No Regrets (Bomar Boys #1) (37 page)

“I’m not going anywhere.” Skylar answered softly.

“Good, because I’m going after him.”

Jemma swiped at her face, “He left?”

Colt nodded, “Grabbed his keys and took off.”

“You have… to go after… him.” She desperately grabbed for his arm as panic spilled into her veins, “You have to…”

“I know.” Colt cut her off with a nod, “If he’s headed for Houston, I’ll stop him, however I have to. If he’s not, I’ll let him stew and calm down and then I’ll try talking to him again. He’ll come around. He has to.”

She nodded even though she didn’t believe that. No, he didn’t have to. He didn’t have to forgive her.

“You really think he could hurt someone tonight?” Skylar asked seriously.

“Only himself.” Colt shook his head.

“Go. Go after him. Please take care of him.” Jemma begged.

“I will. It’s what I do.” Colt started to rise.

Skylar jerked forward, one hand catching him by his shirt. She pulled on him to keep him from moving away. Colt paused, surprise flickering across his face before he wiped it away and simply stared down at her. A long moment of silence passed and then he shook his head, his eyes clear. He caught her hand in his and slowly pulled it away from his shirt, releasing him.

Skylar’s voice trembled slightly when she spoke again, “Be careful. Please.”

Colt stared at her for another second that stretched long and then he nodded. He dropped her hand and stood. He stepped away and then, he was gone.

“Those Bomar boys are nothing but trouble.” Skylar joked but even through her tears Jemma could see her fake smile wobble, “I tried to tell you to steer clear didn’t I?”

“I love them.”

“Yeah…” Skylar gave an unhappy sigh, “Me too.”

Jemma whimpered slightly and leaned into her friend. They were doomed. Cursed to love men that had no idea what love was. Men that pushed everyone away and kept themselves at arm’s length. They loved them but it might never be enough and her tears swamped her all over again at the thought.

Somewhere out there Cash was hurting and alone and it was her fault. She was the one that had hurt him and she was the one that had taken away the one person in the world he’d trusted without fail. She’d told herself time and again that she wouldn’t come between the twins, wouldn’t disrupt the bond they shared, but she had.

“This is all my fault.” She mumbled against Skylar’s shoulder between sobs.

“Somehow, I doubt that.” Her friend brushed her hair back.

“I’m a terrible person.”

Skylar scoffed, “No, you’re not. Maybe you made a bad decision but that doesn’t make you terrible. People do stupid stuff all the time, particularly when it comes to the ones they love.”

“I was only trying to protect him from himself but I screwed up.”

“I only heard the parts when you two got really loud. You don’t have to tell me the whole story. It doesn’t matter. You know what does?”

“What?”

“Amid all that yelling, it was clear you both love each other very much. That has to mean something right? You love him. He loves you. Everything else you can work out.”

“What if it’s not enough?”

“You’re asking the wrong question, Jem. What if it is?”

Considering he felt more like a Bomar than he had in years, Cash went home.

For a split second, he’d contemplated hitting the highway and heading for Texas. He’d vividly imagined the look on that bastards face when he knocked on the door of his high-rise apartment. He would have enjoyed the sound and feel of putting his fist through the fucker’s face, knocking out his teeth and breaking his nose. Only the knowledge that the guy’s face was probably already smashed beyond recognition had stopped him.

Remy had already handled him. He’d beaten him bloody until he broke and gave him the information he’d used as threats. There was no telling what kind of torture Remy had made him endure to get what he wanted but if he was guessing it had been brutal and ugly. On his best days, Remy had always skated closer to Decker’s violent sadism than was healthy and that had been before he became a trained killer.

Cash wanted to hate his brother for taking his revenge away from him. He wanted to be angry that he’d taken what was rightfully his. It should have been his right to deliver those blows, to defend himself and his woman and his family. But nobody had trusted him not to go off the deep end and take it too far and as angry as he still was, he could admit now that they’d been right to worry.

Oh, it wasn’t an easy pill to swallow. That’s why he was taking it with a bottle of whiskey. He was drowning his sorrows and his miseries right along with his hopes and dreams. He hadn’t touched hard liquor since the last time Jemma broke his heart but he figured if he was going to sink again it was only fitting to do it up right.

Call it nostalgia, or masochism or just another fucked-up Bomar acting out, but he figured going home was the perfect ending to this night.

He hadn’t gone up to the house. He couldn’t. Decker’s truck was parked out front and as messed up as he might be he wasn’t itching for another confrontation. So he’d bypassed the house where he’d grown up, where all the horrors of his life had happened, and headed for the only safe place he’d ever known.

The fort he and Colt had built out of spare plywood, tree branches and scrapped parts was hidden in the tree line near the back of the property. He hadn’t been out there in years, clearly nobody had which didn’t surprise him. They were the only ones that knew it was there, knew it existed, that had been the point of it.

He couldn’t remember the day they’d started building it. Didn’t know where they’d found all of the pieces of wood or the nails or the tools to put it together. But he didn’t have to think hard at all to recall
why
they’d built it.

They’d needed somewhere to hide. Somewhere that Decker couldn’t find them. Somewhere he would never think to look. They’d outgrown their hiding places in the house and besides that, he’d always found them there. Whether it was under a bed or in the back of the closet, he raged drunkenly until he stumbled onto one of them, usually Cash, and then when he started hitting him, inevitably Colt would come out to help take some of the blows.

So they’d built the fort and it had been their hiding place. Whenever Decker had started drinking and yelling, they’d quietly pack up a bag and trek down into the woods to spend the night somewhere safe. It hadn’t mattered if it was a hundred degrees and the bugs nearly ate them alive or if there had been snow on the ground, they’d chosen it over the house more times than he could count.

And when they’d gotten older, when they’d gotten big enough to fight back and hadn’t needed a place to hide anymore, they’d still visited it. Sneaking girls out to the fort had been rare but it had happened. More often than not, as teenagers, he and Colt would snatch beers from the fridge and get drunk while talking about how they would never end up like their father.

Sitting there now with a half empty bottle of whiskey in his hand, Cash stared out over the Bomar land and laughed at how naïve they’d been.

All he’d ever wanted was to be better than Decker but he wasn’t. He’d wanted to be better but that was the joke. Failure was part of his DNA. He could try but he would always come up short when it mattered. He was just like Decker.

Angry. He was so fucking angry. Violent. He wanted to put his fucking fist through something. Mean. He wanted to lash out and use his pain to hurt someone else. Useless. He wasn’t good for anything but destruction.

He was a Bomar through and through.

A twig cracked behind him but he didn’t turn around. His shoulders tensed at the sound of footsteps, rocks and leaves being crunched underfoot, but he didn’t move. He just tightened his grip on his bottle of whiskey and stayed seated because if he got up, he’d be tempted to swing the bottle at the intruders head and even half-drunk and angry, he didn’t want to kill his twin.

“Thought I might find you here.” Colt stopped just behind his right shoulder but he refused to turn and look at him.

Just because he didn’t want him dead didn’t mean he wanted to talk to him right now.

Colt huffed out a breath at his silence, “I checked the highway first or I would have been here sooner. Thought you might try to head out of town, take things into your own hands, so I camped out down at the pumps to see if you’d swing by to get supplies. When you never showed I figured you were sticking around. Only so many places to go in Old Settlers so I tried the garage and the bar but when you weren’t at either I figured there was a chance you came out here.”

He rolled his eyes at the long-winded explanation of how his brother had tracked him down. Colt was babbling, a sure sign that he was nervous. He was trying to fill the silence while he figured out his next move. He’d set out to find him and he had but he must not have used his time to come up with an apology.

Cash downed another hard slug of the brown liquid. No, he knew his twin better than that. Colt hadn’t come to apologize. He never apologized for anything. Fuck the world and the horse it rode in on, that was Colt’s motto. If you didn’t like him, didn’t like something he said or did, well fuck you too. He didn’t need you or your approval. He hadn’t come out here to apologize.

“Why are you here?” He finally sighed.

“You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

“I’m not going to do anything stupid like drive to Houston and put that fuck in an unmarked grave.” He stared out into the darkness, his voice soft as he shook his head, “Not going to go picking fights with any of our family members either.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“But I do want to be alone so you can go.”

Colt didn’t surprise him in the least when he shuffled to sit down beside him, “No.”

Cash rubbed his eyes, refused to look at him and scowled, “I’m not sharing my whiskey with you.”

“Didn’t come for the whiskey. I came for you. We need to talk.”

“Not right now we don’t.”

“Damn it Cash, don’t shut me out.” Colt growled and he finally turned to face him.

There was a look of despair in his eyes that Cash recognized easily. He figured it mirrored his own. And fuck if they didn’t look alike in the dark like this. Their differences were muted in the darkness, the haircuts indistinct and Colt’s tattoos all but invisible. Looking into that square, chiseled face and intense blue eyes felt like looking into a mirror and he wasn’t prepared to do that just yet.

“Go away Colt.” He jerked his gaze back forward.

“Not until you hear me out.”

He snorted, “Why should I? You didn’t talk to me before, when it would have made a difference. You lied to me then so go ahead, spill more lies to me now to try and smooth it over.”

“I didn’t fuckin’ lie.” Colt snapped and then pressed out a deep breath, “I didn’t tell you what was going on but I didn’t lie.”

“You told me everything was fine when I asked why you were upset this week. That was a lie.”

“Yeah, maybe, but that’s the same as telling your girl her ass doesn’t look fat in a miniskirt. White lies aren’t bad. They’re designed to spare somebody’s feelings. What I did, it ain’t no worse than that.”

At the mention of his girl, a sharp pain stabbed him in the chest. An image of Jemma in a miniskirt formed in his mind faster than he could blink it away. His girl in a tight little skirt that clung to her sweet, round ass was a fantasy. Slipping his hand beneath to find out if she was wearing panties, to find out if she was wet for him, would just be icing on the cake.

Except he might never get to do that, get to see that, because he’d yelled at her and walked away.

“I know you’re pissed but I’m asking you to take a step back and see my side.” Colt continued, oblivious to the battle raging inside his mind, “I saw an opportunity to protect you and I took it. I thought I could keep you safe if I kept you out of it. I was trying to help you. That’s all I’ve ever fuckin’ tried to do, Cash.”

He snarled at the excuse, “It’s not your job to protect me.”

“Yeah, it is. We protect each other. That’s what we do. We’ve done it since we were kids.”

“But I’m not a kid anymore! I’m not a kid and I don’t need you to fight my battles for me. I never did.” He shot back and watched Colt flinch at that blow before continuing, “I’m just as strong as you are. I always have been.”

“I didn’t step in front of you all those times when Decker swung his fists because I thought you were weaker than me, Cash. I did it because
I
was weak, because I couldn’t stand the sight of you hurting. It killed me. I knew how to tend to my cuts and bruises but watching that light go out of your eyes damn near destroyed me and I’m not fuckin’ letting it happen ever again.”

He opened his mouth to respond, closed it again as what his brother had admitted sank in. Colt hadn’t thought he was weak. He just couldn’t stand the sight of his twin hurting. Cash knew the feeling. It wasn’t his own scars that haunted him. It was the sight of Colt’s, the memories of Colt shivering in pain and knowing there was nothing he could do to save him.

Why he’d never thought of that himself, he didn’t know. It was so obvious now that Colt had admitted it. But some damaged part of him had always clung to the notion that his brother saw him the same way Decker did, as easy prey, as the soft one, the weak one. Hearing that he didn’t changed everything and nothing all at the same time.

As badly as he’d tried as a kid, Colt hadn’t been able to protect him and he couldn’t do it now either.

“If we’d told you about the threats, you would have unleashed hell on that bastard. I know that. You know that. There’s no use trying to deny it. And I couldn’t let you go down that road, not if I could do something to help.”

“You call going behind my back helping?” He scoffed.

“Damn it Cash, you have a chance to be something better than just a white-trash Bomar boy that uses his fists to fight his battles and ends up in prison. That’s all you ever wanted, to do better, be better than this shit we were born to.” Colt motioned out into the darkness with a growl, “I want that for you and I’d do anything to help you get it, even bloody my own hands in the process if it means keeping yours clean.”

“That’s not how I want it.”

“Sometimes you don’t get to choose how you stay clean. I was willing to get dirty for you and whether you accept that or not, it was the best way to keep you safe. I won’t apologize for that.”

“Of course not.” He muttered as he twirled the bottle in his hand.

“It was something I could take care of and there was no reason to drag you into the mess.”

“It wasn’t your mess.” Cash snapped, “It wasn’t your fucking mess. It wasn’t a Bomar mess. It didn’t have anything to do with you! It was Jemma’s mess and she’s mine and that makes it
my
mess but it doesn’t make it yours.”

“Bullshit.”

“Bullshit?” He growled.

“Yeah, that’s bullshit. We ain’t ever divided shit up between us before and we’re not starting now. If it was your mess that makes it mine.”

“No.”

“Fuck you Cash. You don’t want to hear that I was trying to save you, trying to protect you? How about if it’s my mess because it’s Jemma’s mess huh? She matters to me too. I care about her. Hell, I think I’ve loved that girl just as long as you have.”

His fist tightened on the bottle and a dangerous image of the damage he could do if he swung it at his brother’s head filled his brain. No. He couldn’t do that. But he wanted to. Because Jemma was his. She’d always been his and he wasn’t going to share her with Colt. Never.

“Stop thinking about killing me.” Colt must have seen the fury on his face because he snorted, “I love her like a sister. That’s what she is to me. She’s yours and you’re my brother, my twin, my other half. How could I not love her just as much as you do?”

He loosened his hold on the bottle by sheer force of will. Do not maim your brother, he told himself. He isn’t in love with your woman. He loves her like a sister. Hadn’t she told him the same thing? Colt wanted to protect her because she belonged to Cash. That was a good thing, not a bad thing. It meant he had more eyes to watch over her and keep her safe. Do not maim your brother, he silently repeated.

“You were trying to help her. I get that. But you still should have told me.”

Colt groaned, “Maybe we should have, you’re right, but neither of us wanted to see you to go prison. So be mad if you want but when you’re done cursing us, think it through. You’re a smart guy Cash and you know what I’m trying to say is true.”