Even though she knew it would take years for him to truly let it go.
Her anxiety dropped a notch when she stopped in front of Ally and Tyler’s house and saw Tyler’s truck in the driveway. She glanced at Jon, noting how taut the tendons in his neck were. Again she wished she had the power to fix this for him.
But when had life ever been that simple or easy?
Jon had the car door open the moment she stopped the engine. Now that they had stepped onto this road, he wanted it done. To stare down the barrel and face whatever was coming.
Gabby caught up with him on the path. She reached for his hand and held it as they walked to the door. Everything that crossed her mind to say seemed trite or useless. She settled for squeezing his hand.
“I love you,” she said simply.
His hand tightened around hers, but he didn’t say anything. She had the feeling that maybe he couldn’t, that maybe right now it was all he could do to prepare himself to face what he believed would be his brother’s condemnation.
He raised his left hand and knocked.
JON’S HEART WAS RACING AS though he’d finished a sprint. He swallowed, trying to ease the tightness in his throat. Gabby slid her arm around him.
“Trust me,” she said.
Her gaze was steady. Reassuring. He remembered what she’d said to him back at her apartment.
You were a little boy, Jon. An innocent, defenseless little boy.
Rationally he recognized her words made sense. He had been a child, just as Tyler had been. Just as Campbell was. Yet something in him couldn’t release the guilt, the sense of responsibility. Tyler was his younger brother. It had been Jon’s job to protect him. To save him. And he’d failed.
The door swung open. Tyler looked surprised to see them.
“Hey,” he said, his questioning gaze going from Jon to Gabby and back again. “I thought you guys wanted time alone.”
Jon swallowed again. “You got five minutes?”
Tyler frowned slightly before stepping back and swinging the door wide. “Sure, come on in.”
Jon was aware of his brother’s unspoken curiosity as Tyler led them to the living room. Ally was stretched out on the couch, a Home Beautiful magazine open in her lap.
“Hey,” she said brightly. “Didn’t think we’d see you two for a couple of days at least.”
Jon tried to smile and failed. “I, ah, wanted to talk to Tyler.”
Ally’s expression immediately sobered. “Okay. Sure.” The magazine slid from her lap as she sprang to her feet. “Gabby and I can go inspect the seedlings I planted in the yard. Can’t we, Gabby?”
Gabby looked at Jon. He saw the question in her eyes. She’d stay with him if he wanted her to. She’d do whatever he needed. The unwavering, steadfast warmth in her gaze humbled him and gave him the faith he needed to raise their joined hands to his mouth and kiss her hand before letting it go.
She rested her fingertips on his arm—the smallest of acknowledgments and reassurances—before turning to Ally. “You know I know next to zip about gardening, right?”
“It’s easy. You buy the pretty pots from the nursery, you stick them in the ground. If they die, you buy more. If not, you brag like there’s no tomorrow.”
The two women chatted as they left the room, their voices echoing up the hallway as they headed for the door.
Jon stuck a hand in his back pocket and stared at the floor, trying to muster the courage to say what needed to be said. He could feel his brother waiting. Wondering. The sound of the door clicking shut echoed through the house and for a moment the world was silent.
“Grab a seat,” Tyler said after a beat.
Jon shook his head. No way could he do this sitting down. “I’m all right. You sit if you want.”
Tyler eyed him warily. “Mate, you’re starting to freak me out a little here. What’s going on?”
Jon took a deep breath. He felt sick. As though he was going to lose his lunch. “I need to talk to you about Dad.”
“Okay.”
“I need to tell you— I want to say—”
Jon swallowed bile. His heart was pounding, his stomach churning. Hands down, he’d never been so terrified in his life.
It was one thing to throw himself on Gabby’s mercy, but she hadn’t been there. She hadn’t suffered through his inaction. She loved him, for whatever misguided reason, and she wanted to believe the best of him.
But Tyler knew. He’d been there. He understood exactly how Jon had failed.
“I wanted you to know I’m sorry.” Jon finally choked the words out. He forced himself to hold his brother’s gaze. “I let you down. I should have done more, and I want you to know that there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about it.”
Tyler frowned. “Let me down? When have you ever let me down?”
A trickle of sweat ran down Jon’s spine. “You don’t have to keep up the happy families routine. I get that you want to forgive and forget, but that doesn’t change anything. I should have stopped him. Should have protected you. But I didn’t. And I’m sorry. More than you’ll ever know.”
For a moment Tyler seemed frozen. Then he swore, short and sharp, his face distorted by the strength of his emotion. “Unbelievable. This shit gets better and better. I think I’ve got a grip on it, that it’s finally over, and something else comes up.”
Tyler took a step to his right, then stopped. He lifted a hand to his face, dashed his knuckles across his eyes. When he looked at Jon his eyes were shiny with tears. “You know what I think about every day? Standing watching Dad beat the living crap out of you and feeling guilty because I was glad it wasn’t me. Which is freaking great, isn’t it, when you’ve been walking around feeling guilty about not protecting me all these years? Just freaking great.”
Jon stared at his brother. “You have nothing to feel guilty about.”
“But you do? What do you think he would have done to you if you’d fought back, Jon? He would have pounded you into the ground. He would have annihilated you.” Tyler stepped closer, his expression belligerent. “Is this why you went to Canada? Is this why you’ve been knocking back Ally’s invitations, shutting me out? Because of some stupid misguided sense of responsibility?”
Jon was still stuck on the issue of his brother’s guilt. Couldn’t let go of it. Couldn’t Tyler see that he’d only been surviving? That he’d been making the best of a lousy, terrifying situation, taking comfort wherever he could find it?
“You were just a kid.”
Tyler surprised Jon by grabbing both his arms and shaking him, his fingers biting into his biceps. “So were you, Jon! Don’t you get it?”
Suddenly his brother’s arms were around him and he was being crushed to Tyler’s chest.
“All these years. What a freaking waste,” Tyler said. “Both of us punishing ourselves. Bloody hell.”
His brother’s shoulders shuddered and Jon knew he was fighting tears.
“Shit,” he said, but by then it was too late, the first tear was sliding down his cheek. He returned his brother’s embrace tenfold, hanging on for dear life as years of grief welled up inside him.
“I came home because I wanted to make it up to you,” he said brokenly, finally acknowledging the truth that had been sitting inside him for months. “I wanted to ask for your forgiveness.”
Tyler hugged him tighter. “Well you can’t have it, because you didn’t do anything wrong. Neither of us did. We were both victims. Both of us.”
Jon sniffed mightily, on the verge of totally losing it. Tyler squeezed him for a brief second before loosening his grip and stepping back from their embrace. Neither of them looked at each other as they struggled to regain their composure. Jon used the hem of his T-shirt to wipe his face. When he looked up, Tyler was doing the same.
He smiled sheepishly. “Don’t tell Ally I did that. She’s been campaigning for me to start carrying a handkerchief.”
Jon raised his eyebrows. “What does she think y
ou are, a Sunday school teacher?”
“That’s what I said.”
Jon smiled but it didn’t hold long. He felt as though his world had been tipped on its axis, all his beliefs overturned. He’d held on to his sense of responsibility for so long. Blamed himself. Punished himself. And all the while Tyler had been on the other side of the world, flagellating himself over the same issue.
“Why did they even have kids?” It was a question he’d asked himself over and over. There had been so little love and patience and so much anger and resentment.
“Ally and I have talked about that. I don’t think they knew any better. Back in those days, you got married, you had kids. End of story. Tough luck if you’d made bad choices or weren’t suited to it. Tough luck if you had no idea how to manage yourself and your own moods, let alone take charge of two little kids.”
He sat and Jon followed suit.
“It wasn’t just that. He hated us. When his blood was up, he really hated us,” Jon said.
The memory of his father in full fury still made him flinch.
“Well, according to Mom, we brought all that on ourselves.”
He made a rude noise. “Right. Leaving the back door open equals a backhander across the face.”
“Sure. Just like leaving a wet towel in the bathroom equals a thrashing.”
“She should have done something. She should have stopped him.”
“Yeah. She should have,” Tyler said.
Jon looked at his brother. Warmth flooded his eyes again but this time he didn’t fight the tears. Talking about this stuff, airing it, somehow made it smaller. More manageable and less dirty and shameful. He felt…released. Lighter. And the tears were part of that, whether he liked it or not.
Tyler studied his hands, lost in his own thoughts. “Do you remember the time when he took us to the beach on holidays?”
Jon winced. “Yeah. I remember.”
They talked for over an hour, exhuming old memories, sharing insights and observations, making connections. Hearing his brother’s version of events that had lived large in his memory helped scale Jon’s own demons down to size. And there were good memories among the bad. Moments of laughter that he hadn’t consciously thought of for years. The time he and Tyler built a tree house in the backyard. The time they’d been given a bike each by a friendly neighbor who’d been clearing out his garage. Long afternoons by the river, flying out over the water on the tire swing while their Tarzan cries echoed in the trees.
At some point Jon registered that it was pitch-black outside.
“Gabby,” he said, shooting to his feet.
She’d be worried. Wondering how this had all gone.
They found Gabby and Ally in the bedroom, leafing through copies of Ally’s extensive magazine collection. Gabby’s head came up when he appeared in the doorway, her gaze scanning his face intently. He smiled faintly and held out his hand. Sliding off the bed, she crossed the room and wrapped her arms around him and lay her head on his chest.
Jon rested his cheek on the crown of her head.
One day he would find the words to thank her for pushing him to talk to his brother. Right now, he wanted to savor the feel of her in his arms.
Ally insisted on cooking pasta for them all, claiming that such a stressful day demanded some serious carb loading. And no one argued with her.
IT WAS AFTER TEN O’CLOCK BY THE TIME Gabby and Jon returned to her apartment.
She led him straight to the bedroom. Toeing off her shoes, she crawled to the head of the bed and patted the mattress beside her. “Come here.”
He sat on the edge of the bed to pull off his boots, then he joined her. He tried to take her in his arms, but she shook her head.
“No,” she said, and she guided his head onto her breast and wrapped her arms around him. There was a lot of him and not quite so much of her, but it was the best she could do and it was what she needed to do to show him that she was there for him and that he was loved. She pressed a kiss to his temple and stroked his hair and breathed in the warm, manly smell of him.
She loved him. So very much.
“I think you should move in,” she said eventually.
He turned his head slightly to kiss her chest.
“Is that a yes?” she asked, even though she knew.
“You know it is.”
She bit her lip, then finally allowed herself to voice the question that had been top of her mind since Jon had appeared in the doorway of Ally and Tyler’s bedroom.
“I don’t need to know all the details of what you and Tyler talked about. I don’t need to know any of the details, really. I just need to know that you don’t blame yourself anymore.”
“I don’t want to have any secrets from you.”
Precious, powerful words.
He sat up, crossing his legs so that he was sitting beside her. He picked up her hand, tracing the delicate bumps of her knuckles with his thumb.
“Tyler told me that he’d felt guilty for being relieved when Dad laid into me and not him.”
Deep inside, Gabby flinched. That two of her favorite people in all the world had carried around such terrible burdens made her feel infinitely sad.
“And what did you say?”
“I told him that he was a kid. That none of it was his fault.”
“And he told you that you were a kid, too, right? That you were both kids and that you didn’t stand a chance against an adult?”
He smiled at her vehemence. “Yeah. That’s what he told me.”
She eyed him. “You believe him, don’t you?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
But there was a small smile at the corner of his mouth. Tyler had gotten through, as she’d hoped. Their shared experience had given Jon a new way of looking at the past.
“Thinking about it. I see.” She pushed away from the headboard and closed the distance between them, climbing into his lap and wrapping her arms and legs around him. “Think about this, Jon Adamson. You are the most honorable man I know. Even when you didn’t like me much you were worried about my personal safety. You tried to stop me from making a fool of myself, you drove me home and offered me good advice.”
“The argument could be made that I was probably desperate to get you naked. Even if I wasn’t ready to admit it at the time.”
She ignored him.
“You don’t do anything that you aren’t one hundred percent committed to. You’re extremely tough on yourself. You hassled Tyler into hiring an assistant for me, and today when I tried to quit, you offered to give up the partnership with Tyler because you wanted me to be happy.” She laced her fingers behind his neck and looked deep into his gray eyes.
“Does that sound like the kind of man who would let people down? Ever?”
He smiled slightly. Almost shyly. But he didn’t deny it or try to turn aside her words.
“I think the man I described might even be a bit of an overachiever in the taking responsibility area. He might even be a bit overbearing and overprotective sometimes,” she said.
His smile broadened. She was glad to see light in his eyes. She knew there would be days ahead when they would talk about what had happened to him again—when and as he needed to—and she was going to do her damnedest to persuade him to talk to a professional. But right now he deserved a little lightness and a lot of love.
“This man we’re talking about might even sometimes verge on being patronizing when he thinks he knows better than others.”
He kissed her, his tongue sweeping into her mouth. Then he flopped back on the bed so that she was sprawled on top of him. She’d barely caught her breath when he rolled to cover her, his weight pressing her into the mattress.
“Hey. I wasn’t finished,” she said. “I hadn’t gotten to your really good qualities yet.”
He ducked his head to bite her nipple through her top. She gasped, then made an approving noise when he soothed the bite with his tongue.
“I think you’re f
inished,” he said.
She reached to cup the side of his face, suddenly very serious. “I am, you know. You did me in. The moment I met you, my goose was cooked.”
“You cooked mine first. Asking if I wanted a coffee while I was using your computer without permission. What kind of a hard-ass does that?”
“The kind who loves you with everything she’s got,” she said, tracing his cheekbone with her fingers, her eyes locked with his.
He turned his head to kiss the center of her palm. “Thank you for not giving up on me, Gabby.”
“You’re worth it. A million times over.”
He trailed kisses down her belly. She smiled to herself, knowing where that trail ended.
She made a correction in her mental diary as he popped open the snap on her jeans. Last Saturday wasn’t the best day ever. Today was. A tougher day, by many measures—especially if they counted the hard stuff that had happened in the early hours of the morning. But still a very, very good day because they were here in her bed and Jon loved her and at long last there were no secrets between them.
Jon pulled down her zipper and licked the skin he’d exposed. He glanced at her, a wicked glint in his eyes.
She settled against the pillows.
Of course, she was willing to revise the best day decision on a regular basis. Say, every day.
Because she had a feeling that they were all going to be pretty damned spectacular with this man by her side.
EPILOGUE
Seven months later
“IT’S REALLY QUIET IN THERE. Too quiet,” Jon said, springing to his feet. He paced, striding from one end of the small waiting area to the other.
“Relax. Royal Margaret has the best maternity wing in Melbourne. Ally’s got a gazillion specialists at her beck and call.”
“She was calling out before. Why has she gone quiet all of a sudden?”
Jon ran an agitated hand through his hair. Gabby stood and stepped into his path.
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