A Fire That Burns

by Kirsty-Anne Still

  Getting outside she headed straight for the large table that everyone was sitting around and went straight to Tyler’s side as he had kept the chair next to him free. Regardless of what had happened, Tyler never flaunted another girl in her face when they were an item. He was faithful and never lashed out in such a callous and malicious way.

  “Here you go, Sunny,” Tyler said as Austin sat down next to him. He held up a large bowl full of ice cream and toppings – a typical Strongson ice cream bonanza. She hadn’t quite expected it, and it brought a smile back onto her face. “Made exactly how we like it.”

  “Mmm,” Austin sounded as she took the bowl and licked her lips. “Best part of a meal.”

  “Dessert before dinner?” Liam asked as he watched Tyler hold up a bowl toppling over with ice cream.

  Austin smiled like a child for a moment, “It’s a little tradition between me and Tyler.”

  “Aussie always told me the dessert was the best part of a meal and she didn’t want to die before she had it, so I was brought up on having meals backwards,” Tyler chimed in happily as he remembered a past mantra that he and Austin had lived by.

  “And it hasn’t failed yet,” Austin commented in almost a sing song tone. She grabbed the spoon and carried on eating as Tom pushed on with finding out more about the team. She just continued and got lost in their words and remained silent and thoughtful.

  As Austin finished the last spoonful, she realized that the icy feeling in her wasn’t from the copious amounts of ice cream, but more due to the glances from Michael. “I’m going to go see how long until dinner,” Austin commented and pushed herself up. “I’m still starving,” she covered up her excuse with a smile. She wanted to get away from the crossfire that was slowly erupting between Tyler and Michael.

  “I’m going to check on her,” Michael said after a few moments of awkward silence. He got up and looked at Tyler, “Unless...” he trailed off questioningly wondering if Tyler would like to go.

  “No, it’s fine. Go ahead,” Tyler said with a smile and watched the man smile gratefully before turning on his heels and heading into the house. “They seem a bit tense around one another,” Tyler commented as he watched Michael try and apologize to Austin as she went and helped her mom out.

  “He didn’t like the fact that she left. Their relationship broke down when she announced it,” Emma told Tyler, and hoped that for now, that response was enough to hold off any more questions. She knew, from Tyler’s stone-like look that he had on his face, it wouldn’t hold out for long.

  Tyler knew there was more to this collision of two friends than met the eye, but he would stand beside Austin until she told him. It didn’t stop him from knowing there was more to learn where Michael was concerned; and it didn’t stop the bottom of his stomach from rumbling with jealousy.

  An emotion Tyler prayed wouldn’t get the better of him.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  IF an afternoon could sharply change, Austin now knew exactly how. She was on the spot and feeling very exposed and vulnerable.

  “Liam, he wants you back. He wants you back on the team,” Jessica started to tell Austin as they sat outside in the unseasonably warm October evening. The other three men had taken residence in a motel just around the corner, not wanting to infringe on the Pearson’s. Now as they waited for Liam and Michael to arrive for dinner, Jessica felt it was time to admit a few home truths to Austin, “The unit isn’t working as well without you. You were the only tech that wasn’t afraid to hack whatever to get whatever.”

  “I-I,” Austin felt like all eyes were on her, “I don’t know.”

  “We’re not pressing you, Aus, but we just wanted you to consider it,” Emma dropped in abruptly, noticing the look of fear as it ignited upon the entire surface of Austin’s face.

  Archie, flipping his hair out of his face, looked at Austin’s expression and felt nervous, “Statistically, our cases have almost doubled in length since you left.”

  “We just don’t function without you,” Jessica told her sadly. “It’s you that brought us together and it’s you that kept us afloat. We just want you back,” she quickly caved and admitted the initial true nature of their visit to California. It was selfish, but they were sinking and they were now desperate.

  Austin looked at her friend, a woman who had become her family in such a short space of time, “I can’t. I don’t want to.” She told her truthfully, “I love it in New York, but I love it here more and I’m happy here. I want my life here.”

  “There’s another reason,” Tom jumped in as he sat and watched his little sister. If there was anyone, other than Tyler that knew her, it was him and he wanted to know. “What else?”

  Looking up, Austin now understood what a deer caught in the headlights felt like. She hated every second of it and wanted to bolt.

  “Tell,” Tom told her, leaning back in his seat with his arms crossed over his chest. “What else is it?”

  “I hated the nightmares,” Austin admitted softly and felt exposed and vulnerable.

  Jessica and Emma exchanged looks with one another as they understood that matter immediately. Austin was alone on the nightmare side of the job, and she would always be. The rest of the team had more time together than anything; they could profess what was going on more in their minds. Austin hadn’t gained that ability.

  “Dreams and nightmares are the minds way of metabolizing the stimulus it received prior to sleep,” Archie jumped in trying to save the moment, “It’s perfectly healthy.”

  “It is not perfectly healthy!” Austin suddenly had a massive outburst. “It is not normal to dream of those murders and feel what those victims felt. It is not normal! Just because you guys have had training and can compartmentalize and whatever else you do, does not mean I can!” As she finished she got up, supporting her tender arm and left everyone in the garden and went into the house, going straight to her old bedroom. She didn’t expect herself to have that sort of outburst, but no one knew the unthinkable horrors that had crossed her screens. No one knew what her dreams twisted into and no one would know the amount of pain she was caused by just going to sleep.

  No one prepared the naive, lost woman that messed around with the wrong software and got caught. She was a self-taught hacker from watching her brother, and she paid a high price for it.

  Even now, she was still young and naive and had a perfectly brightly colored outlook of the world. She wasn’t experienced for that job; it was the one thing that had pushed her to come home. She had done her duties, was set free, and she wanted a life again. She knew if she stayed with the FBI she wouldn’t get that.

  It was with each new case that her yearn to have Tyler around had grown; and it was with each new Unsub caught that she had wanted to go home, but she was trapped in New York. The worst part of it all was that she had developed connections with the team, had grown to love them, and she had to leave yet another family to gain back the other.

  Sitting on the bed she pulled a pillow to her chest and cried into it. There were multiple demons she had to face to overcome this moment. She knew she had to completely let Tyler in. The biggest demon she had been scared of was making a family of her own. The one she had yearned for since losing the baby and New York wasn’t giving her the man that was in her dreams – Point Arena was.

  A soft knock came from the door and Austin looked up and wiped her face before summoning in whoever was there. She tried to breathe in the calm and prayed her face wasn’t a red and blotchy mess. She was pleased it was Tyler who walked in and no one else. Any of the team would have made her carry on being angry as a defense mechanism and any of her family would have made her break down into a bawling mess. Tyler calmed her enough to make her see sense and talk it out calmly and collectively before breaking down.

  “I’ll be down in a bit,” Austin told him, offering a feeble reassuring grin.

  He ignored her and went over and climbed onto the bed, sitting next to her, “I’m not leaving you.”<
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  “I’m fine,” she lied strongly to him.

  “Something more happened than just those cases,” Tyler told her sincerely as he took her hand in his. He had realized the moment she had kicked off that something more than just nightmares had happened. Right now, he wasn’t leaving until he got the God’s honest answer. “What was it?”

  Austin sighed, “I familiarized too much.” Austin admitted to him, and sniffed back the tingle in her nose as it told her a new bout of tears was coming. “I was given a brief training, but when you’re there, living it, you can’t help it. You see people lose the people they love and you can’t help but empathize, and get involved. Especially when you felt like you had lost everyone you loved yourself.”

  Feeling his chest constrict, Tyler hated to hear how broken Austin felt over how her life had come to be. He had always expected her decision to run as a life choice and losing everyone was just the consequences of her decision.

  “There was one case,” Austin started quietly; “I was called out with the team to use a computer at the scene.”

  “They put you out there in the crime scene?” Tyler cut in angrily. His thoughts consumed with Austin being forced into danger.

  “I was surrounded by six FBI agents, millions of police. I was safe,” She calmed him gently. “There was a woman that was held captive and she was pregnant. As the guy brought her out, he shoved her towards me and she fell and hit her stomach. In the time it took to get him talked down and arrested and help getting to her she was bleeding and had bad stomach cramps. I saw it all over again. That night I lost your baby. It all happened again. Right in that moment,” Austin confessed and cried. “Her husband had died and the one thing she had to remind her of him was taken from her too.”

  “Oh, Baby,” Tyler sympathized as he put his arm around her and pulled her close, cautious of her wounds still.

  “She wouldn’t let me leave her and I was with her when she was told she had lost the baby,” Austin sobbed, idling wiping the tears away so they could be replaced with the newer flood. “The look on her face was exactly the same as I had when I was told those words and I sat there thinking wow, is this what every woman feels when they lose a child?” Austin continued as she stared off. “That same empty feeling as the darkness took over that total feeling of untouched heaven.”

  Tyler’s silence was comforting to her. He allowed her to have a sounding board for her woes to hit.

  “Not even twenty-four hours later we got a phone call to tell us she was found dead,” Austin finished, scarily quiet. Her tears still falling, but her sobs now held back in a catatonic way. “She had killed herself because everything she had left to live for was taken away from her.”

  Tyler’s grip was getting harder as he held onto her hand still. He had no words. Six years of building sentences and making dialogues for the moments of the truth like this one were futile. He had no way to help her, but to listen.

  “That was the last case I did there. I had to come back as soon as possible,” Austin admitted to him and cried heavily again. “I had to come back for you.”

  “And you did, Aus, you came back to where you’re supposed to be,” Tyler told her sincerely. “Regardless, you came back for what was rightfully yours.”

  “Why is the world so cruel though, Tyler?” Austin asked looking up at the man she loved. “You’re still alive, regardless of our baby, but she had no one. Absolutely no one.”

  “I don’t know why the world is so cruel, but that’s why we have people like the bunch downstairs, the others coming over, and me, to fight back and make sure it is just a little safer.”

  “You’re destined for something more than a pokey little town, Handsome. That unit is made for you,” Austin told him sorrowfully. “You would be perfect.”

  “But I wouldn’t be perfect if you’re not happy. I love this town, I love this life now. I don’t plan to move because, at the end of the day, I want my children to grow up like us.”

  “Being caught in love triangles?” she asked him with a cocked brow.

  Chuckling, Tyler kissed the top of her head, “Growing up with the love of their life’s right next door. Romance blossoming in the front yard, loving your best friend to the max, and to know what having the world at your feet feels like. My best memories are filled with you, Austin. From waking up in the morning, to watching you try and seduce me at family meals. Hell, turning up at my work to get me to play. I want my kids to experience a love like ours – of course, our kids won’t be getting it as young as we did. They’re being kept on a leash until they’re fifty.”

  Austin giggled and looked up at him, “Is that all you want?” Austin asked him dubiously, wanting to know what he really craved out of life. What he really wanted from her and she wanted to know if their dreams really matched one another’s.

  “Well,” he started, “I want your last name changed, the white picket fence, and to kick start the good life. I want to show you that after everything I am a changed man, and in a good way. I will never neglect you and I will never, ever make you go a day worrying. I am going to spend the rest of my life making my past mistakes up to you, but I will do it with every piece of my being. I just want my life with you to begin properly.”

  Austin sighed happily at that thought.

  Tyler kissed her again before finalizing his thoughts, “For now though, I’m happy enough having the love of my life all to myself.”

  Feeling her heart balloon, Austin had never felt so elated to hear those words again. It seemed her days lately were so full of ups and downs, battles with her emotions, fights with her inner demons. Every time Tyler swore on his love for her she felt her heart become more and more solidified and fortified.

  Biting her lip hard, Austin felt the pain, but it wasn’t as much as the pain another secret was causing her, “We need to talk about another matter.”

  “I guessed,” Tyler told her presumptuously. “You love Michael, don’t you?” Tyler asked Austin outright after a few moments of silence. It had been something he had thought in the last couple of days as he had watched Austin and Michael around one another. If anything, he expected there to be some romance in Austin’s six year absence, and the pain and jealousy he felt over it must have been what Austin had felt when she had watched him with Natasha.

  “No,” she whispered to him. Austin felt like her body was frozen with that question. She shook her head and looked to Tyler, “No, not like I love you, but he loves me a lot like how you love me.”

  Tyler now felt like he was suddenly in a battle for Austin’s heart. He could lose it all – again.

  Chapter Fifty

  FOR fucks sake, Michael! I loved you, but not enough!” Austin bellowed, her chest heaving, her throat constricting. This was not how Austin wanted her day to begin. It seemed that Michael’s incessant behavior had pushed her over the edge.

  “I only ever loved you!” Michael exclaimed at her and grabbed her wrist, “What don’t you understand? I wanted you stay in New York with me because I love you so much that you leaving hurt and I lashed out.”

  “Lashed out by sleeping with other women!” Austin fought back and tore her arm away to get free from his hold on her wrist, but failed miserably. “Let me go Michael,” she said with a warning tone. “Now.”

  “Please come back to me,” he begged her as he loosened his grip. “I’m not the same man without you. I’m the wrong man. I do stupid things, make wrong decisions.”

  “You did those before you knew me,” Austin told him with a head shake, “Don’t tell me I’m the reason you stopped those.” She then let out a laugh full of irony, “Plus, I was still around when you made the wrong decision of sleeping with three other women!”

  “I’m sorry for that, I was angry,” Michael defended, trying everything to grapple onto her.

  “Angry doesn’t make you do that, Michael!” Austin fought back, “I tried, I really did try to give you my all, but when I broke, you did that to me. I can’t run t
he risk of that happening again.”

  “Anger does make me do that! I did it, I admit that. Being angry made me make that decision, but only because you said you wanted to leave. I was so angry I needed a release and instead of hitting the gym or a bar, I went for a sexual release and I am truly sorry for that, Austin. I am paying for doing that.”

  “If you loved me you wouldn’t have done that! It wouldn’t have been the last resort you ended up at. It wouldn’t even have been a resort at all,” Austin shouted back, she couldn’t get over that night as he tried to spout his apologies at her. Sorry didn’t right this wrong at that moment in time. Sorry didn’t take away the sting that seeing three women in bed with the man that she had tried and searched to move on with, and sorry didn’t make this okay.

  “Tyler did it though!” Michael called to her, “I was told he did. He was going to get hitched to the woman that took everything from you, Austin, and yet, you took him back. He lied and deceived you, but he gets forgiveness. Look what he did to you,” he said and motioned to her arm. “Look at everything he’s caused.”

  “I can’t believe you just said that,” Austin bit back with a venomously dark tone. “Out of all of the things you’ve said, you’re really going to try and make me hate Tyler? You clearly don’t know me at all.”

  “I’m trying anything here,” Michael said with a shrug. He knew he was losing, but the more he tried to salvage their relationship, the more he seemed to soil it. He was losing this battle and he wasn’t accepting it lightly.

  “You know I loved Tyler,” Austin told him as the tears coursed down her face as they finally broke their thresholds. “He was the reason I could never be truly happy with you, Michael, and you knew that.”

  Michael went to pass judgment yet again.

  “Can you understand that?” Austin asked Michael outright, stopping him from making some snide remark about Tyler. “I nearly caved and gave you all of me and you weren’t there for me when I needed you most. You let me down and I wanted out. You shut me out when I said what I wanted.”