Hudson stepped back and let me in, and I ran over to the kitchen table where his laptop was open and sat down. God
damn
, my jaw fucking hurt.
“I talked to him yesterday . . . what the fuck are you doing? I don’t want you in here, and I sure as shit don’t want you on my damn laptop. You
ruined
my little sister.”
I slammed my hand down on the table and stood back up. “I
know
that, Hudson. I. Fucking. Know. I made the biggest mistake of my life yesterday, but right now Saco needs us. He got in a wreck this morning with his son. Dude, Tate died. Saco’s so fucked up right now.”
“Shit,” he whispered, and pressed his fists onto the table, dropping his head. “You’re lying, right?”
“I wish I was.”
Straightening, he ran his hands over his face, and stood there staring at nothing for a few minutes before responding. “All right. Get us the first flight out of here, do you want my card?”
“No, I got it.”
“I’m gonna pack and call Erica, she’s at work right now.” He’d turned to head to his room, and turned right back around with a finger pointed at me. “This doesn’t change shit between us, you get me?”
I didn’t respond. I knew this wouldn’t change anything, and there was no point in responding to him. No matter what I said right now, we would end up fighting about it . . . and this wasn’t the time.
Coen—
November 5, 2010
H
UDS
ON AND
I
stood back behind Saco for almost an hour after everyone had left the cemetery. The service had been short, and painfully heartbreaking, but nothing could compare as we watched the world’s smallest coffin be lowered into the ground.
There was nothing like it. No words to describe it.
Olivia screaming that Brody was a murderer had only served to have her hauled off by her father, and to have Brody collapse on himself as grief consumed him.
Never in my life had I wanted to hit a woman until that moment.
Stepping forward, I put a hand on Saco’s shoulder, and waited to see if he would respond. He didn’t. He stood there, still as stone, staring at the fresh mound of dirt.
“This wasn’t your fault,” I told him a few minutes later. “There’s nothing you could have—”
“Don’t let them go,” Saco mumbled. “They could be gone tomorrow. Be with them, enjoy them, love them while they’re here.”
I nodded but didn’t respond. I didn’t want to talk about Reagan and Parker with him now, not when we were staring at his son’s grave. I didn’t want to talk about what I’d thrown away, and was trying so hard to get back, when the person he loved most in the world was gone.
Instead, I took a step back, knowing he wasn’t ready to leave this place yet. Glancing at Hudson, he gave me a look and I nodded. We’d have to take Saco from here soon, or he’d drive himself crazy. He needed to keep grieving, but he needed to do it away from where he looked like he was about to lie down and never leave.
I’d called Reagan at least a dozen times a day every day since I’d shown up at Hudson’s place, but she’d never once picked up. Hudson had even let me use his phone, but she’d hung up the second she heard my voice. And every time, I felt like I was closer and closer to losing them for good.
After I told Hudson about the call from Saco and the story about my client’s relationship, and how those conversations had started the worries and insecurities that had snowballed out of control into what went down in Reagan’s apartment, he’d understood. He’d punched me again the second we got out of the airport in Oregon, but he’d understood. He knew I’d made a mistake, and he knew I’d do anything to get them back. But there was only so much I could do while I was a couple states away, and right now, Hudson and I needed to be there for our brother.
Reagan—
November 7, 2010
M
Y BODY STIFFENED
when I felt my phone start vibrating in my back pocket. Looking over to where Parker was playing with my dad, I pulled the phone out and locked my jaw when Coen’s name, and a picture of the two of us flashed on the screen.
I sat there staring at the screen until the voice mail finally picked up, and a deep sense of longing filled me—as it did every time he called.
“Are you ever going to answer that boy’s calls?”
My head jerked up to where my mom was staring at me from across the table, and my brow furrowed. “
Ever
? Don’t say that like it’s been years or something. It hasn’t even been a week.”
“That doesn’t answer my question, sweetheart. He’s called you five times since you got here this morning, and I know that’s not unusual for him right now.”
She was counting? Pressing down the lock button, I held it until I could turn my phone off. Parker was here, I was with my parents, and Keegan was with . . . well, he was with friends. No one would need to get in touch with me who couldn’t wait.
“Reagan,” Mom prompted.
“No, Mom, I don’t think I will ever answer his calls.”
The disappointment was clear on her face and in her tone. “He said he needed time to think. He said he needed some space. To me, that’s not even asking for a break, maybe he just wanted to be alone for a little while, and you took it the wrong way.”
I raised my eyebrows and brought my hand up to point at myself, but didn’t make it all the way before pointing at my phone instead. My jaw shook as I whispered, “I took it the wrong way?” Clearing my throat, I straightened in the chair and shook my head. “No, I didn’t take anything the wrong way. Those were
some
of the words he said, but his meaning was crystal clear.”
“Reagan, you push men away, it’s what you do.”
“I pushed him, and he pushed right back. I stopped pushing him months ago. I did not want him to leave, Mom. You have no idea how much it destroyed me to watch him walk away from us.”
She leaned forward and extended her arm on the table toward me. “But he’s calling. He’s calling all the time. That doesn’t sound like a man who doesn’t want you.”
Neither did his voice mails. “He walked away once, Mom. That’s all I need to know.”
“Reagan. You tried walking away in the beginning too.”
An agitated huff blew past my lips and I rolled my eyes. “To protect my son. Not because I didn’t want a relationship.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Whose side are you on, Mom?”
“Parker’s,” she said without missing a beat. “I’m on Parker’s. I want the world for you, Reagan, but you’re being childish. I had my reservations about Coen in the beginning, but he is the best thing to ever happen to you and my grandson. And, yes, he made a mistake, but he’s trying to come back, and you’re stopping him. You’re stopping my grandson from having the father he deserves.”
“If Austin had tried coming back, would you have wanted me to give him another chance?”
My mom scoffed. “Of course not. But he didn’t love you the way you deserve to be loved, and he did not love Parker. Coen claimed Parker as his son without a second thought, and without realizing it, the day Parker was rushed to the ER. Even when we mentioned it to him, he still didn’t catch it for a few seconds. That is why I
know
he deserves another chance.”
I sat there in shock for a few moments before I was able to compose myself. And just when I started to ask my mom what exactly had happened, Coen’s words drifted through my mind.
“I’m not your husband, he’s not my fucking child. It is not my job to take care of you!”
Looking at my son smiling as he played on the floor—completely oblivious to everything happening around him—I shook my head sadly as a few tears slipped down my cheeks. “You must’ve been mistaken.”
Coen—
November 10, 2010
I
T’D BEEN ALMO
ST
a week and a half since I’d walked out of Reagan’s apartment, and even though I still called at least twelve times a day, she wasn’t talking to me.
Hudson and I had come home from Oregon late Sunday night because Hudson had to be at work again on Monday, and even with trying to catch Reagan at her apartment, I hadn’t seen her either. Now I was outside the building she worked in, parked next to her car, and was waiting for her to walk outside at any moment.
The second she walked outside I stepped out of my car and waited for her to see me. Her hazel eyes briefly glossed over me before doing a double take, and she froze on the middle of the sidewalk. With a step back, she froze again, and I watched as her chest started rising and falling roughly.
I knew she needed to get to her car. She needed to go get Parker from school, so she couldn’t just avoid me, and it was clear in her eyes. She wanted to run, but she knew she couldn’t.
Walking to where she still hadn’t moved from, I stopped in front of her and looked into her lifeless eyes. “Please talk to me. You’ve been avoiding me for over a week, and there’s so much I need to say.”
She didn’t respond. Her face had no emotion, just like her eyes. And it was killing me to know I’d made her look like that.
“I was wrong to say what I said, I was wrong to try to make you think you were the problem. I was freaking out and—” I cut off when she quickly tried to walk around me, and I caught hold of her arm. “Reagan, please! I’m sorry, I know I fucked up. I know that. I got scared for a split second, that doesn’t mean you should just shut me out.”
She turned on me, and I hated that instead of sadness or anger, I saw pity in her eyes. “
Me
shut
you
out? You ran from us, Coen, what do you expect from me?”
I nodded and let go of her to run my hands roughly over my head. “For a
second
. I ran for a goddamn
second
. I love you, Reagan. I love Parker. Don’t take the two of you from me.”
Biting down on her bottom lip, she shook her head slowly as she began turning back around. “You did that all by yourself.”
“Reagan, I am right here, and I am begging you not to do this. Just talk to me about what happened, let me explain, and for Christ’s sake, stop acting like you don’t care.”
“It’s not that I don’t care, I’m protecting
him
,” she ground out as she kept walking.
“I thought we were done with that bullshit. I thought we were done with you pushing me away because you’re scared of what could happen in the future.”
She didn’t stop walking, and she didn’t look back at me.
“Reagan, talk to me!”
“You’re right,” she said, and suddenly whirled on me. “We are done with all that bullshit. We were done with it the day you told me you couldn’t promise me a forever.”
“Babe—”
“You were right about that too, Coen.” Straightening her back, she hardened her hazel eyes at me. “You couldn’t promise me a forever any more than I could promise you one. And I’m not taking us away from you because I’m scared you’ll run. You already fucking ran, Coen. You already ran, and now you’re regretting it because you lost the one thing that could silence your demons.”
My body went rigid and my eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”
She huffed a sad laugh, and that look of pity deepened. “I don’t know why it took me so long to figure it out. I was so consumed in everything you are—and so blinded by the bullshit you fed me—that I never really noticed
why
you fought so hard for us. It wasn’t because you loved Parker. It wasn’t because you loved me. It was because I chased away what you can’t escape in here,” she said, and touched my temple with her fingers. “It was because I was a means to forget about all that for a little while.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“You told me—”
“I know what I fucking said, Ray! And it’s true—you do silence them. But that is not why I fought for us. You completely captivated me because of what being near you can do to me, but I fought for us because I fucking loved you. I’ve always loved you. I want to marry you, I want to adopt Parker so I can legally be his dad, I want to give you as much of a forever as I have.”
She shook her head sadly and stepped away from me. “And there you go trying to blind me with your words again. You’re an artist, Coen, through and through. What you see of the world through your camera, and the words that come from your mouth. But I’m not buying it anymore. I’m done letting you use us so you can have a few moments of peace from your fucked-up mind.”
My head jerked back and mouth opened, but nothing came out.
“The demons in there?” she said after taking a couple steps away. “They’re ruining you. You’ve allowed them so much freedom that they now control your life. And you may not be able to see it, Coen, but I can. Because of them . . . you’re toxic. I can’t have someone like you in my son’s life.”
I stumbled back a step like she’d hit me, and watched her get in her car and drive away as my legs threatened to give out beneath me.
My entire world was being ripped away from me, and once again, I was the only one to blame.
Coen—
December 5, 2010
A
PAINED GROWL
left me as I flew into a sitting position and gripped the sheets below me. Looking around me, I bent forward and dropped my head into my hands as I tried to push the memories from my mind.
“God damn it!” I roared, and launched a pillow across the room.
Jerkily untangling myself from the sheets, I pulled my clothes off and turned the water on as hot as it could go. Waiting until steam billowed out, I stepped into the shower and fisted my hands against the burning sting. I needed it. I needed it to make the smell, pain, noise, and clear-as-day memories go away.
Stepping out, I didn’t even bother grabbing a towel to dry myself as I searched for clothes and my running shoes. By the time I had everything on, was out my door, and already running on the path, I still had water dripping down my body. I didn’t care that I was only in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, and that it was snowing, I just needed to run. I needed to forget.
That was almost laughable.
I would never forget.
A deep, searing pain pierced my chest as I came closer to the playground in the park, and my footsteps automatically slowed down. Even in the dark gray of the early day, I could see the times Reagan and I had brought Parker here. See the first time I’d accidentally run into her here. And each one made the ache in my body grow as it had every time I made it out this far.
Three and a half weeks since I’d seen Reagan. Almost five since I’d seen Parker, and I hadn’t even told him I loved him that day. I’d been an asshole, and left. That was it, the last memory he had of me.
Lying down on my back in the snow, I stared up at the lightening sky and tried to remember every moment with them.
I hadn’t stopped calling Reagan, and she hadn’t started answering. But I hadn’t shown up at her work or apartment anymore—to be honest, I was afraid of what I would find out if I did.
That she had moved on. That she had hardened herself to men again. That she had meant her words about me being toxic, about not wanting someone like me in her son’s life. That she still believed I only wanted her so I wouldn’t have to deal with my demons . . . I would wake up the same way I had this morning every day for the rest of my life if it meant getting Reagan and Parker back.
I wish I could say that because of Reagan shutting me out, I’d gone to get help—well,
tried
to get help. But I hadn’t. I still believed talking to some random psychiatrist wouldn’t do shit, but every day I wished I would have opened up to Reagan when I’d had the chance. She understood me. She knew just by looking at pictures I’d taken of myself what I was doing, when I hadn’t even realized that I’d been doing it. She didn’t judge me. Hadn’t . . .
hadn’t
judged me. She would have listened; and my peace—in the form of the most amazing girl I’d ever met—would have helped me somehow.
I lay there thinking about words that should have been said long ago . . . back when she’d first looked through all my pictures. But it was too late; I couldn’t turn back time to change what I had kept from her.
Pictures.
I sat up from the cold, wet ground and stared blankly in front of me. Not seeing the playground in front of me. Scrambling to my feet, I took off in a dead sprint for my condo, never once slowing down until I was back inside.
Grabbing my laptop, I quickly found the folder with the pictures of me and scrolled through them before opening up another folder, and then another.
I sat there staring at the pictures in front of me for long moments before running around my condo to find my phone, and calling Hudson.
There was a grumbling noise, and it was only then that I realized I didn’t even know what time it was. But I didn’t fucking care.
“Hudson, I need your help,” I said breathlessly.
There was a rustling noise for a few seconds before: “Steele? What happened?”
“I gotta get my family back, and I need your help.”
Reagan—
December 16, 2010
“K
EEGAN,”
I
WHINED,
and fumbled with the blindfold. “This is so dumb, why can’t you just tell me where we’re going?”
Someone smacked my arm. “Stop trying to take it off, can’t you try to have fun just once?” Erica asked.
Crossing my arms, I huffed as I sat back against the seat. “I have fun . . . I would just rather not be kidnapped by my brother and his girlfriend.”
“But it’s for your birthday, so it’s allowed, and a surprise, and
fun
,” she argued. “So get over it.”
“Seriously, Ray, just a few more minutes until we’re there.”
I made a face at the direction of my brother’s voice. “I would have tried to guess where we were going if you hadn’t confused me by going up and down the fucking freeway.”
“Are you really being a bitch on your birthday?” Keegan asked. “Because this is not a party and you cannot cry.”
“Who said I’m crying? I’m not crying. I just want to know where I’m being hauled off to before you kill me. I would’ve liked to say good-bye to my son. Speaking of! Why isn’t he in the car with us?”
“Did you really want him to be bored while I drove up and down the freeway for an hour? Besides, you heard him, he asked to stay with Mom and Dad.”
With a defeated sigh, I mumbled, “No.”
But honestly? Even though I loved my family for whatever they had planned for my twenty-third birthday, I just wanted to be in my apartment with Parker. It was nothing against my family . . . I just didn’t want to do much of anything lately. Each day seemed harder than the last to function. To get myself out of bed. To go to work. The only thing that drove me to do anything was Parker. Even with tonight, I’d known we would be going out to celebrate, but Erica had taken one look at me and shoved me back in my apartment before doing my hair and makeup, and making me change. Saying I had to at least look like I was excited to be celebrating. Its not like I’d been in sweats . . . actually, yeah, I had.
All I wanted was to make it through another night so I could crawl into bed and finally give in to the ache of not having Coen there, not having his arms wrapped around me, and knowing he wouldn’t be there in the morning to wake up Parker with me.
I tried telling myself I’d made the right decision in not letting him back into our lives, but when Austin had left me, I’d gotten stronger every day without him. I felt like I was slowly dying without Coen. After a month of constant calling, his calls had stopped a week and a half ago; and while a part of me was glad for it, the rest was terrified that I would never hear from him again. And I didn’t know what was making it worse. That it was
my
decision. That I knew it was
still
killing Parker to not have Coen there. Or that I’d purposefully hurt Coen to the point where I’d hoped he would
want
to stay away.
So, no, I didn’t want to be kidnapped. I didn’t want to be separated from my son. I wanted to be home with him acting like there wasn’t a huge piece of us missing.
The car stopped and I straightened when I heard the gears shift to park. “Are we here?” I grabbed for the blindfold, and my arms were smacked away again.
“You have to keep it on until we’re inside,” Erica chastised.
“Is that necessary?”
“Yes!” they both hissed, and I jerked back.
“Got it. Sorry.”
I let Erica help me out of the car and waited until she grabbed my hand to lead me into the restaurant.
“Parker’s already here?”
“Your guy is waiting for you,” she said patiently. “There’s a
tiny
step up right in front of you.”
I stepped up and my brow furrowed when the light behind the blindfold vanished. I knew we were inside. But it was completely silent, and it sure as hell didn’t smell like food.
“Uh . . .”
“I’ll be right back, let me help Keegan with your gift. Don’t move!”
“Erica!” I complained, and reached out into the darkness, letting my arms drop when I heard a door shut. “Seriously?”
Taking a deep breath, my body stilled and goose bumps rose on my arms as the faint scent of the building I was in registered in my mind. I knew this place. I knew that smell.
Quick flashes tortured me. Skin against skin. Perfectly placed arms and lips. Fingers slowly pulling down the zipper on my jeans. A firm hand gripping my hair. A large bed. Slow movements as I fell in love with
him
.
My lips barely parted and the goose bumps moved to my entire body as the flashes kept coming. Taking a step back, my hands moved to the blindfold, but stopped halfway when a song began playing throughout the space. As I ripped the blindfold off, my mouth dropped open and I hurried to cover it with my hand when I saw everything in front of me.
I was in Coen’s studio, and hanging from the ceiling were large canvases. Dozens of them. They were low enough so the canvases hung directly in front of me in two rows set across from each other at an angle.
I walked past picture after picture of Coen. Every one I’d seen the day I looked through the folder of him. They still gripped at my heart when I saw his eyes or his face covered, knowing that he was hiding his demons from the world, but that never took away from how amazing each one was.
My footsteps faltered when the pictures changed to the flashes I’d just been having. The photo shoot Coen and I had done right here in this studio was now in front of me. In each picture the chemistry between us was tangible. In each picture the passion and love that kept pulling us together was breaking my heart more and more. Tears filled my eyes before spilling over as I came upon pictures from the park of Coen and Parker, Parker and me, Coen and me together . . . and last, the three of us.
I stopped walking and looked straight ahead at the only canvas on an easel, which was situated at the end, in between the two rows. Coen was leaning in to kiss me, both of his hands cupping my cheeks; one of my hands was resting on his chest while the other held Parker close to me. Parker’s head was tilted back, looking up at us with a large smile on his face—and there, across our feet, were the words:
My Peace
.
A jolt went through my body when Coen’s voice came from directly behind me, and I bit down on my lip to try to stop the fresh wave of tears.
“Two and a half years ago, I was on a mission and my team was ambushed. I’d fallen through a trap and was knocked unconscious, and when I woke up, the five of us were in a small room.”
I didn’t turn to face him as he spoke. I just shut my eyes and listened to each soft, haunted word he was sharing with me.
“We were each chained to the ceiling and floor, and roughly an hour after I woke, four men came into the room with us. One by one they tortured my men for hours in ways I refuse to plague your world with, before finally giving them the relief of shooting them. They didn’t want information, and they never said anything to us. They tortured them just for the sake of torturing them. Saco’s team came in at the exact same moment they killed the last man on my team.”
A silent sob worked its way through my body, and my shoulders jerked from the force of it. I shook my head and fought the craving to reach behind me to touch him, to be there for him while he relived this.
“I’d promised their wives I would bring them home safe, and I didn’t keep that promise. I watched them die, and it was because
I
fell into a trap I know I should have seen.”
“No,” I choked out.
“I see that day whenever I fall asleep. I see it whenever a smell or sound triggers it,” he continued, his voice still slow and dark. “I didn’t think I deserved happiness, not after that, and not until I met you.”
The tips of his fingers brushed up the arm that hung at my side, and my breath caught from the intimacy of the simple gesture.
“You changed me so completely. I’ve tried to hide—and hide from—my demons. It wasn’t until you that I stopped hiding. I fell in love with you and your son, Reagan. I fell hard, and fast, and everything about the three of us together made sense. But I let a few words form doubt, and I know I shattered your trust—I know I shattered the little trust you already had in men, and you will
never
know how sorry I am for ever walking away from the two of you.”
Slowly wrapping an arm around my waist, he closed the little distance between us and rested his bent head against the side of mine so his nose brushed against the curve of my neck. My body slowly trembled from forcing myself to not grip his hand in mine, but I knew I was slowly losing the battle. He had no idea what his touch and words were doing to me, or maybe he did.
“I am losing my mind without you. I would choose having flashbacks of that mission . . . every night for the rest of my life in a heartbeat if it meant I could have you two for the rest of our forever. A night of not remembering is heaven, but that”—he pointed to the picture of the three of us—“is my peace. You and Parker are my peace. You’re my life. My family. I can’t live without you, please don’t ask me to keep doing it.”
I stood there trembling and staring at the picture in front of me for long minutes before I realized I couldn’t see it through the tears anymore. Dropping my head, I shook it back and forth as I fought with myself. I was terrified. He’d hurt us, he could do it again. But I was right there with him, I wasn’t sure we could live without him. I hadn’t felt this whole since the last time I’d set foot in this building, and everything in me was screaming to stop running from him.
With a tortured breath out, his arm slowly left my waist. “I’m sorry, Reagan,” he whispered before I heard his footsteps retreat from me.
The war with myself reached deafening levels as he got farther away from me, and it wasn’t until I heard the door shut to his studio, did I finally turn from the spot I’d been standing in. Before I could even run after him, I froze in place again and my eyes widened as I saw the backs of the canvases. Down the entire left row was a word on every canvas: I
T’S BECAUSE
OF YOU THAT
I
STOPPED HIDING
FROM MY DEMONS THANK
YOU.