by Leigh Lennon
“Scar, honey, I got you, I got you, sweetheart.” He murmured something else under his breath, some sort of slew of curse words. “Shit, honey, what the hell did they do to you, again?”
I was on his lap, on the couch, and I hadn’t stopped crying. I fell asleep at one point, and when I woke, I was sprawled out on the sofa with a fucking bunch of people quietly chatting behind me like this was some sort of intervention.
As I sat up, Arden was at my side in a second. “Didn’t I just leave you at the lake house?” It was the first thing that popped in my head and formed on my lips.
“Yep, but, Scar, when you need us, we’ll be there for you, regardless.” He enveloped me in his arms. As he released me, I turned to see Ell, Daimen, Andrew, and Brock at my table with a pot of coffee. Looking outside, it was dark already. How long had I slept?
Standing, I made my way to the table, a little lightheaded. Grabbing the couch to steady myself, my stomach began to growl. The traitor didn’t know I was dealing with heartache. I couldn’t feed her yet. Ell stood, grabbing Andrew and Brock.
“Hey, boys, let’s run down to the Italian eatery nearby and get Scar some food.” I didn’t want her to go because she was the voice of reason with Arden and Daimen, and right then, by the look in their eyes, they were ready to murder a fireman and a doctor. With the rage coming from both of them, they’d probably be able to do it with their bare hands.
After I sat down, Arden rummaged through my fridge and brought me some carrots to snack on. “Here, you must be starving. We can’t have you fainting on us, sis, or we’d really go kill some men.” Those words came from Arden, who was normally the calmer of the two.
“Listen, guys,” I began, crunching down on a carrot. “I understand you’re pissed on my behalf, but I’ve got this. I’ve survived a breakup before, and I’ll survive again.”
Daimen, who’d remained quiet from his seat, pulled at my arm from across the table. Giving it a squeeze, he still had not lost his solemn look. “But here’s the thing, Scar, you don’t have to go through this on your own.”
A thought popped in my head, and it made me giggle, welcoming the distraction to this fucked-up situation. “Could you two at least promise me that you won’t go after Levi and Jordan like you did with Jefferey?”
This made both men smile, too. After my boyfriend strung me along for years and left me in bad shape after I found out he’d cheated on me, both of my surrogate brothers set out to get even with him. They’d ruined his credit, and the house he was about to close on didn’t go through. Plus, with the type of job he’d applied to, a CFO of a major pharmaceutical company, the ruined credit was a red flag, and the company rescinded their offer. I’d, of course, only recently found out about all of this. I thought it was funny, and honestly, I was honored they loved me so much to destroy the guy who had ruined me for so many years. But as much as I hated both Levi and Jordan, I still very much loved them, too.
“Can’t make any promises, Scar,” Daimen replied. “But we will try,” he relented. I was sure it worked in Levi’s favor that both these men in front of me loved his twin sister fiercely.
“So let me have it,” I began, still letting the carrots calm my angry stomach.
Daimen and Arden sat near one another, holding hands, while Daimen still had my hand interlaced with his. “Scar, we’re just worried … and pissed off at Jordan and Levi but more so worried about you,” Arden started. “We saw what Jefferey did to you, and hell, we never liked that man, so it wasn’t hard to protect you. But we honestly adore both Jordan and Levi and thought this was a good fit.” He looked down at his reflection in my deep cherry oak table. Still not looking at me, he finally asked what everyone wanted to know. “So what happened? Last night, you thought they’d gotten close?”
I didn’t know how much to disclose, but hell, I was tired of not being able to discuss it. I needed to dissect it to understand better. Finally, I replied, “They slept together. No, more than that, they made love to each other. Jordan finally admitted he loved Levi, so it was more than a fuck. But Jordan let himself get into his mind and ran. He left Levi a Dear John note, telling him to take care of me.” The tears fell on my table, but I didn’t wipe them away. “Now that I’ve had them both, I can’t choose, nor do I want to.”
Arden and Daimen gave each other a knowing look. “We get it, Red. We wondered if we’d make it through losing Elliot. Sure, we had a firm foundation already before Elliot had become a fixture in our life,” Arden started, “but I questioned if we’d make it through losing Ell. Thank fuck we didn’t have to.”
Daimen stood, wrapping me in his strong brotherly arms. “We’re here for you, Scar, always.” He leaned around me, dropping a kiss on my cheek. Again, I cried in his arms, and because it was Daimen and Arden, it felt natural letting it all out with them in my presence.
Whatever Andrew and Ell bought for me, some sort of calzone, was not sitting well on my stomach. I woke the next morning, knowing I needed some kind of distraction to keep my mind off the two men who’d broken my heart. As I rolled out of bed, I rushed to the bathroom, tossing the shit from last night in the toilet. Fuck, on top of a broken heart, food poisoning was now messing with me. Shit, this was the last thing I needed. As I stood, after tossing my cookies or calzone, so to speak, I barely made it back to bed. I was dizzy, and all of a sudden, I was exhausted. Placing my head on the pillow, I didn’t have time to worry about the future because sleep claimed me right away.
48
Jordan
I’d stopped to get ingredients for mac and cheese. Oh, and beer, a fuck ton of beer. Maybe that would numb my pain. The second I got to the cabin, my phone didn’t stop. I’d had several texts, but nothing from the two people I knew I was putting through hell.
The ugly brother: You are a chicken shit, you know that? I held YOUR girl as she cried herself to sleep. Since her parents died, being abandoned is her worst nightmare.
Yeah, I was a chicken shit. There was no better word to describe me.
Arden Blakely: You and I need to have a talk, but I’m not sure you’re ready for what I have to say to you yet. But running away only hurts those you love, and fuck, stop denying yourself the love you deserve, too. Right now, the only thing I feel you deserve—is a beatdown for hurting my sister. She was our girl first, don’t fucking forget it, so yeah, you have me and Daimen to contend with.
Arden’s was undoubtedly the longest, but it didn’t stop. I’d known Elliot for years, and her text affected me, too.
Elliot: I don’t think I’ve ever been more disappointed in you than I am now. Somewhere, deep down inside of me, I’m trying to understand because I was there, too, when Arden and Daimen both pursued me, but you walked out, left a Dear John letter, and left Scar like every other man has. How could you?
But when the last text came in from Daimen, I couldn’t take anymore.
Daimen Torano: You ran. You left. She’s destroyed.
It was the last message that did me in the most. Red was destroyed, at my hands. I wasn’t sure I’d ever forgive myself.
Fishing was the one thing in this world that brought me peace and comfort. I’d been in my own world when footsteps alerted me that I was no longer alone. I’d expected to look over at my brother.
Nope, when a man in boots and jeans sat next to me, it wasn’t my brother. It was another man I loved in a very different and very genuine way.
He said nothing as his legs dangled over the dock like mine. He had a Chicago Bears ball cap on and a lightweight jacket. October was cold up north, especially on the lake. My pole was extended, and we sat in silence a good ten minutes.
His touch was quick and effective, his hand reaching my knee. I tried to ignore it. Tried was the key word.
His hand remained on my knee, but we didn’t say a word. After about an hour without one bite on the line, I packed it up. I hadn’t expected to catch anything with it being so cold, but fishing always calmed me. Levi even held his hand out and pul
led me up. Of course, as he did, I was right in his face, his eyes beckoning me to break the silence. I couldn’t look at him, not for a second, but he drew me into his embrace and his warmth.
“I need you to know how much I truly miss you.” I nodded my head in his direction.
When I thought he’d follow me into the cabin, he walked to his truck, started it up, and backed out of the little makeshift driveway my dad had installed for this cabin years ago. I turned and watched as he shifted his little pickup truck out of reverse to drive and sped away.
Did he really come all this way just to tell me he missed me? Yeah, he did, but more so, he left so as not to pressure me. It was then I realized I missed his touch, too. Shit, I missed Red and his touch so fucking much.
Waking the next day, I grabbed my duffle bag and headed to my car, leaving the place where I came to get clarification. I found it, but I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it. Not yet.
49
Levi
It took a lot to get Andrew to give me Jordan’s whereabouts. “I’m just as pissed at him as you are, but he needs time, so give it to him,” he’d insisted. Yet I had to make sure he was okay. Even if I saw him for a moment, the two-hour drive was worth it.
After I parked my beat-up truck in the garage kitty-corner from my building, I’d tried to unlock my door, only for it to be unlocked already. Opening the door slightly, I’m met face-to-face with one of the scariest motherfuckers I know when he was angry. And because he’d been waiting at my place for only God knew how long, I braced myself for the worst.
“How’s Scar?” I asked, grabbing two sodas from my refrigerator. I’d asked my sister this same question many times, and her only reply was you don’t deserve to know.
But with Daimen Torano, I was positive I’d get the same response.
I handed a soda to him, and he took a long swig. Putting it down on the end table, he turned squarely at me. “How do you want me to answer this question, Levi? She’s a fucking mess. What did you expect?”
I took a deep breath. Of course, he was pissed at me. “I know. I’m not sure what to say, Daimen. This got out of hand, so quick.”
His fingers raked through his thick black hair. “Yeah, because you pushed. You couldn’t leave well enough alone. Even when Andrew wanted you to decompress, leaving Jordan to be, you went half-cocked to confront him.”
He was wrong on this. If I had gone up there half-cocked, I would have followed Jordan into the cabin. I would have pushed him up against the wall, laying claim to his ass as I made him admit I owned his heart, too. But no, I walked to my truck after my question was answered. He was okay, and that was what I’d set out to do.
“I honestly needed to make sure he was all right. We didn’t even speak. We sat in silence.” He shook his head.
“Well, you can’t keep doing what you’ve done. You have made no progress with him. And I will tell you what, if you hurt Scar again, brother or no brother to Elliot, you and I will have problems.”
He stood, taking one last sip of his soda. “I understand wanting him so bad it aches, but right now, Scar has gotten herself so sick she can barely peel herself out of her bed, so back off. I know it’s a fucking cliché, but if you love them, set them free. If they come back, they loved you, and if they don’t, they were never yours.” In his parting words, I understood how much truth was packed into them. So. Much. Fucking. Truth.
When I arrived for my shift the next day, Garner was waiting for me in the common area. “When you have a second, I pulled together all your old cases, and I want to go over each one.” He pointed at his iPad. It does beat going through tons of boxes.
“Wait for me in my office, and I’ll be there soon.” My men had been on edge since hearing through the grapevine about the note found near the fire and how I was the target. It had not been the right time to share with Scar or Jordan about the threat to my life. I didn’t keep it from them on purpose, but between Scar kicking me out and Jordan not saying a word to me up at his cabin, I hadn’t had a chance to tell them.
Ell had barely spoken to me. However, she’d at least responded to my last text telling me Scar had been sick. They believed it was an emotional breakdown. I wanted to go to her, but Elliot said between Daimen, Arden, and herself, they had forbidden it.
After the turnover, I met Garner in my office with two cups of bad firehouse coffee. Sitting down, I went through record after record of my previous cases, stilling at a file from the call that still haunted me.
I was a rookie in my first year, and I’d officially started seeing Cami and Dane, together. I’d left from their apartment for my shift. I was so green, so inexperienced, and when we got to the house, a young woman was trapped. The father and brother attempted to run back into the house. I tackled the brother because it was suicide to attempt the rescue. The whole time, the brother screamed for his father and sister, and all we could do was watch the flames engulf his home. I got it; if it were Ell, I would have done anything to protect her, yet my goal at that moment was to protect the almost grown man so he’d have a future. I never saw him again. He only yelled at me, but his face was so full of smoke, I was glad his features were never ingrained in my mind. As I looked back at the file, a memory assaulted me. His exact words were, “One day, brother, Karma will get you.” It was the voice that hit me like a punch to the gut. In the here and now, the tone rang in my head like a face I had just recognized.
Taking the iPad from Garner, I went back, looking further into the files. “The Cassie Deckland case, I think we have something.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and called someone, asking for the case from the evidence locker. Arson had never been ruled out, and the Aurora police had it.
“I don’t care,” he almost growled into the phone. “Get it rushed over to me and get more digital records.”
I grabbed for my mobile phone but remembered placing it down during turnover in the large conference room. I searched through the case file, trying to get a glimpse of the young man, and at the very end of everything that had been downloaded to digital records years ago, my heart stopped. I knew this kid. In the file, it said his name was Kevin Deckland, but I knew him as Kevin Driscol, the other lieutenant who took over for me after my shift. I stood, my hands shaking as I pushed myself from my seat. “Fucking son of a bitch, I got it. I figured it out.”
My first thoughts were for those I loved. Understanding the fucking nutcase Kevin was, I feared for those I called my own.
50
Scarlet
Daimen and Arden insisted I see a doctor. After a couple of days, I wondered if it was more than just stress. Their trusted doctor, Dr. Serrin, was on call at the hospital, and he worked me in. After the appointment and my mind and a fuck ton of other things, I was not paying attention on my way through the tight corridor and ran smack dab into someone. Looking up, out of the thousands of people who came and went from Mercy daily, I saw Jordan.
“Red,” he started, grabbing for my hand, but I quickly yanked it away. “Hell, Red, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I turned, trying to give myself space. I couldn’t look Jordan in the eyes.
“Red, wait!” he yelled after me, attempting to sidestep me. “Did you get it, too?”
I stopped. I was dizzy, queasy, oddly enough hungry, and fucking pissed off. With my hair color, it was a lethal combination. “What?”
“Levi texted me.” He stood in my space. “He needs to see us. Something about the case. He fears we’re in danger.”
I rummaged through my phone, pulling up the messages.
My Hot Fireman: I know you need time, and I get it. But you and Jordan are in danger. Meet me at a place I know you’ll be safe.
Jordan showed me his text, which was basically the same message. “I just found another physician to cover for me. I’ll drive.” He pulled at my hand, but I still yanked it away. In danger or not, I could still be fucking pissed at these men. And I was just that.
Levi was not the only
one blowing up my phone. Elliot was, too.
Elliot: What did the doctor say?
Me: I will tell you when I’m back. Levi needs to see Jordan and me.
I powered off my phone because I couldn’t handle her twenty questions. In the car, we said nothing at first, then I had to know. “Where did you go after you left that chicken shit letter for Levi to find?” I didn’t try to hide my disgust with my tone.
“My family cabin.” He was quick and to the point.
Looking out at the streets of Chicago, I only continued, “You didn’t stay long.”
I was attempting to bait him, make him mad with my tone and my harsh words. Something that would get him to explain this all to me. “Yeah, leaving didn’t solve the problem.”
“You mean, leaving Levi to wake up without you after you shared a night of passion or leaving the city, yet another person I loved abandoning me!” I was yelling, and I wouldn’t be dialing it down.
He raked his hand through his hair, and replied, “Both, I guess.” He didn’t say more, not when we arrived at the address. “I guess this is it,” he continued, getting out of the car. It was an old warehouse. It was something that looked like it could be refurbished, similar to the building he lived in now. I didn’t think it was odd. After all, a safe place was inconspicuous, and that certainly was what this old building was.
51
Levi
I found my phone in the conference room where I had stopped earlier to talk to Matt Shirley. Garner was already in with my chief as I looked at all my texts, still reeling from the revelation that Kevin Driscol was the man behind the fires.