“I do have to admit I like having you here.” Leah picked up one of his mother’s scarves, a muted blue and brown, classy and subtle, like she was, and folded it. “Kind of evens out the testosterone.”
His mom dropped her hand and winked at Leah before returning to emptying the drawers of the dresser. “From what I’ve seen, you handle my bossy boys just fine without me.”
He closed his eyes for a second, beating back the words, but they came out anyway. “Maybe it’s easier for you to go. Is that the real reason?”
“Declan.” Leah hit each syllable with a smack. Looked like she wanted to go after him next.
He shrugged. “It’s a fair question.”
With a shirt dangling from her fingers, his mom stopped and stood there, her back highlighted in the mirror above the dresser and her face pale. “Was it a question? It sounded more like an accusation.”
“He has every right to be a mess.” Declan didn’t have to name names. They all knew he meant Callen.
“I know that, Declan.”
She hadn’t used his middle name yet. That meant that, while he might be on the verge of making her furious, he was not quite there yet. “Explain it to me. Can you do that?”
Leah eyed him with a the-lecture-will-come-later glare. “Now isn’t the time.”
“I want to understand.” They’d all lived through so much—absentee father and husband, no food, evictions—and for Declan, the waffling from high intensity and dragging loss while on deployment overseas.
Through it all, Mom had been a constant. Imperfect but decent and hardworking, with a bone-deep love for her sons, even the one she’d let go with Charlie. But her keeping this secret for all those years tarnished some of Declan’s belief in her, and he hated that.
“You lied to him, to all of us, and I can’t figure out how to make that okay in my head.”
Leah stood up. “You need to stop talking now.”
His mom motioned for Leah to sit back down. “It’s okay.”
“Is it?” God, he didn’t know anymore.
“I look at you and Leah and I see this amazing future ahead of you. Kids, if you want them. A life together.” Mom tightened her stranglehold on the sweater in her hands. “You are protective and good, and I hope like hell you never have a child you love, by birth or not, ripped from you. It scars you. Torments you until the list of horrors that could befall him keeps you on edge all the time.”
Declan got all of that. He truly did. Where the logic faltered for him was at the next step. “But he’s a grown man now, mom. Has been for years.”
“And I never stopped thinking of him as the little boy I could not protect. I failed him. And none of us can image what Charlie had Callen do while they were gone or how that damaged him.” She sighed. “That is all on me.”
There was a sharp inhalation of breath as Leah put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, Kim.”
“But you’re right. I was wrong not to tell him sooner.” Mom breathed in as she dumped the now-wad of cotton on the dresser behind her. “I kept the secret because I lost him once and could not survive losing him a second time. It was selfish, I know.”
“Human.”
“Thanks, hon.” She reached out and took Leah’s hand. “Truth is, I would rather Callen hate me now than have walked away from me forever if I’d told him the truth back when he was twenty or some other age.”
“He doesn’t hate you.” Declan knew that down to his soul. If his brother really hated her, he would ignore her and not care, and that wasn’t happening. “But for a long time he thought you didn’t love him enough to fight for him.”
“In reality I loved him so much I stayed quiet, or Charlie would never have let me see him again.” She shook her head as the sadness weighed down on her. On the whole room. “I’m not saying I got it right, Declan, but I did the best I could. What I thought was right at the time.”
The sheen of tears. He couldn’t handle those. “You don’t have to—”
“I’m saying I love all three of you. Even Charlie Hanover could not destroy that.”
Declan nodded. He didn’t say anything, because he really couldn’t.
She drew herself up, straight and tall again, every ounce of the force to be reckoned with that he remembered from the time he stole a car at fourteen. “I will promise you that I’m not leaving Sweetwater until Callen forgives me enough to accept that I will always be his mother, blood or not.”
“Good.” Leah kissed her on the cheek. “I need reinforcements around here.”
“I think you handle Declan just fine.” His mom squeezed Leah’s hand as her eyes brimmed with acceptance.
Now that he understood. “So do I.”
***
Callen waited until late to go home. After losing it with Grace, nearly taking her right there against the wall and forgetting all his reasoned arguments about staying away from her that would make Beck’s legal mind proud, Callen drove around. Mindless to what was happening around him except for the stop signs and the scattering of people walking out past eleven, he kept moving. It wasn’t until he realized he’d stopped concentrating on the road that he finally pulled over. Then he sat. For over an hour.
He finally drove up to Shadow Hill and, seeing a kitchen light on, entered through the back door. He expected Kim or Mom or whatever he was supposed to call her now. He got Declan.
“Mom left.” Declan leaned against the big white farm sink, tapping an empty water bottle against the palm of his open hand.
Closing the door, Callen slipped in and took a seat at the kitchen table. “Guess that’s not a surprise.”
Heading to bed didn’t seem like an option now. Declan was clearly in a thinking mood, and since Callen was tired of thinking, he figured they made a decent pair.
Thump, thump, thump. The hollowed-out sound from the empty water bottle echoed in the quiet room. “You feel . . . what, nothing?”
Callen didn’t have a lot of fight left in him, and he had no interest in battling Declan. “What are you looking for here?”
“An ounce of emotion would be nice.” Declan threw the bottle in the sink and let it thud as it bounced around. “You can turn it on and off. It’s fucking freaky.”
If only. Callen would do just about anything for that skill. “That’s not true.”
“I’m just telling you what I see.”
“Since I found out, I haven’t gone five minutes without thinking about it, about her, about a woman named Sylvia Jenkins who gave birth to me, then died alone in a psychiatric ward a few years later.” The words poured out through the numbness. “Is that what you want to hear? That inside I’m a goddamn mess to the point where I can barely think?”
“No.” The chair screeched across the hardwood as Declan pulled it out and sat down across from Callen.
“Well, it’s an accurate description. I work the land, pound posts and fill holes because I need to keep moving.” Callen balanced his elbows on the table and traced a fingertip over a nick in the wood. “If I stop, it all catches up with me.”
“Shit, I shouldn’t have—”
Not wanting to hear an apology even though he knew it would be genuine, Callen talked right over his brother. “Just because I don’t go on about it every second doesn’t mean I’m not living it.”
The truth ate at him. He’d spent all those years on the road with Charlie both angry with his mom for letting him go and grateful for her. What made it okay to be Charlie Hanover’s son was having her as a mother. She didn’t roll around in the filth. She was a victim and rose above it. In Callen’s head that meant at least half of his gene pool was worth something.
Now he knew his birth mother was Charlie’s first wife. this Sylvia person, the one no one talked about. The marriage Charlie hid—and that made him the kid his father passed off as belonging to another woman.
&nb
sp; “You know you can talk. You know, with me. If you need to.”
Seeing Declan rub a finger over a mark on the table as he stumbled through his words provided Callen with his first burst of amusement for the day. “Damn, man, you could not look less comfortable.”
“This isn’t easy for any of us. I mean, no one bears the weight of it like you do, but still.” The chair creaked as Declan leaned back and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Fucking Charlie.”
Callen said that about a hundred times a day. “Yeah, exactly.”
“You know, the half brother versus full thing doesn’t mean shit to me.”
Declan and Beck had made it clear from the beginning that nothing had changed between them as brothers. Callen held on to that but he sometimes forgot how the stress of what was happening radiated out and touched everyone in the family.
“I know. I really do.” Not really great at the emotional bullshit that came easier to others, Callen said what he could, knowing Declan would get it. “Me neither.”
“Good.”
“You’re as much of a pain in the ass now as you were before I knew the truth.” Callen smiled for what felt like the first time in years.
Declan laughed. “That’s the big brother we all love.”
“Happy to live down to your expectations.”
The smile slowly faded from Declan’s mouth, and the mood sobered again. “But seeing you ripped apart, the awkward silences with Mom—it’s a lot to take.”
“I can’t figure out how to talk with her without yelling. I want to shout, and I know I’ll say things I’ll regret.” Then there was the sick part. The words Callen didn’t want to admit but had to tell someone. “Part of me wants to hurt her, and that makes me feel like an even bigger shit.”
The admission hung there. When Declan stayed silent, Callen kept his head down and focused on that table nick, picking at it and making it bigger.
“You mean you want to say something like, ‘You lied, and there’s no excuse for that’? Because you can probably skip that line. I said it to her this afternoon.” Declan groaned. “Leah made it clear we’re going to talk about my behavior tonight.”
“Jesus.” The comment worked for both the Mom part and the Leah part. Either way, Declan stepping up meant something to Callen.
Could also mean his brother had a cold night on the couch ahead of him. For some reason, that made Callen want to laugh.
“I get that Charlie destroyed Mom. I was young, but I was there after he took you. She was in pieces. Crying and rocking. She stayed in bed for days. I thought . . .” Declan brushed his hands up and down his legs. “Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought.”
“I get what happened back then. The part about me being a kid and her taking me in and loving me, then not being able to stop Charlie because he reminded her she wasn’t really my mother. I get all of that.” Just thinking about how it must have been for her made Callen’s brain shut down and his heart open up to her a bit. “But I’m thirty-four. There had to be a time in the last twenty-plus years where she could have said something. Anything.”
Declan nodded. “I know.”
“I can’t figure out how to get around that.”
“Talk to her.” The pleading in Declan’s voice had gone from subtle to obvious.
But that didn’t mean Callen was ready. “Not yet.”
Declan opened his mouth like he wanted to say something but then shook it off. “Fair enough.”
“So, she’s with Tom.” Biological mom or not, that bit of news had Callen’s alarm bells ringing. They’d known each other for years, and from the way Tom’s gaze heated when he stared at her, whatever teen crush he’d had in the beginning burned pretty damn hot now that he was an adult.
Declan nodded. “I plan on beating the hell out of him tomorrow.”
“Let me know if you need help.” She deserved a private life, and maybe Callen could even tolerate the idea of her having a sexual relationship, though his mind blanked in self-preservation at the thought, but still. Tom was younger than her and not hiding his interest. Since he worked at Shadow Hill, it all felt too close to Callen.
Declan smiled. “Speaking of that—”
“No.” His brother didn’t have to say one more word for Callen to know they’d somehow circled back to Grace. He had to shut this down, because he could feel the interrogation coming.
“What?”
The whole open mouth and weird tone combination didn’t work for Declan at all. Callen heard the train coming right for him. “Don’t be a dumbass. You suck at subtle.”
“I have skills.”
“We’re not talking about Grace.”
“From that I assume you went to her room as predicted.”
And here he was thinking he deserved a medal for waiting one day. “Proving you’re not the only dumbass in the family.”
“Or maybe that you really like this woman?” Declan hesitated over each word, as if they needed any emphasis.
Whether Declan talked fast or slow, Callen was not touching that. “You win the bet.”
Declan shrugged. “We all did. None of us thought you’d make it through the week without giving in. I saw Grace, so I’m surprised you made it through the first afternoon without diving in.”
Sitting there, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and usual creaks of the big house as the wind pressed against the walls, Callen debated telling Declan the rest. Not that any of it would amount to a surprise. “I have no willpower where she’s concerned.”
A soft click sounded as Declan sat up straight and the front legs of the chair hit the floor. “So, maybe you should talk to her, too.”
“I tried, and ended up crawling all over her instead.” Callen wiped a hand over his face as he groaned. “She wanted to talk—I kissed her and lost my fucking mind.”
“So you two . . . ?”
Callen didn’t look up. “Almost.”
“Sounds to me like you guys aren’t done.”
That time Callen let his arms fall against the table again as he faced Declan head on. “We are.”
“You’re not very convincing.”
Yeah, that was the problem. Callen kept saying it in his head, and repeated it a bunch of times in the car an hour ago. None of those times stuck. “We have to be over. I can’t take that again.”
“Actually, no. You get to choose whether you want to try and whether you think you can get past all the crap in your history.”
Okay, yeah, the conversation could end now.
Callen started shifting in his seat, trying to find a comfortable position. “She lied.”
“And Leah lied to me.”
“It’s not the same.” Leah had wrestled with a vendetta passed on to her from her lying piece of shit of a father. He nurtured her hatred and fed it, but then she met Declan, and all those years of Marc Baron grooming Leah to hate fell apart.
Sure, it took Leah too long to come clean, and Callen gave her a rough time in the process, but she turned a corner. Grace . . . hell, he didn’t know what was happening with Grace, other than he saw her and he got hard and stupid.
“Deception is deception.” Declan thumped his fingers against the table. “But I forgave Leah. Can’t imagine my life without her now.”
That was a big statement for a guy like Declan. He didn’t spew about his feelings, which was one of the reasons Callen liked talking things over with him. Still, the guy was up to his ass in love, and Callen didn’t think that was going to change anytime soon. He saw how happy his brother was. How, with each day, he became more comfortable around her, more attached.
Seemed to Callen like there was an obvious solution if the question was how to make her stick around forever. “You ever going to man up and marry her?”
Declan frowned. “We haven’t been dating that long.�
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“Right, because length of time matters.” If Callen were the eye-rolling type he would done it right then. Instead, he let his tone make the point.
“Have you met her dad?” Declan asked in a voice full of sarcasm.
But he didn’t say no, which Callen took to mean the question was on Declan’s mind. Likely all the time. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m not putting her in the position of choosing between me and her idiot father.”
Talk about missing the signs. “She lives here, with you. Hell, with us. So, I think she already did.”
“I can’t even deal with that right now.” Declan kept drumming those fingers.
Callen watched the non-stop movements and gritted his teeth against the annoying pounding sound. Looked like denial to him. “But I’m guessing you already decided to ask someday.”
“Okay, yeah. She’s the one. No question.”
Not a surprise, but still a whoa moment. “Then ask her now.”
“Not until I figure out a way to get her talking with her father again. The man is a dick, but she loves him, and I have to figure out a way to respect that.”
“Sounds like we both have women troubles.”
Declan snorted. “At least I’m sleeping with mine.”
Rubbing it in. The bastard. “You forget Leah is mad at you.”
Leaning back and looking completely in command, Declan propped his hands behind his head and smiled. “But this is where we’re different. See, Leah and I will work through her grumpiness with me today and I’ll be in bed with her in fifteen minutes, while you’re in yours alone.”
Bed. Grace . . . damn it. “You suck.”
“You’re jealous.”
There was no point in denying it. “Damn right.”
Now he had to figure out what to do next.
Chapter Six
Grace stepped into Gossamer at lunchtime the next day and froze, despite the warm colors and welcoming cozy feel. To her right was a seating area with overstuffed sofas, complete with two older ladies who stopped whispering long enough to raise their heads and wave at her before going back to studying whatever they were reading together.
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