking. And whenever he woke up first, he did what he was doing now, watching her breathe, noting the faint, sleepy flush to her cheeks.
But something was different today. It was as though his vision was clearer, and it took a couple of minutes before he realized it wasn't his vision. It was his head. The heavy pall he'd been walking around with for so many years was lifting. It felt like he was shaking off some illness. Or like a fog slipping away. He was almost afraid to examine it too closely in case it shifted direction and came back again.