Hard as Stone (Passion in Paradise: The Men of the McKinnnon Sisters) (49 page)

“Yes,” Harmony
agreed with a voice still thick with emotion.

“Wonderful!” Aunt
Orla pronounced jovially, before turning to face Ice. “Now that all that is
settled, just need to know if you sleep in the nude.  It’s not a deal breaker,
but color me curious.  And if the answer is yes, I want you to know that I’m
perfectly comfortable with the male body.  No need for you to be shy
at all.
”

“And on that note,
meeting adjourned,” Honor declared with a faint grin, moving to rise and
stumbling against the table as she felt the world shift beneath her feet. 
Pressing a hand to her now-spinning head, she belatedly looked down at her
empty coffee mug as Zeke grabbed her arm to steady her. 

“Honor, you alright,
sugar?”

Lifting her head to
try and focus on her aunt’s question, Honor’s vision swam, shapes and colors
wavering before her eyes.  Oh, she remembered this feeling...and she remembered
exactly what and who usually caused it.  Turning in Patience’s general direction,
Honor growled through clenched teeth, “Did you
dose
me, you traitor?”

Jabbing her finger
in Cain’s direction, Patience shook her head.  “I only made the tea!  The
doctor added the medication!  You were stressed and he thought…”

“Cain Turner!”
Honor shouted as loud as she could manage, the sound echoing in her own ears
and pulling a wince from her.  “Did you roofie me?” she hissed, sinking back
into her chair.

“It’s just a mild
relaxant, Honor,” Cain stated dismissively, rising from his own chair and moving
toward his sister-in-law.  “You and Harmony both had a pretty good scare
today.  You needed a little something to even you out,” he soothed, picking up
Honor’s wrist and taking her pulse.

“Cain?” Zeke asked
in a low voice.

“She’s fine, Zeke. 
Honest to God, she’s okay,” Cain replied calmly, dropping Honor’s hand gently
back into her lap.

Blinking rapidly to
try and clear her vision, Honor focused on Jake.  “You’re an EDA agent.  Isn’t
this illegal or somethin’,” she slurred.

“I think you mean a
DEA agent, sweetheart.”  Jake grinned at her.  “And no, I think it’s fine. 
Especially since there’s medical supervision.”

“Damn,” Honor
muttered.  Looking up at Cain, she petulantly asked, “Did Harmony get dosed?  I
think Harmony should get dosed.  If I gotta take me’cine, so should she.”

“You’re such a
giver, sis,” Harmony snorted, her lips twitching when Honor lifted a hand to
scratch her nose and poked herself in the eye.  Of all the sisters, Honor was
usually the one that handled all things with aplomb and grace.  Until tonight,
obviously.

Rising from the
table, Faith looked between Patience and Harmony and saw them nod slightly. 
“Don’t worry, sis.  We girls are gonna pile in your room for a slumber party.”

“S’umber party?”
Honor yawned, watching as her sisters walked toward her.  There might be more
than three of them, but she wasn’t quite sure any more.

“Uh huh,” Harmony
agreed, patting a tense Zeke on the shoulder before taking one of Honor’s arms
and helping her stand.  “Just like the old days, remember?  When we’d all stay
up late talking for hours.”

“That’d make Momma
and Daddy maaaaaadddddd,” Honor giggled as Patience took her other arm and
helped her down the hallway.

“Well, nobody’s
gettin’ in trouble tonight,” Aunt Orla assured her as she stood to follow the
girls down the hall.  Pausing as she reached Zeke’s side, she reached out and
squeezed his hand.  “Son, you need to give it five or ten minutes and then come
stand outside Honor’s bedroom door.”

“What?  Why?” Zeke
questioned sharply, his gaze worried as he stared down into Orla’s tired eyes.

Looking around at
the men that remained in the room, she shook her head.  “The boys will explain,
son.  But, I want you to remember something,” she cautioned, her weathered
fingers tightening around Zeke’s wrist.  “Whether Honor Grace will admit it or
not, you are one of the few stable things she’s had in her life for six years,
Ezekiel.  She depends on you to be strong.  You’re her safe harbor, boy.  Don’t
you dare let my precious girl down now.”

“Miss Orla, you’re
scarin’ the shit out of me,” Zeke growled, his body going tight and hot.

Stepping up to
Zeke’s side, Jake murmured, “Go on, Miss Orla.  Ice and I will make sure he
doesn’t lose his head in the house.”

Zeke turned to Jake
as Orla nodded and limped down the hall after her girls.  “What the fuck is she
talking about, Jake?”

“Man, I’m sorry. 
You’re about to find out some shit that I wouldn’t wish on anybody – especially
not somebody that could eventually be my brother-in-law,” Jake apologized, his
dark eyes filled with remorse as they stared at the sheriff.

Blinking, Zeke
turned toward his brother.  “Ice?”

Ice ran a
frustrated hand through his untamed mane of black hair.  “Fuck,” he cursed,
unable to meet his brother’s eyes.

“Seriously, Zeke. 
Let’s just go set up camp outside Honor’s bedroom,” Jacob suggested calmly. 
“You need to hear this from her even if it happens by eavesdroppin’.”

Clenching his jaw,
Zeke whirled on the heel of his boot and stomped toward the bedrooms as Ice and
Jake shared a concerned look.

Both men knew the
truth.  The shit was about to hit the fan; before it was done, they would all
be dirty.

For years, the
McKinnon sisters had let their youngest sister be the one in control. 
Following Honor’s abduction and rape, they had restructured their lives to
always be together, to always make the baby of the family feel safe and
secure.  And for Honor, that had meant that she had to be the one making
decisions.  Luckily, she had a keen business sense and the ability to cut to
the core of a topic with ease.  The sisters relied on her to keep their family
afloat and their business in the black; in return, they made sure she had what
she needed to be safe.

Which was exactly
what brought them to this point.  Honor’s mental safety was no longer as
certain as it had once been.  The sisters were not about to let her suffer any
longer, even though that meant that she had to deal with memories that had once
been locked into her subconscious. 

Harmony perched at
Honor’s hip as her sister settled on her back in the bed.  Crossing her legs
Indian-style, the soft cotton of her yoga pants stretched across her legs as
she felt Faith and Patience sit on either side of Honor’s feet at the foot of
the bed.  She sensed Aunt Orla settling into the faded floral print recliner in
the corner of the room.  Glancing at the doorway, she found it half open and
heard heavy footsteps walking down the hallway and pausing just shy of the
door.  It appeared everyone was now where they needed to be, and as much as she
hated it, she knew what she had to do.  Shooting a reassuring smile toward her
sister, Harmony lifted a hand to brush the fine blond hair away from Honor’s
face as she looked into the woman’s drugged eyes.  “Okay, Peanut,” she said
softly, “We need to talk.”

“I don’t like that
look you’ve got, Harmony.  You look like you did every time you told me I had
to sit between Patience and Faith in the backseat of Momma’s Buick,” Honor
muttered with a tiny frown.  “I hated being wedged between those two.  Faith
pinched and Patience was a seat hog.”

Harmony chuckled
softly as she remembered those long ago arguments.  Her sisters had never been
good travelers.  Whether they were going cross-state or to the grocery store in
town, there’d always been a fight of some kind.  “Well, I promise that Faith
will keep her fingers to herself and Patience won’t move from that spot at the
end of the bed, but we’ve still got to talk.”

Honor wrinkled her
nose.  “Fine,” she grumbled, lifting a hand to tug nervously at a strand of her
hair.  “Although, I don’t know whatcha wanna talk ‘bout.”

“Yes, you do,”
Harmony countered, her eyes capturing her baby sister’s gaze for a long, silent
moment.  “We
have
to talk about this afternoon, Peanut.”

“Don’t wanna.” 
Honor face screwed up as she closed her eyes, almost as though she were trying
to squeeze the memories out of her head.

Smoothing her
fingers over Honor’s wrinkled forehead, Harmony shook her head.  “I can see
where Heaven gets her stubborn face from now, but that’s not gonna work any
better for you than it does for her, Baby Sister.  You remembered something
today, Honor.  You need to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to.” 
Honor shook her head against the pillow without opening her eyes.  “Don’t make
me,” she begged, her thin voice rising with fear.

“Blocking it out
won’t make it go away, Honor.  You know that, sweetie.  It’ll just come back to
haunt you later.  Those doctors didn’t say much I agreed with back when you
were hurt, but one of them made a lot of sense.  He said that memories can be
like battery acid, slowly eating away at a patient’s soul.  He said that the
only thing you can do is purge the lines when the buildup gets too bad.  It’s
time for you to purge, honey, before that acid eats through you.”

“Honor, you’re
safe,” Faith said from the end of the bed, reaching out a hand and resting it
on Honor’s slack hand.

“We’re all here,
sis,” Patience said from the other side of the bed.  “Nobody is gonna hurt you ever
again – none of us will let that happen, but Harmony is right. You need to tell
us what you remembered today when that bastard walked back into our lives.”

Honor slowly opened
her eyes and stared at the ceiling tiles above her head through glazed eyes. 
“Everything,” she replied tonelessly.  “I remembered
everything
.”  She
grimaced and shuddered.  “I didn’t want to.  I tried to block it out… shut it
down the way I did right after it happened, but I couldn’t,” she admitted, her
fragile voice breaking as she squeezed her eyes closed again.  “I tried and I
couldn’t.”

“Listen to me,”
Harmony urged, gripping Honor’s hand and lacing their fingers together.  “You
couldn’t do it because maybe you
shouldn’t
.  Maybe it’s time to face
this, Honor.  For six years, you’ve tried to move past what happened, but
honey, you haven’t been able to do it.  You’ve tried.  You’ve put on a happy
face and gone about your life as best as you could, but you’ve been surviving
each day and that’s a hell of a lot different from
living.
  There’s a
reason for that.  Your mind can’t deal with the unknown.  It has to process
what happened that night, make some kind of sense of it.  You can’t just shove
it all in that box in your head and lock it up tight any longer.  And that’s
okay.  Whatever it is that you’re facing, you’re not alone.  You’re never going
to have to face it alone.”

“It’s bad,
Harmony.  It’s
so
bad.  I came home and took three showers and I still
feel dirty.  I don’t know if I’m ever going to feel clean again,” Honor confided
faintly, opening her bluish green eyes to stare beseechingly at her sister.  “This
is ugly in a way that once you hear, you’ll look at me and…”

“You listen to me. 
You
are
clean.  Those bastards that hurt you are the dirty ones, Honor,
never you.  And nothing you ever say could change the way I feel about you or
what happened to you,” Harmony promised softly, holding Honor’s cold hand
tightly in her own and silently willing her baby sister to absorb some of her
warmth.  “Tell us what you remember.”

“I…I don’t know
where to start.”  Honor turned her head to stare at the wall, her already pale
face seeming to whiten even more.  “When I heard Tanner’s voice this afternoon,
it was like the floodgates opened and now everything just feels like a jumble
of memories.  It’s all tangled in my head.”

“Best place to
start is always the beginning, Sweet Pea,” Aunt Orla advised from her chair in
the corner.  “What’s the first memory you have of that night?”

“The street,”
Harmony whispered shakily.  “Seein’ Zeke on the street after the football game
at school.”

Harmony took a deep
breath.  This part she already knew; Zeke remembered it.  “He stopped to ask
you if you needed him to take you home, didn’t he?” she asked, smoothing her
hand through Honor’s hair just as she did when she comforted Heaven.

“Mmm Hmm.” Honor
nodded against the pillow.  “He was nice, but I could tell he was in a hurry. 
He had that woman with him.  Sherri Lawson.  She was all dressed up and glarin’
at me.  He told me to get in the backseat and he’d take me home.  I told him
that I was waiting on a ride, but he said I didn’t need to be waiting alone at
night.  Sherri…I could tell that made her mad and that I was ruining their
plans,” she continued, her voice cracking as a tear slid out of her eye.  “I
told them to go on; that I’d wait.  I should have gotten into the car with
them.  Ezekiel would have kept me safe.  If I’d gone with him, none of it would
have ever happened.  I was stupid.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Honor whimpered as
Harmony heard a moan emanate from the hallway, almost like a wounded animal
caught in a trap.  Thankfully, the sound didn’t even register to Honor. 
“You’re not stupid, Peanut.  You could never know what would happen.  No one
could have known” she soothed softly, tightening her fingers around Honor’s
hand.  Darting a worried look at the door, she shifted her eyes to Aunt Orla
and saw the woman shake her head sadly.  Looking at Patience’s bent head behind
her as she kept holding Honor’s hand, she whispered, “Should we…”