Long Way Home (5 page)

But she had to tell him. So much of how everything soured between them came from her holding back and trying to figure out the right time to drop news. “You need to know—”

He backed her into the door and his body covered hers. His hands traveled from her face to her back. “Do you want me to stop?”

She grabbed on to the back of his shirt, dragging the material until it balled in her fists. “No, but we have to—”

“Later.” His lips brushed over her cheek to the top of her ear.

The smell and taste of him . . . the man went to her head. Common sense pushed out and her brain short-circuited until she had to fight to hold on to a simple thought. And when he licked
there
, right behind her ear, her insides went wild.

“Last chance.” He kissed his way down her neck to her collarbone. “Tell me no.”

“Never.” She didn’t have the willpower. With him, her mind melted into mush.

She could feel him shift around. A hand left her and he patted his back pocket. The swearing came next.

Half out of breath and in between kisses, he whispered in her ear. “I don’t have anything with me.”

“Right.” The comment splashed over her like a bucket of ice-cold water. Her hands went to his chest. She caressed him even as she tried to give her brain a second to reboot. “It’s okay.”

“I didn’t bring a condom. Stupidly thought that would keep me out of your bed.”

Birth control. Yeah, this was her moment to blurt it all out.

Her fingers skimmed over his shoulders and she tried to hold on. Anything to keep him from running again when he heard the news. “Maybe we should stop and talk.”

“Are you still on the pill?”

Looked like their communication was as off-kilter as ever. She fell back on a half-answer. “We don’t need a condom.”

His fingers went to her shirt, and the first button popped open. He kissed every inch he uncovered.

This has to stop now.
She put her hands on his cheeks again and forced him to look at her. “Okay, wait.”

His gaze searched her face. With every second that ticked by some of the cloudiness left his vision, and he straightened up. “Right. This is fucked-up.”

“It’s not that.” She could feel his erection pressing against her and his heartbeat hammering under her hand.

He stilled. “Do you see why you need to leave town?”

“I want this. I want you.” She tried to tighten her grip, but he was already moving.

“I did.” He dropped his hands then. Let go and stepped back as if stopping and walking away were the easiest things in the world to him.

“Callen?”

“I don’t anymore. This is runaway train bullshit, wild and crazy and so damn dangerous neither one of us will survive.”

The first sentence stuck with her. The words sliced through her but she refused to flinch. Not after the last few minutes when a tiny flicker of hope had taken hold in her belly. “It sure felt like you wanted me a minute ago.”

With a gentle touch, he moved her to the side, and she was too stunned and confused to stop him.

The sadness moved back into his eyes. “Go home, Grace.”

Before she could tell him she
was
home, he was gone.

Declan stood in the doorway to one of the house’s extra bedrooms and watched his mom pack her suitcase. She lived in California but had been staying at Shadow Hill for more than three weeks. He knew friends were taking care of her cat and the small place she’d bought. It was the first house she’d owned and she hadn’t managed to scrape the money together for that until a few years ago.

Never mind that Grandma Nanette lived in this sprawling place or that Charlie had money squirreled away everywhere—other people’s, but still. Mom always suffered. Always went without. After years of struggling with depression and poverty but keeping her head high, the bullshit with Callen had her shoulders stooping and her face pulled taut with tension.

He looked at Leah where she sat on the bed next to the open suitcase, taking things out as quickly as Mom put them in. Loving Leah made him wonder if Charlie had ever felt anything for any of them. Declan couldn’t imagine picking anything over her.

Not sure what to say or how to break through the impasse, he tried a simple question. “You’re really going?”

His mom smiled then with only a twinge of sadness at the edges. “Not from Sweetwater. Just out of this house.”

“Is there really a difference?” Declan could feel her pulling away. When she let them each go as teens, sending them into the world, she’d taken a huge step back. She didn’t hover or interfere. It was a sharp break between childhood and adulthood, but he guessed it might have been the only way for her to let go of him and Beck after losing Callen so many years before.

Leah made a grumbling sound. “She’ll be five minutes away.”

The argument made perfect sense, but Declan couldn’t silence the nagging doubts floating through his head. This felt like one more break to him, another way for his mom to let distance do the healing. A theory she seemed to believe in and he rejected.

“Yes.” She brushed a hand over his hair as she’d been doing since he was a kid. “Callen needs some space. You all need some space.”

Declan touched the back of her hand. “No one is asking for that, Mom.” In fact, he was desperate to keep her close, fearing that even a mile or two would widen the gulf between her and Callen to an irreparable distance.

“I do have to admit I like having you here.” Leah picked up one of his mother’s scarves, a muted blue and brown, classy and subtle, like she was, and folded it. “Kind of evens out the testosterone.”

His mom dropped her hand and winked at Leah before returning to emptying the drawers of the dresser. “From what I’ve seen, you handle my bossy boys just fine without me.”

He closed his eyes for a second, beating back the words, but they came out anyway. “Maybe it’s easier for you to go. Is that the real reason?”

“Declan.” Leah hit each syllable with a smack. Looked like she wanted to go after him next.

He shrugged. “It’s a fair question.”

With a shirt dangling from her fingers, his mom stopped and stood there, her back highlighted in the mirror above the dresser and her face pale. “Was it a question? It sounded more like an accusation.”

“He has every right to be a mess.” Declan didn’t have to name names. They all knew he meant Callen.

“I know that, Declan.”

She hadn’t used his middle name yet. That meant that, while he might be on the verge of making her furious, he was not quite there yet. “Explain it to me. Can you do that?”

Leah eyed him with a the-lecture-will-come-later glare. “Now isn’t the time.”

“I want to understand.” They’d all lived through so much—absentee father and husband, no food, evictions—and for Declan, the waffling from high intensity and dragging loss while on deployment overseas.

Through it all, Mom had been a constant. Imperfect but decent and hardworking, with a bone-deep love for her sons, even the one she’d let go with Charlie. But her keeping this secret for all those years tarnished some of Declan’s belief in her, and he hated that.

“You lied to him, to all of us, and I can’t figure out how to make that okay in my head.”

Leah stood up. “You need to stop talking now.”

His mom motioned for Leah to sit back down. “It’s okay.”

“Is it?” God, he didn’t know anymore.

“I look at you and Leah and I see this amazing future ahead of you. Kids, if you want them. A life together.” Mom tightened her stranglehold on the sweater in her hands. “You are protective and good, and I hope like hell you never have a child you love, by birth or not, ripped from you. It scars you. Torments you until the list of horrors that could befall him keeps you on edge all the time.”

Declan got all of that. He truly did. Where the logic faltered for him was at the next step. “But he’s a grown man now, mom. Has been for years.”

“And I never stopped thinking of him as the little boy I could not protect. I failed him. And none of us can image what Charlie had Callen do while they were gone or how that damaged him.” She sighed. “That is all on me.”

There was a sharp inhalation of breath as Leah put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, Kim.”

“But you’re right. I was wrong not to tell him sooner.” Mom breathed in as she dumped the now-wad of cotton on the dresser behind her. “I kept the secret because I lost him once and could not survive losing him a second time. It was selfish, I know.”

“Human.”

“Thanks, hon.” She reached out and took Leah’s hand. “Truth is, I would rather Callen hate me now than have walked away from me forever if I’d told him the truth back when he was twenty or some other age.”

“He doesn’t hate you.” Declan knew that down to his soul. If his brother really hated her, he would ignore her and not care, and that wasn’t happening. “But for a long time he thought you didn’t love him enough to fight for him.”

“In reality I loved him so much I stayed quiet, or Charlie would never have let me see him again.” She shook her head as the sadness weighed down on her. On the whole room. “I’m not saying I got it right, Declan, but I did the best I could. What I thought was right at the time.”

The sheen of tears. He couldn’t handle those. “You don’t have to—”

“I’m saying I love all three of you. Even Charlie Hanover could not destroy that.”

Declan nodded. He didn’t say anything, because he really couldn’t.

She drew herself up, straight and tall again, every ounce of the force to be reckoned with that he remembered from the time he stole a car at fourteen. “I will promise you that I’m not leaving Sweetwater until Callen forgives me enough to accept that I will always be his mother, blood or not.”

“Good.” Leah kissed her on the cheek. “I need reinforcements around here.”

“I think you handle Declan just fine.” His mom squeezed Leah’s hand as her eyes brimmed with acceptance.

Now
that
he understood. “So do I.”

***

Callen waited until late to go home. After losing it with Grace, nearly taking her right there against the wall and forgetting all his reasoned arguments about staying away from her that would make Beck’s legal mind proud, Callen drove around. Mindless to what was happening around him except for the stop signs and the scattering of people walking out past eleven, he kept moving. It wasn’t until he realized he’d stopped concentrating on the road that he finally pulled over. Then he sat. For over an hour.

He finally drove up to Shadow Hill and, seeing a kitchen light on, entered through the back door. He expected Kim or Mom or whatever he was supposed to call her now. He got Declan.

“Mom left.” Declan leaned against the big white farm sink, tapping an empty water bottle against the palm of his open hand.

Closing the door, Callen slipped in and took a seat at the kitchen table. “Guess that’s not a surprise.”

Heading to bed didn’t seem like an option now. Declan was clearly in a thinking mood, and since Callen was tired of thinking, he figured they made a decent pair.

Thump, thump, thump.
The hollowed-out sound from the empty water bottle echoed in the quiet room. “You feel . . . what, nothing?”

Callen didn’t have a lot of fight left in him, and he had no interest in battling Declan. “What are you looking for here?”

“An ounce of emotion would be nice.” Declan threw the bottle in the sink and let it
thud
as it bounced around. “You can turn it on and off. It’s fucking freaky.”

If only. Callen would do just about anything for that skill. “That’s not true.”

“I’m just telling you what I see.”

“Since I found out, I haven’t gone five minutes without thinking about it, about her, about a woman named Sylvia Jenkins who gave birth to me, then died alone in a psychiatric ward a few years later.” The words poured out through the numbness. “Is that what you want to hear? That inside I’m a goddamn mess to the point where I can barely think?”

“No.” The chair screeched across the hardwood as Declan pulled it out and sat down across from Callen.

“Well, it’s an accurate description. I work the land, pound posts and fill holes because I need to keep moving.” Callen balanced his elbows on the table and traced a fingertip over a nick in the wood. “If I stop, it all catches up with me.”

“Shit, I shouldn’t have—”

Not wanting to hear an apology even though he knew it would be genuine, Callen talked right over his brother. “Just because I don’t go on about it every second doesn’t mean I’m not living it.”

The truth ate at him. He’d spent all those years on the road with Charlie both angry with his mom for letting him go and grateful for her. What made it okay to be Charlie Hanover’s son was having her as a mother. She didn’t roll around in the filth. She was a victim and rose above it. In Callen’s head that meant at least half of his gene pool was worth something.

Now he knew his birth mother was Charlie’s first wife. this Sylvia person, the one no one talked about. The marriage Charlie hid—and that made him the kid his father passed off as belonging to another woman.

“You know you can talk. You know, with me. If you need to.”

Seeing Declan rub a finger over a mark on the table as he stumbled through his words provided Callen with his first burst of amusement for the day. “Damn, man, you could not look less comfortable.”

“This isn’t easy for any of us. I mean, no one bears the weight of it like you do, but still.” The chair creaked as Declan leaned back and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Fucking Charlie.”

Callen said that about a hundred times a day. “Yeah, exactly.”

“You know, the half brother versus full thing doesn’t mean shit to me.”

Declan and Beck had made it clear from the beginning that nothing had changed between them as brothers. Callen held on to that but he sometimes forgot how the stress of what was happening radiated out and touched everyone in the family.

“I know. I really do.” Not really great at the emotional bullshit that came easier to others, Callen said what he could, knowing Declan would get it. “Me neither.”

“Good.”

“You’re as much of a pain in the ass now as you were before I knew the truth.” Callen smiled for what felt like the first time in years.

Declan laughed. “That’s the big brother we all love.”

“Happy to live down to your expectations.”

The smile slowly faded from Declan’s mouth, and the mood sobered again. “But seeing you ripped apart, the awkward silences with Mom—it’s a lot to take.”

“I can’t figure out how to talk with her without yelling. I want to shout, and I know I’ll say things I’ll regret.” Then there was the sick part. The words Callen didn’t want to admit but had to tell someone. “Part of me wants to hurt her, and that makes me feel like an even bigger shit.”

The admission hung there. When Declan stayed silent, Callen kept his head down and focused on that table nick, picking at it and making it bigger.

“You mean you want to say something like, ‘You lied, and there’s no excuse for that’? Because you can probably skip that line. I said it to her this afternoon.” Declan groaned. “Leah made it clear we’re going to talk about my behavior tonight.”

“Jesus.” The comment worked for both the Mom part and the Leah part. Either way, Declan stepping up meant something to Callen.

Could also mean his brother had a cold night on the couch ahead of him. For some reason, that made Callen want to laugh.

“I get that Charlie destroyed Mom. I was young, but I was there after he took you. She was in pieces. Crying and rocking. She stayed in bed for days. I thought . . .” Declan brushed his hands up and down his legs. “Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought.”

“I get what happened back then. The part about me being a kid and her taking me in and loving me, then not being able to stop Charlie because he reminded her she wasn’t really my mother. I get all of that.” Just thinking about how it must have been for her made Callen’s brain shut down and his heart open up to her a bit. “But I’m thirty-four. There had to be a time in the last twenty-plus years where she could have said
something
. Anything.”

Declan nodded. “I know.”

“I can’t figure out how to get around that.”

“Talk to her.” The pleading in Declan’s voice had gone from subtle to obvious.

But that didn’t mean Callen was ready. “Not yet.”

Declan opened his mouth like he wanted to say something but then shook it off. “Fair enough.”

“So, she’s with Tom.” Biological mom or not, that bit of news had Callen’s alarm bells ringing. They’d known each other for years, and from the way Tom’s gaze heated when he stared at her, whatever teen crush he’d had in the beginning burned pretty damn hot now that he was an adult.

Declan nodded. “I plan on beating the hell out of him tomorrow.”

“Let me know if you need help.” She deserved a private life, and maybe Callen could even tolerate the idea of her having a sexual relationship, though his mind blanked in self-preservation at the thought, but still. Tom was younger than her and not hiding his interest. Since he worked at Shadow Hill, it all felt too close to Callen.

Declan smiled. “Speaking of that—”

“No.” His brother didn’t have to say one more word for Callen to know they’d somehow circled back to Grace. He had to shut this down, because he could feel the interrogation coming.