Karen was staring at him with the same expression the others wore. Eyes wide, mouth agape. Her chair scraped loudly as she scooted in toward the table, eyes avoiding mine. “Do you need to get by?” Without a word, he took a step around her.
The other astronauts were all watching him, and he studiously avoided their eyes. I didn’t even bother to hazard a glance to where Tolan and Adam sat, but I imagined them equally glued to the proceedings as well.
Dad had stood from his place and was staring at me wide-eyed. He hissed the question at me through clenched teeth. “What the hell is going on?”
Ryan turned on him with burning eyes and clenched fists. “Sit down, Barrett. And don’t speak to her that way. She was helping me.”
Dad scowled back at him. When I opened my mouth to speak, he cut me off, gesturing with a stiff finger at Ryan. “The problem here is that you weren’t man enough to walk away. You’re destructive and dangerous. I don’t want any of that near her.”
“Look—” I began, but this time Ryan interrupted me, hissing at my father.
“And you weren’t man enough to back off and let her live her life like the adult she is.”
My blood boiled, my face flushed, and that little voice inside my head that was always telling me to calm down and take a deep breath, control myself, that voice was shouting now.
“She’s my daughter, you bastard.”
“She’s a grown woman.”
“Stop!” I yelled at both of them. Every head in the room had jerked toward me, like they were watching some kind of three-way tennis match. It might have been comical had it not been about me and my life. Steam could have been shooting out my ears for all that these two alpha male assholes had noticed me—even while discussing me.
“I am right here!” My fist struck the table, rattling the dishes and the silverware. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not present or I don’t have my own goddamn voice.”
If my cooler head had prevailed, I would have left the room. But there was no way I could walk out after demanding to be heard.
“And for God’s sake, stop making decisions about my life as if it is out of my own hands.”
Dad opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. “You are driving me away. Is that what you want?” My entire body shook as the words flowed out of me, tears rushing down my face. “To drive me away like you drove off Mom? And everyone else? You can’t run our lives. You can’t dictate to us how we live them. We aren’t dolls on the end of a string to parade about for your amusement.”
“Gracie.” He held out a placating hand. “Please calm down. Your heart—”
My face flaming, I landed a fist on the table again. Silverware clattered to the ground. “You’re breaking my heart, Dad!”
I detected movement from where Ryan stood. He had shifted his stance. He looked restless, as if plotting to wrangle me out of the room somehow. As if considering how to herd me into some private place. But I had things to say to him too. Things that wouldn’t be easy to hear.
Catching my eye, he gestured to the exit, and I turned on him, fists clenched, nails digging into my palms.
“And you,” I hissed. “You are just a liar. You lie to me. You lie to everyone around you. But worst of all—saddest of all—you lie to yourself.”
With a pang in my chest, I stopped to catch my breath, rubbing at my collar bone and noting how my dad gasped when he saw it. Naturally he assumed I was in some kind of cardiac distress.
Ryan stepped toward me. “Gray. Let’s take this—”
“No one can fix what’s wrong with you, Ryan Tyler. I can’t.” I gestured to the other astronauts on his team. “They can’t.” I resisted the urge to point to Karen. It was just too painful. Instead I struggled for a breath, my entire body vibrating with emotion. “The only one who can do it is you. But you can’t even acknowledge there’s a problem. Good luck to you, though, on getting through this. Nobody wants it more than I do. But I’m done trying to beat any sense into your head. I love you, but I just can’t anymore.”
Dad stepped toward me, and I turned on him with a sharp gesture. “Don’t follow me.”
Squeezing around Keely’s chair, I turned when I saw Ryan take a step toward me. I made an abrupt chopping gesture at him. “You either!”
Fortunately, Noah had stood up to block him and I took advantage of that to get the hell out of there without meeting the eye of anyone else. Making a beeline for my car in my high heels, I awkwardly dodged dust and garbage scuttling about on the wind. Then I tore open the door to seek safe haven inside.
I didn’t know where I was going—certainly not home. Being trapped inside those four walls with all these thoughts and feelings racing through my mind would drive me crazy. I’d feel helpless. Instead I needed to take charge.
Before anyone could come out into the parking lot to try to stop me, I pulled out and headed north on Chapman Avenue toward the summer-bare hills and away from the freeway. I hoped that just driving aimlessly and thinking would help me gain some clarity.
It was the strangest thing, really, how heading nowhere could suddenly force your mind along paths you’d never seen or considered before. My hands were on the wheel and my conscious mind was checking mirrors and the road and the bright headlights of oncoming traffic.
Feelings stabbed at me like thousands of little memory-knives. Remembering the feel of Ryan’s arms around me, the taste of his lips when he’d reached for me in his panic.
The way he’d listened to me when I told him he’d be okay. And he was okay…
Goose bumps blossomed all over my skin, and my eyes stung with tears, knowing that now, more than ever, he was lost to me. Nevertheless, I savored those fresh feelings, that rush of joy at being his everything, if only for a few moments before reality came crashing back for us both. They faded and left emptiness and pain in their wake.
Again.
I couldn’t keep doing this to myself. Over and over again. Opening my heart to him only to have him rip a fresh chunk out of it. My emotional heart would start looking like my physical one had, deformed and ill-functioning, before brilliant doctors had repaired it. But as far as I knew, there was no such thing as a prosthetic heart valve for the emotional heart.
No. If I cared about my own emotional wellbeing as much as I apparently kept wanting to give all of my heart to the same unavailable man over and over again, I’d have to practice self-care.
I’d have to close myself off, take myself away. Learn how to heal. Look out for myself once and for all.
And I’d have to fix this mess I’d created with my father, too. Fix the damage that he had done to the company by becoming involved and then throwing his weight around. It was time to stand up to him, too. I didn’t have to be the one suppressing my own feelings in favor of helping everyone around me.
I could fight for me, and that was just fine.
After meandering through twisting roads up in the hills for almost half an hour, I came to a pull out overlook off the main road, a tiny twisting two-way residential neighborhood of upscale homes that overlooked the lights of north Orange County. Off in the distance, I spotted the giant lit-up A of Angels Stadium in Anaheim, the looming boxy Honda Center nearby, and the brilliant coordinated light show at the brand new ARTIC train station. My eyes skimmed these sights, dazzled by beauty and yet not really seeing them.
Without another second’s hesitation, I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my contacts, clicking on the message app. I glanced at the time—just after 8:30.
I keyed in my message and waited.
Me: Hey there, I was wondering if we could meet up. I really need to talk.
I stared at the phone screen for a minute, willing the reply. The telltale three dots appeared, indicating that he was reading the message. I swallowed. It might seem sudden. It was definitely late and out of the blue, but maybe, just maybe…
The three dots disappeared, and a new message popped up on my notifications screen.
I bit my lip, considering, then replied.
Me: I’ll come over to your house if you don’t mind. Promise I won’t impose long.
Him: Never an imposition. See you soon!
I swallowed the lump in my throat and started the car, the words that I wanted to say to him already speeding through my mind.
Chapter 25
Ryan
Watching Gray walk out of that room was like watching my heart tear itself out of my chest.
And though she’d warned her old man off, I took a step to follow her when I was very deliberately blocked from doing so by Noah. I didn’t resist his interference. I owed him an explanation, after all. I owed them all. My undershirt was still soaked with the cold sweat of that episode in the dark. And they were likely reeling from the revelation.
None of them could possibly be as sick as I was to have revealed it, though. And yet also, I was oddly relieved.
She’d been right, and I’d been too blind to see it. I was unfit to fly.
And now, they all knew the truth of it.
I spun on my heel and headed for the men’s room instead. I took a moment to catch my breath, splash some cold water on my face, and try to come up with a plan.
But after a few minutes of procrastinating and knowing the rest of the guys would soon follow me in here, I left without a plan, only the gnawing need to go find Gray, to apologize to her. To hold her close if she’d let me.
That desire was soon thwarted when I saw who was waiting for me on the other side of the restroom door, leaning up against the wall, arms folded and staring at the ground, lost in her thoughts. Karen.
I owed her an explanation, too.
“Hey,” I said softly so as not to startle her out of her daydreaming.
Her head came up, and the curtain of dark hair fell away from her lovely face. To my surprise, there was a soft smile on her lips. “Hey.”
I froze, and we awkwardly stared at each other for a long moment. “So, we should talk,” I said.
She let out an explosive breath as if she had been holding it. “Yes, we should. There’s a small room just off the hallway here. It looked empty. Maybe they won’t mind if we borrow a seat. We’ll make it an ongoing tradition.”
I nodded and followed her to the room in question. It was a small sitting room set aside for special gatherings. There was a large sofa and chairs and a fireplace that was now dark. The lights were dim. Karen took one of the chairs, so I sat on the sofa, facing her.
Karen laced her fingers together and settled her hands in her lap. “So…” Her eyes narrowed, searching my face. “I have something I think you need to read.”
I frowned, struck by the oddness of her words. Had she written me a letter? While I was in the bathroom? I puzzled over that while she pulled her purse strap off her shoulder.
She produced a plastic envelope, undid the button-and-string-tie fastener that held it closed, and produced a folded letter from within. It was clearly something she treasured—and something that had been unfolded, handled lovingly, read and reread, and refolded. Over and over again. A letter not quite tattered but definitely affectionately worn along the folds of paper.
She cradled it carefully in her hand as she unfolded it and handed it to me. “Read this now. And we shouldn’t talk again until you’re finished. Okay?”
With a profound frown, I took the paper from her and laid it out on the coffee table in front of me. In the dim light, I squinted to make out the words. It was clearly in Xander’s handwriting. I would have recognized it anywhere.
And I soon realized, after seconds of staring at it, what this was. Every astronaut, before going up, was encouraged but not required to write one or more of these, depending on the number of people waiting for him at home. A letter to a parent, a child, a domestic partner, a best friend. A just in case letter.
My eyes flicked up at her, and she nodded. “After witnessing what happened at dinner, I realized that he never wrote you one because you were going up together. But arguably, you are the one who probably would have benefited the most from reading his thoughts on the mission. His hopes and fears. Read it, Ty. You need it.”
I sat back for a minute and stared at her, my chest tight and my vision a little hazy. “I can’t…”
“Please. If you won’t do it for me, do it for Xander. Read it.”
I felt like I was invading her privacy, even though she was the one who handed me the letter. But I dove in, skimming through the personal message he wrote to her—the brief collection of memories that stood out to him in their relationship. When he first met her, their engagement, and so forth.
I found a message in his words—like a secret code hidden, as if for me—almost three-quarters of the way down the page.
…You know how much I’ve wanted this, and I can’t help but admit to being thrilled about this next milestone in my life. I’m the luckiest man in the world, and you are ninety-nine percent of the reason for that.
I’m also lucky because I’m doing this with my best friend, my brother. If I believed in it, I’d say it was providence that Ty and I are going up together. It means so much. I know that you rely on him a lot when I’m not around, so this will be extra hard for you. But you’ve never complained. Not once.
If I don’t come back, you’ll have many questions. And the one I most need to answer is what do I want you to do?
Live, Karen, live your life. Live it without fear and sadness. Live it in a way that you can cherish the memories of us but still make brand new ones. Fill your life with love and happiness and share that with our son. Treasure what we’ve had together, but please, for my sake, move on.
You’ve given me so much, and I feel like all I’ve done is take. With every breath I take, I love you. I love you. I love you.
Yours always,
Xander
I read and reread those lines at least three times, unable to move past them. Unable to hear them in anything other than Xander’s voice. That voice I hadn’t actually heard in over a year now. The voice which still haunted my dreams.
His voice leapt off the pages and declared I’m doing what I love...I’m the luckiest man in the world…I’m doing this with my best friend.
Xander. My best friend. My brother. The man who gave up everything to save me. I bit my lip and pushed the letter back toward her, blinking back the tears. I couldn’t let his widow see me like this. I had promised to take care of her, not force her be strong for me.
But those words. My eyes returned to them over and over again, scanning and rescanning the lines, hoping to brand them into my memory. Hoping the message would sink in when knowing that in reality I wouldn’t allow it to.
I knew why Karen had wanted me to read this but…
But I couldn’t let go. The guilt, the shame, they were all I had left.
“Ty,” she whispered, leaning forward. “Don’t you see? He’d wanted this his entire life. He died doing the job he dreamed of since he was a little boy. He—”
“He died trying to save me.” I cut her off in a dead voice, no longer able to hold it in. That secret—that shameful secret that I’d only divulged to one other person until now. “He had everything to live for, and he gave it up for me. Because I was in danger.”
She frowned, and her gaze fell to the paper in front of me, then flew to my face again, a question apparent in her dark eyes. “I don’t understand,” she said quietly.
“I’m saying that Xander defied my orders and Mission Control’s and knowingly released his tether. He put himself in danger because my suit was breached.”
I shifted, sitting back and meeting her eyes. I didn’t deserve the luxury of avoiding her gaze. I stared into her eyes while I told her how her husband—her everything—had wasted his life, had willingly put himself in danger to save my undeserving skin.
The look on her face, the hardening of her eyes, the dra
wing back and sinking into her chair as I continued to relate the facts to her, broke my heart into a thousand pieces. I closed my eyes finally, rubbing them as my voice shook, hating my own weakness. Hating myself like I knew she must hate me upon learning the truth. Upon learning that I was here, sitting across from her, instead of how it should have been. Instead of it being Xander.
The divot between her dark brows deepened, and I wondered if she would start crying. And if she did, I wondered how I would be able to handle it.
“Good God, Ty,” she finally said when my voice trailed off. I couldn’t speak another word for my throat closing and preventing speech or even breath. “Have you been tormenting yourself about this for a year? Telling yourself that you don’t deserve to be alive because he isn’t?”
I didn’t answer. I just continued to stare at her, not quite yet knowing where she would go with this. Her fist closed in her lap, and she reached with her other hand to pull the letter back to her. Oh, so it was to be anger.
Good. She deserved to be angry at me. She knew the truth now.
“You fucking idiot,” she ground out. “Did you not absorb a word of this? How can you be so dense?” She took a deep gulp of air and held the page in front of her again, her eyes scanning the page as she read out key phrases. “Treasure what we’ve had together, but please, for my sake, move on.” She swallowed, looking at me with dark, accusing eyes before returning to the paper again. “Live your life. Live it without fear and sadness. These are his words Ty. If you disregard them, you disregard the last word of a man before he died. Your best friend. Your brother. You needed these words as much as I did.”
“But don’t you see—”
“No!” she shouted, waving a tiny fist. “I don’t see. When we lost Xander, the world lost an amazing man. You lost your best friend. But I—I lost the love of my life. My partner. The man I co-parented my son with. And I don’t resent you. I don’t value his life over yours. In fact, by doing this, by keeping this secret, I resent you for not revealing to the world what a true hero he was. And if you continue to claim that your life means nothing, then you are saying that my husband died—sacrificed himself—for nothing. So cut it with this bullshit, Ty! You’re above this. Xander was above this. Don’t do it. Stop devaluing his sacrifice.” She sucked in a deep breath and let it out again to calm the trembling in her voice. “And mine.”
High Reward Page 26