The need to connect to someone familiar overrode past hurts busy huddling
behind my grief. I swallowed, and then reached for my voice, “Hey, Hayseed.”
His nickname came out dull, but it didn’t stop him from reaching out to cover my restless fingers, stilling them against the warm surface of my gun.
“Hey, you.”
Leave it to Tag not to ask me the totally inane question of how I was doing.
It was painfully obvious.
“Kelsey’s dead.” Saying the words out loud made them real, cracking the
barrier holding my emotions back. Tears threatened, but crying was pointless.
Kelsey was gone.
My sister had been brutally ripped from my world, leaving behind a wound
so raw and bitter, I didn’t think I’d ever recover. No matter what I chose to do
from here, I would never make up for the fact her death could be laid indirectly
at my feet. “Make me understand.” Half plea, half accusation.
“I can’t.” Two words. One lie.
I searched Tag’s face. Under his compassion lay a wary watchfulness, a clear
sign he expected me to break, as if it was a forgone conclusion. His look morphed my helplessness to fury, and it seared through my veins chasing out the
numbness. My fingers curled around my gun, and I yanked my hands out from
under his. “Can’t or won’t?”
He didn’t answer, instead he recaptured my hands. His touch sent a small jolt
of static electricity zinging along my skin. It almost made me miss his flash of
quickly squashed guilt.
Almost.
“You bastard,” I hissed, a sickening sense of certainty crashing through me.
He knew something, something he didn’t want to share. He was going to screw
me again. I scrambled to my feet, knocking him away. “My sister is dead! You
don’t get to shut me out!”
“It’s not my decision, you know that.” He remained crouched in front of me.
Somewhere behind me Kayden must have made a move because Tag signaled
him to hold.
“No, I don’t.” I stood there, shaking with the force of my raging emotions as the past and the present collided, boiling into an incandescent storm.
At one time, he was the big brother I needed, pushy and protective. I
believed him without question, trusted him to cover my back for years in some
of the biggest hellholes on earth. Until the day I sat in a cold courtroom, alone,
answering the unanswerable in a flurry of accusations. Now, when I needed his
honesty the most, he wouldn’t talk. “What the hell is really going on here, Thomas?” I bit out the question.
Tag slowly straightened to his full six foot four, his face blanking into a familiar stonewall. “It’s classified.”
“No.” I shook my head slowly, never breaking eye contact. “No, you don’t get to pull this shit on me again. The two of you are going to level with me.”
“Or what?” Kayden’s question jerked my head around. He pocketed his cell
phone and came closer.
I raised my hand to hold him off. “Or I walk away.”
