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None of them could take me one-on-one, so three of them had jumped me in the library. I should have been ready for it. I was always ready, always watching. I had to be. It was the only way I’d survived prison this long.
Once a day, when I first woke up, I let myself reach for the end. I let all my grief in, and for a minute, I thought about the outside. About my family. Gram. My brothers. Even her, although I had to be especially careful with that.
“Are you kidding?” Gavin asked. “Asher Bailey gets out of prison and you didn’t think we’d all be there for that? Also, we were fighting over who got to be the one to pick you up, and Gram said if we didn’t all get in the car and get moving, she’d turn her peckers loose on us.”
“I was pretty pissed at first when Gram told us we couldn’t go see you. But I’ll never forget what she said. Do you guys remember that?” Levi nodded. “She said sometimes when a man goes to war, he has to make himself forget the people he leaves behind. It’s the only way he can become the warrior he needs to be to survive.”
“The good news is, you can put down your weapons,” Logan said. “War’s over.” I looked down at my battered hands. Put down your weapons. I wasn’t sure if I remembered how.
Logan cast another glare at Cara. She flipped him off.
I didn’t want to sit down. I wanted to scoop her into my arms and hold her. Breathe her in and tell her how much I’d missed her. Tell her how a part of me had died every day that I’d had to spend without her. Soothe this ache with the warmth of her body.
Just a glimpse of the place where Grace worked, and my mind was suddenly filled with her. She was the moon to my ocean. I couldn’t escape her gravity.
“A man needs to know his mission,” Gram said. “Without that, he’s adrift. It’s why so many young men act like idiots. They haven’t found their mission yet; they don’t have anything guiding them. Some men, like Asher, find their mission early. It’s what made him so steady when you two were younger. But he doesn’t have that anymore, and he’s going to struggle until he finds it again.”
I texted Logan, telling him to stay with Grace. He replied with a shirtless selfie in Grace’s kitchen. Gavin was in the background grinning and flipping me off.
“You know how some people totally spoil and enable their children? That’s me. I’m people. I can’t stand the thought of you being unhappy, so I do whatever I have to do to make sure you’re not.”
“Normal people spread out their love and attention, but I don’t have anyone else, so you get it all. Which I realize probably sucks for you because I have no idea how to actually love someone.”
They hadn’t stolen his compassion. He hadn’t lost his desire to protect the people he loved. His once-easy smile had become harder to earn, but it wasn’t gone. And he still had his sense of humor. He would always be intelligent and hard-working, and his loyalty ran deep.
Asher sat in a folding chair a few feet from the hospital bed. His forearms rested on his knees and his eyes were fixed on the ground. He didn’t seem hurt physically, and he’d redirected any questions about his well-being back to me. Just take care of Grace, or, I’m fine, Grace needs help. For a while, it had seemed like that was all he knew how to say.
“Honest question. Are you sure you should reproduce with him? I thought you were the most stubborn person I knew until I met him. And now it’s a toss-up. I’m afraid of what might occur if your DNA is allowed to mix.”
“But I think for you two, it’s real. You’re actually soulmates. And it’s nothing short of a goddamn tragedy that you’re not happily married and making babies right now.”
“I miss him every single day. But like I said, his love was big. He left me with enough to last until the day I’m called home and get to see him again.”
