She continued packing, and I rolled through every conversation we’d shared in the past months. I still didn’t know where it went off the rails.
When Shannon reached for a pile of blankets, I caught her wrist and pulled her down to the sofa. I locked her hands behind her back. She still fought like an angry bull in the chutes, but I had her pinned. We were getting to the bottom of this shit whether she liked it or not.
“You have two choices, my dear. You can either tell me what’s pissed you off today, or I can take you into the bedroom and torture you with my tongue.”
“I’m done with scheduled sex,” she said, her words quivering. “I want you to leave.”
Springing to my feet, I hauled her over my shoulder and marched down the hall. “Bedroom it is,” I said, slapping her ass.
“I’m serious, Will,” she said, and something in her voice stuck with me. She sounded detached and cold. I dropped her to the bed and kept my hands on her hips. “We’re finished.”
“You have to do better than that,” I said. “If you’re finished, I’d like an explanation. Was it the orgasms? You just hated all the orgasms I gave you?”
Shannon covered her face with her hands and released a long, heavy sigh. Her body sagged into the mattress and her chin wobbled, and I just wanted to hold her and make this stop. “Sam almost died when we were in D.C.,” she said. “He and his girlfriend had a huge fight, then he got crazy drunk and ended up in the hospital.”
I lifted her arms to see her eyes. “Is he okay now?”
“That isn’t the point, and I don’t know how he is because he’s left the city and won’t share his location with anyone,” she said. “Riley probably knows, but he’s not saying a word about it.”
“So what does that have to do with us?”
She covered her face again.
“Because you don’t understand me at all,” she murmured. “All I ever hear from you is how I need to worry about my brothers less. They’re grown men, right? They should be able to live their lives without me, right? You don’t get that my family is all I have. Taking care of them is what I do. I let you get between us once, and I’m not doing it again.”
“No, I understand your relationship with your brothers perfectly,” I said. “And yes, I’m sorry about what happened with Sam, but you cannot spend your entire life just waiting to catch them when they fall. You have to be able to turn your phone off sometimes or go away for a weekend, and you’re not going to convince me otherwise.”
“You said you wanted to take care of me, that you knew what I needed,” she said. “To you, that’s having me all to yourself.”
“Yes, Shannon, that’s exactly what it is,” I said. It was possible that this was the closest range argument I’d ever had with a woman. It was intimate, and void of the yelling, stomping, and slamming I knew Shannon favored, but in a way, I would have preferred her usual. I didn’t want this resigned version of her. “I want so much more of you. I want you all the time. Always. I hate it that I can’t wake up with you every morning and I can’t kiss you good night. I hate that, even when I do have you, I have to fucking share you with them.”
“Because they are myfamily,” she whispered. “I have nothing without them.”
“That’s not my view on the situation,” I said. “You hold their entire fucking worlds together, Shannon. You do everything, all the time, and it will never be enough. Not for you, definitely not for them. If you just let me—”
“No!” she said, pushing me away. “Don’t tell me how much better my life would be if I let you call the shots. Don’t act like you want what’s best for me. You want what’s best for you, and even after all this time and everything I’ve told you…you still don’t get me. You still don’t see that I am what I am because of my family, and I don’t want that to change. Maybe you need to realize that you can either earn your spot in our tribe or get the fuck out of my life. We stick together, no matter what, and—”
“Yeah? Kind of like how you stick with Erin? If that’s the logic you’re operating under, Shannon, please explain to me how not speaking to your sister is sticking together. I actually want to hear you make this argument.”
The anger in her expression drained, and in its place was cool emptiness. It was a haunting, dead-eyed look that I never wanted to see again. “I meant it when I said this was over.”
“Fight me,” I demanded, wrapping my hands around her biceps. “Put on your war paint, little girl, and fucking fight me. You want to get rid of me? I want to see you work for it.”
I shook her, desperate to see any flare of emotion, but nothing broke through her stoic grimace.
“I know you’re upset about Sam, and I know you hold yourself responsible for”—I held my hands apart, trying to encapsulate the world Shannon managed—“for fucking everything, but where the hell do you draw the line?”
“Will,” she said. “No more.”
We stared at each other, minutes passing as the distance grew between us. “You should know I’m going down range for a few months. There’s a comm blackout in effect with this task force. No mobile phones, no email.” Shannon dropped her eyes to her hands and rubbed the pad of her thumb over her fingernails. “I should be stateside around September, and when I am: I’m coming for you.”
Chapter Eighteen
SHANNON
Ididn’t allowmyself the luxury of falling apart.
The weeks and months after Sam’s implosion were hard on everyone, and we all hoarded reasons to blame ourselves, but a fair amount of quietly spoken censure tracked toward me. Regardless of whether Sam was an adult with advanced degrees and a successful career, I was still responsible for tending to his health and overall well-being. It was built into the mechanics of this family, and I’d never stopped to announce we were overhauling the system. Instead, I’d abandoned that post when he needed it most.
