All the rage seems to drain out of him leaving him looking like a broken man.
His voice is shaky when he finally says, “He told her if she stayed… stayed and played the whore for us…that he was the head of the family and he’d get first…crack at her. Luke, he put his hands on her.”
His words gut me but it’s the devastated look in his eyes that is almost worse as he chokes out, “Why? How can we come from someone like him? How could we not see that she was in danger? He never hesitated to hurt us so how did we not see that he could hurt her too? We just let her be here, be around him and never once thought about the threat he could be to her too. This is as much our fault as it is his. Fuck, Luke, I wish I had fought back as soon as I was big enough to take him. I wish I had killed him all those years ago.”
My hand reaches for the weapon I carried for eight long years to make that happen. It’s a reflex action and I want to make him pay but my hand only finds air. Rex’s brow furrows and he starts shaking his head as he tracks my motion.
“Don’t you think I want that too? I want to go straight back to town and choke the life out of him with my bare hands. I told Chase that when we left her but he said if we do that, then we’d be the ones leaving her this time. We’d go to jail for it, no question - and then how would we fix this for her? How could we make it up to her or try and get back what was stolen from us all? We can’t. We’d lose her all over again.”
My hands drop to my sides as his words penetrate and tamp down the beast straining to be let free. Rain, my Sunshine, she’s what matters. She didn’t leave me the way I thought she did and now that she’s back, I’m going to make sure she never will. I won’t lose her or anyone else I love ever again. The monster is still there wanting out so I do the only thing I can to cool him off.
Wordlessly I stride past Rex over to where the ax is hanging on the wall and pull it down before stomping around the barn to the woodpile. I set up the first log, lift the ax up behind me and swing down, cleaving it in two. I send all my pent-up anger into that swing and the log practically blasts apart. Again and again and again until my t-shirt is soaked through with sweat, my arms ache, and sweat drips from my chin. I don’t stop until I physically can’t lift my arms for one more swing. Only then do I feel like the beast is subdued, back in its cage, and too tired to hurt anyone.
Almost lazily I make a one-handed swing to wedge the ax into the chopping stump and leave it there to scrub the sweat from my face with the hem of my t-shirt and then turn and look across the fields in the direction of Rain’s trailer. My shoulders slump with the weight I feel. Would she even want me near her now? It’s partly my fault she left, that she had to leave the only home she knew and face a strange world all on her own.
It’s not even just that. I’m not the same boy she knew all those years ago. The beast inside me has grown since then – fed by every harsh word and every hard fist directed at me and the rage I could never express from losing my family and being put under his thumb and control.
The military hardened me, changed me – but also helped me to harness that monster, and I learned how to unleash him and point him at our enemies. They gave me an outlet for all the pain and anger I’ve carried with me and had never been able to let go of. They also gave me a different kind of family. A band of brothers that depended on me to have their backs. I was scared shitless when I first enlisted but eventually found that the structure of it all was exactly what I needed to thrive. I didn’t have to question my place with them and I never doubted that I belonged. I had clear concise instructions for what to do and what my objective was. Kill the enemy, protect my brothers.
It's not that I don’t feel like I belong here, I do. Especially now that Lannister Kingston isn’t around to push me down in the dirt and make me question whether I belong. Chase made damn sure my name was on all the property documents so I would always feel like a partner to him and Rex and I’ll never be able to repay him for that. But the question in my mind now is if I deserve to be a part of Rain’s life. If she’d even want me to be.
I strip off my soaked shirt and slap it over my shoulder as I slowly walk up to the main house and into the bathroom to step under the cool spray of the shower. Even though every part of me aches with exhaustion I know it won’t help me sleep through the night. There’s only one place in this world where I’ve ever slept straight through and that’s next to her in her small bed.
I throw on clean clothes and reheat some leftovers from the fridge, eating it over the sink with my gaze through the window locked in the direction of her trailer.
I might question my place in her life or if I even have a place anymore - but I’ve never been a coward. By the time I wash off my plate and set it in the rack to dry my decision is made and I stride through the house to the front door, pausing briefly to look into the living room where Chase and Rex are sprawled out in front of the TV watching an old episode of American Choppers. My brow raises when I spot the glass of sweet tea in Rex’s hand, not a whiskey bottle in sight.
“You going over there?” He asks me with a knowing look.
I nod slowly. It was never a secret that I spent many nights escaping to Rain’s, back before she left. Even though they both hoped she’d choose to finally be with one of them, they never gave me shit for spending nights with her. My brothers knew it wasn’t anything more than the comfort and security she gave me to get through my worst nights. We had all agreed early on that we would keep things respectful with her until she turned eighteen, wanting her to be the one to make the move to something more when she was ready. That didn’t stop any of us from wanting her desperately.
Chase frowns deeply and looks away, back to the TV.
“You think that’s a good idea, Luke?”
When I don’t answer, he drags his troubled gaze back to me.
“I’m just saying, she’s only here to clear up her daddy’s stuff. Just…try and remember how hard things got the last time she left. We all need to keep that in mind before getting too deep with her again.”
Rex scowls at him. “You think she’s not going to stick around?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “She has a life in the city. Why would she stay here?”
Rex scoffs. “You saw her tell off that douchebag at the funeral and she’s not wearing that ugly ring anymore.”
“Just because she dumped the dick doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a life she wants to get back to. What could this place offer her? Don’t get so wrapped up in the girl she used to be and lose sight of the fact that she’s not that girl anymore. We don’t even know who she is. We don’t know the woman she grew into.”
Rex glares at him. “It’s Rain, Chase. I refuse to believe that she’s changed so much from the girl we all loved. We’ve got a second chance here!”
“A second chance at what? What makes you think she’d stick around for us? For you? Me? Luke? You heard her, she wasn’t going to choose between us back then, why would you think she would now? We can’t go back to how it was. We’re fucking adults, not kids!”
I walk away before he can say anything else that I don’t want to hear right now. I don’t know how we’d go forward but I know right now, I need her. She doesn’t know she was my lifeline for eight years. She doesn’t know that I wrote her a letter every night I was in that hellish desert. It doesn’t matter that I told her dad to throw them away. I just needed that connection when things got so dark I could barely breathe. I wrote all the things I could never say to her and it let me sleep a little better so far from her, so far from home. I need to see her tonight like I need to breathe so I walk the dark path I used to take so many nights as a kid and teenager and go right to her window. The light in her room is on so I tap at the window and hold my breath, hoping…
Rain
Ihaven’t been able to settle all day long. I’d started and stopped so many areas of the small trailer to pack up but I can’t stop thinking about the three men that made up such a big part of my life before I left. I carried that secret like an anvil around my neck for so long that now that it’s all out in the open, I have no idea how to move forward. They know I didn’t leave by choice now but does that change anything? None of us are the same people we were back then. I certainly am not. I’m…relieved…that it’s out in the open but we can’t just wash away ten years like it didn’t happen.
I get ready for bed, throwing on my smallest sleep short set in the hope of being cool enough to sleep and point the table fan to blow directly at the bed when a tapping at my window has my whole body freezing in place. My head turns slowly to the shade covering the window as countless memories flash through my mind of all the nights that tapping would come. My feet move without conscious thought until I’m standing in front of it but my hand hesitates to pull the shade open. Do I want to open my window to him? Do I want to open the possibility of what that would mean?
