A Heart's War (The Broken Men Chronicles Book 5) (10 page)

As I set to prove to Morgan that her waiting time was practically non-existent, reality set in that our escapade wasn’t meant for a second round as a door slammed and a set of footsteps could be heard downstairs.

My lips froze on their descent to pay homage to Morgan’s chest as I pulled back and stared at her, shock in equal measure.

“Auntie Morgan!  Auntie Morgan!” a little voice yelled as little feet hit the stairwell.

Beneath me, panic took over Morgan’s face.  “Oh, fuck!” she said, and next thing I knew, she was shoving at my shoulders without much success at bucking me off.  “Quick, get dressed!”

She didn’t have to tell me twice, but before I could move, my body froze as I heard, “Auntie Morgan, where are you?” from the little one who wasn’t very far from the bedroom we were in.

“I’ll be right there, munchkin!” she shouted at the same time a woman called out, “Savi, get your tiny butt back down here, missy!” Little feet stopped and then proceeded closer.

My eyes played between the bedroom door and Morgan’s wide gaze.  “Who…what?” I sputtered.

“I’ll tell you in a bit,” Morgan whispered. “Just get off of me and cover up before-”

Just like the front door, the bedroom door slammed open and a little girl of about five or six stood in the entryway with her blonde pigtails, huffing and puffing for air through a few missing teeth.  Before any of us could say anything,
Savi
beat us to the punch.

“Mommy, there’s a man in Auntie Morgan’s room and he’s squishing her!” she squealed, another set of footsteps now making their way toward us in a hurried fashion.

My jaw dropped and then my body began to shake with laughter to which Morgan groaned and let her head fall back to the mattress while grumbling “Tattletale” to the little girl.

“I was just hugging her,” I fibbed.  It seemed like a plausible enough excuse for a child her age.

“Savannah, get out of there!”  A woman came running in, coming to a dead halt behind the little girl as soon as her eyes met our compromising position. “Oh, God!  Cover your eyes, baby, turn around, and go downstairs to the kitchen.”  A deep crimson suffused her face as she averted her eyes from us. “I’m so sorry, guys,” she said in total mortification.

Instead of doing what she was told, the kid crossed her arms in a gesture of defiance, looked up at her mother and asked, “Mommy, why’s that man hugging Auntie without his shirt on?”

Thank God for small reprieves in the form of bed sheets, which we’d crawled under shortly after our first round.

The woman’s eyes bugged out of her head before she forced Savannah to turn away by the shoulders.  “Kitchen, now!” she ordered, and when the child listened, she squeezed the bridge of her nose and sighed.  “Hugging!  If she only knew.”

Morgan threw me under the bus.  “Don’t look at me, he’s the one who gave her that idea.”

“Hmm…right.”  She looked as if she was stifling a bout of giggles.  “I’ll be downstairs.  Come find us when you’re dressed.  No ‘hugging’ until were gone, got it?”

“Kayla,” Morgan began, “I’m-”

“Don’t worry, Morgan,” she started. “Savi had to learn about the birds and the bees some time, and since her father isn’t around, she isn’t going to learn it from me.”  She turned and left us.

As we dressed, my mind took a detour in its memory bank and snagged on the two names I’d just heard.

Fuck!

As realization hit, that I’d just come face-to-face with Damon’s wife and child, my heartrate shot up.  Blood rushed into my ears, my knees began to quake, and my stomach churned.  My ass met the edge of the mattress when my knees gave out.  I tried to massage the drumming pulse that beat at my temples, breathing to stave off the darkness hovering in my peripheral vision, threatening a total blackout.  I was on the verge of a massive panic attack.

“Oh fuck,” I mumbled.

Too busy with my turbulent emotions, trying to find my bearings, and dealing with reality, I barely noticed Morgan’s approach.

“Theo?”  I shook my head, my mouth dry as the Sahara.  “Theo, talk to me.  What’s going on?”  With much effort, she managed to pry my hands from my head and cradled my cheeks in her hands, effectively tilting my face so she could see it.  “Shit.”

“Yeah, that about sums it up.”

“Theo-”

“That was Damon’s woman,” I croaked.  “That’s his…” I didn’t finish.  Instead, I led with, “They’re all alone because of me.”

“Theo, you know that isn’t true,” Morgan whispered, but her words could have been yelled and I wouldn’t have heard them.  Not the way she meant them.

I grabbed her wrists and pulled her hands away, setting her at a distance so I could stand.  I ran a hand down my face and gulped.  I knew this wasn’t going to go over well but, “I’ve got to get out of here,” came out before I could stop it.

Morgan blanched at my words.  “What?”

“I can’t, Morg.”

“You keep saying that, and I’ve told-”

“Would you stop thinking about us for one damn second and take a good look at what just walked out of here!”

The woman flinched at my tone, but instead of backing down, she only looked more pissed off.  “I’ve looked, Theo.  I’ve been seeing for
years
!
I’ve been there for them from the beginning, helped them, grieved with them, laughed with them, and-”

“So what?”  I snorted.  “You think they’ll be just like you and open their arms and welcome me into the fold?”

“But-”

“I bet Kayla never expected that the guy you decided to entertain after your ex would end up-”

“Stop cutting me off!” she yelled back.

My rant continued as if she hadn’t said anything, “getting your brother killed in the same mission, huh?”

“What?”

My head snapped to the bedroom door and found Kayla standing there, her eyes swimming with tears.  There was no sign of little Savannah anywhere.

Thank the fucking Lord for small mercies!

Before the two women could say anything, I shoved my t-shirt over my head and made to leave the bedroom.  When I got to Kayla’s side, I forced my gaze to meet hers and whispered, “I’m sorry that you had to find out this way.  He loved you so much,” before I left.

My way downstairs was nothing but a blur, with the exception of the little girl that stood by the door as I paused to tie my work boots.

Her tiny hand touched my forearm.  “Are you okay, mister?”

I knew I shouldn’t have, but I looked at the tiny face that held her father’s eyes and before I lost my cool, before I could even stop myself, I tilted the little one’s head downward and kissed her hair.  “I’m so sorry, shorty,” I croaked before I straightened and fled Morgan’s home.

I ran across the driveway and jumped in my truck, gunning the engine, and peeled out of there like my ass was on fire, and headed home.

Slamming the front door after unlocking it, I dropped the keys to the floor and headed to the kitchen, pulling a beer out of the fridge. Popping the top, I downed half before moving toward the back door.

The back yard was slightly better than what the front had looked like before I had tamed it.  The only thing that rendered it passable was the fact that I’d mowed part of the grass so it looked as if I had a yard.

I needed to get my anger and guilt out – to find something to purge the surge of emotions roiling through me.

The shed door listed to the side, one rusty hinge barely holding it in place as I pushed it open and grabbed the axe the previous owner had left behind.  Maybe a little manual labour would be the ticket.

I lost count relatively quickly at how many logs I managed to split into firewood, but despite my tripling the size of the the pile, my emotions had yet to calm.  So I moved on to destroying the dilapidated pergola that covered the patio.

With a large yank on the last rafter, I heard, “What are you doing?” which caused me to lose my footing and tumble the couple of feet off the step ladder to land on my ass with the piece of rotted wood over me.

“Jesus!” I shoved the scrap to the side, my heart beating wildly, and avoided the woman standing there by keeping my back to her.  “You shouldn’t be here,” I growled.

The silence was heavy for a few seconds too long before a tiny whirlwind of a force ploughed into my side, wrapping her short arms around my neck.

I didn’t move, too surprised to do so.

“Mommy says you knew my daddy?” Savannah stated more than asked.

I didn’t answer.

“Mommy says you were brave just like him,” the kid added, which still didn’t garner a response from me.

“Savi,” Kayla warned, coming into my line of sight.

“How come you came back but Daddy didn’t?” Savannah questioned.

I shut my eyes and wished that I were anywhere else but right where I was.  My answers weren’t befitting of a child’s ears.

“Savannah, that’s enough!” Kayla said.

“You must have been the toughest of the bunch, right?” the little one persisted with a hint of awe to her voice.  “That’s what Auntie Morgan said.”

I grunted as a response.
  Tough…right.

The little pipsqueak that refused to let go of me began to feel like a comfort and I found myself wrapping an arm around her and giving her a gentle squeeze.

Because I had yet to say anything, Savannah took it as a cue to keep rambling.  “Why are you sad?”

Kayla gasped.  “Savannah Morgan Smyth!”

But like always, Savannah ignored her mother’s scolding.  “You shouldn’t be so sad,” the child said, and I knew she was far from done, and sure enough, she didn’t disappoint.  “Did you know that Auntie Morgan has the bestest cure for when I’m sad?”

I snorted.

“It’s true!” Savannah argued as if my reaction conveyed disbelief.  “She gives the best hugs and she knows just where to tickle to make me laugh.”  Her giggle made my lips quirk.  “She doesn’t tickle Mommy, but she does make her smile when she’s feeling down.  I don’t like it when she’s sad, so I help Auntie make Mommy feel better.”

“I bet you’re pretty good at it too,” I mumbled.  And she was good.  Hell, I was beginning to feel the anger subside when nothing else I’d been doing had worked.

Savannah pulled back and gave me a look filled with conviction and a wide grin.  “I’m the next bestest!” she announced.

I guffawed.

“See? It’s working!”  She turned to her mother.  “Mommy, I told you I could do it!”

I snuck a quick look at Kayla.  Her lips were in a firm line but her eyes shone with pride, clouded with reservation.  When her eyes met mine, she mouthed, “I’m sorry.”

I gave her a quick nod to let her know that it was fine.

“Savi, don’t you think we should leave Mr. Lowell be?” she asked.

“Please, call me Theo,” I said, as Savannah uttered a petulant “No!”

Morgan appeared around the house’s corner.  “I’m sorry, Kayla, our little shorty here snuck out on me while I was in the washroom.  What’s going on?” Her gaze travelled between Kayla and widened when she saw Savannah sitting across my lap and my arm around the little spitfire that took a lot after her aunt.

“We’re making Theo happy again.”  Savannah grinned wide. “Well,
I’m
making him happy, but Mommy wants me to leave him alone.”

Morgan’s eyes met mine with hesitation.  “Is it working?”

Savannah answered for me.  “I think so.  He laughed.”

Morgan’s lips quirked up and she arched a brow.

I shrugged my shoulders.  “She’s pretty good at it.”

“Baby, we should get going,” Kayla started.

“But you said you wanted to talk to him?”  The little girl pouted.

That got my attention.  “You did?”  The woman nodded.

I looked over at Morgan, who’s eyes softened.  “It’s time, Theo.”

As anxious as I became, and as much as I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, something told me that she was right.  It was time.  Time for me to come clean with the wife of one of my best friends.  Time for me to find forgiveness…to maybe purge the guilt that’s been plaguing me since the mission that forever altered my life, that left me feeling undeserving…worthless.

Lifting Savannah off of me and setting her onto her feet, I got up, dusting myself off, and said, “Actually, Kayla, can I speak to you for a minute?”

Morgan took Savannah back to her house as I escorted Kayla into my unfinished kitchen.  I pulled a bottle of beer out for myself and said, “I know you’re driving, so would you prefer some water or soda, I have lemonade too?”

Kayla paused from her perusal of my practically non-existent kitchen and mumbled, “Lemonade would be good.”

Now that it was just she and I, my nerves were getting the better of me.  I stalled the inevitable conversation I had instigated by topping a tall glass with ice and grabbing the pitcher of the tart juice from the fridge.

Pouring slowly, Kayla picked up on my delaying tactic and said, “I need to know what happened.”

My shoulders slouched, my resolve deflated a little, but this was it.  This was the time to find out if she would see me as the killer I imagine myself to be, or the broken man that Morgan saw.

I gestured to one of the two chairs that currently served as my kitchen set and Kayla took a seat while I put her glass of lemonade in front of her.  I took the other seat and gulped down a hefty sip of my beer before setting it down and studying the woman that sat across from me.

She was young, beautiful, strong, whether she was willing to admit it or not, and a good woman, from what I remembered Damon saying.

Before Kayla could commence with her questions, I spoke.  And I didn’t stop, even going as far as to recount what I’d gone through with my capture, and how I got back.

“I always knew that I’d end up a widow,” Kayla whispered when I finished telling her the tale that had killed more than just my teammates.  It had killed long-wished-for dreams as well.  Theirs, hers, Savannah’s, Morgan’s…mine too, if I were being entirely honest.

“Kayla-”

She cut me off.  “Steve loved the marines.  Aside from being a father and spending his life with me, being a marine was his life, it was who he was.  I know you believed that at one point too.”  I nodded.  I had.  Kayla’s hand crossed the table and cool fingers landed over my forearm.  “God, the things you’ve been through.”

“I don’t need anyone’s pity,” I mumbled, retracting my arm from her touch.  “I told you the story so you would know the truth, not the romanticized version they most likely told you.  Smyth was under my command.  He was following orders and he died doing that.  It’s my fault and I take the blame.”

I got a less than enthused, “Wow,” from the woman, which made my head snap up and my eyes move to hers.  “You really are the self-sacrificing son of a bitch Steve talked about.”

“Excuse me?”

“Theo, we’ve never met until today, but I know you.  Aside from Morgan coming to me and telling me she’d met you on the weekend after my husband’s birthday, you need to know that Steve wrote and talked to me about you.  He said that you’re a good man, one who would do anything for the ones you care about.”  My response came in the way of a curt nod.  “You’d give it all away, wouldn’t you…your happiness, your family, your friends, your life? You would have given it all up if it meant that they’d lived.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“What’s wrong?” She shot up to her feet, agitated beyond what I expected.  “You have the gall to ask me what’s wrong?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s wrong is that
my
man didn’t die so you’d be miserable.  He didn’t die because he was under you.  He didn’t die because you told him to drive over that fucking roadside bomb.  And he sure as hell didn’t die to have you get captured, tortured and used against and by our government, Sergeant Lowell!  He was ready to die to give us all a better life just like you were, so you telling me that you’d die just so he could come back, though honorable as some would say it is, only tarnishes my husband’s sacrifice.”

Just like Morgan calling me by my nickname, Kayla calling me by my title made me sit up straighter.  No one had called me that since the day I’d received my discharge papers.  I don’t even recall the last time someone had spoken to me that way except for my superiors.  And the woman was on a roll, but this time, her voice grew softer.

“Can’t you see?  You’ve already died before even leaving this life.  That’s not what he –
no
– what
you
fought for.  You’re no hero, Lowell, but you sure as hell did what so many of us couldn’t.  Some don’t understand, but having a father in the Marines, and his fathers before him being part of the same brotherhood, helps me understand.  There’s no fucking glory in what you do.  The pats on the back don’t mean shit.  I know that! What means something is that you stood up when others couldn’t…when they wouldn’t.  You fought for your friends and family.  You
came back! You
-
”

“Kayla, listen-”

“No,
you
listen!” She stomped her foot.  “You’ve got something special right here.  Morgan told me about you before today, but it wasn’t all about how you knew Steve.”

She did?

“Yes, she did,” she said as if reading my mind.  “She cares a lot more than you think.  She’s moving on from the loss of her brother, just like I am, just like Savannah is.  But you haven’t at all, have you, Theo?  You walk around, carrying the weight of the dead, fearing that letting them go means that you once again failed them.”

“I suppose that maybe you’re right,” I mumbled.

“You know I am.”  Her face bore a look of confidence in her deduction.  “So what you have to ask yourself is, are you ready to come back to the land of the living?”

Hmm.
  Was I ready to do that?

“Are you ready, Sergeant Lowell?” she asked again.  “Instead of living like the dead because they can’t, can you try and live a life that’s worth something to be proud of, something that Steve Damon Smyth could be proud of?  Can you live a life that rivals any that the men and women you lost would be happy seeing you living?”

I cleared my throat and met her eyes with mine, but my voice came out with a croak and filled with emotion, “You’re not the first to tell me this, Kayla.”

“And I’m not going to be the last.”  The woman crossed her arms over her chest, sat down, and gave me the stubborn look that was all too familiar.

Oh yeah, Savannah didn’t just have her father’s looks and her aunt’s attitude.  It seemed that the stubbornness ran on both sides of the family, because her mother had more than enough of it in her pinky finger.

I nodded in assent.  “Seems that everyone around me has been telling me the same thing since I’ve come back.”

“That’s because we’re right.”

“Maybe you are,” I said for the first time, leaving myself open to the fact that I wasn’t to blame for what happened over there.

“And how does that make you feel?”

I scrunched up my nose at her.  “What are you, a shrink?”

“Among other things.”  She shrugged her shoulders.  “After what I say next, I think you’ll have to ask yourself a very important question.  If you can answer ‘yes’ to that question, then I’d have to say you’re off to a very good start.”

“And what’s that?”

“Theo, I know there is one thing that you haven’t heard from me yet that you need to, but you’ll never admit it.”

“There is?”

“Stop playing dumb, it’s unbecoming.”  She smirked and her face straightened to complete seriousness.  “I forgive you.”

Damn, were all women this confusing?  “But you said I didn’t do anything.” 

“It doesn’t matter if you did or didn’t.  You believe you did, so I forgive you,” she paused.  “The question is can you forgive yourself?”

“But I didn’t do anything.”

“Now I think we’re getting somewhere.”  Her eyes twinkled, but her lips remained in a firm line.  “So you forgive yourself?”

Leaning forward, staring down at the table with my hands in my hair, I thought about that for a moment.  Logically, I knew everything that happened had been out of my hands.  Psychologically, I felt I had failed, as if there was more I could have done.  Could I really forgive myself for that?  What’s more, could I move on and give myself the life I knew my men would have had, honoring them as I did?

“The short answer should be ‘yes’,” I said.  “The long answer is that it’s a hell of a lot more complicated, but I think I can learn to.”

“Good.  That’s all I want to hear.”  With that, Kayla got to her feet again and proceeded to walk toward the back door, while I watched on.  As she reached the exit to the kitchen, she looked at me over her shoulder. “Take care of her.  She’s my sister in every sense but blood, and I’ll cut your dick off with a dull, rusty Ka-bar if you ever hurt her, you hear?”  And then she was gone.