Halos and Heroes - 2. Chapter 2

In some families, please is described as the magic word. In our house, however, it was sorry.

—Margaret Laurence

THE smell of sizzling bacon fat hit me the moment I walked into the house. When I entered the kitchen, Emma was sitting in a high-backed barstool at the large granite island with her back to me. Adelyn stood on the other side of the kitchen, flipping pancakes in a frying pan on the stovetop before she turned slightly to work on scrambling eggs in another frying pan. She moved with a speed and efficiency I'd never seen outside of Food Network TV. My mom had always tried to make breakfast for Connor and me as kids until the metastasized liver cancer destroyed the few pieces of her that our dad’s abuse hadn’t. We’d never even gotten a bowl from cereal from him when she’d been so sick she couldn’t get out of bed, so neither Connor or I had ever been good in the kitchen past boiling water for buttered noodles. Now that he was dead, I guess he never would be, but maybe I still had a chance. If a 17-year old could do it, a man trained in some of the most covert tactics in the world had to be able to make blobs with batter, right?

I eyed Adelyn silently for a moment. I knew she’d heard my footsteps when I entered the kitchen because even in socks, they were heavier than any feminine footfalls in this house, but she still ignored me as if I wasn’t there even though I read the new tension in the set of her slim shoulders. I gave her the same kind of space I’d have given any wild animal with teeth that could tear chunks out of me and move along with their day like they hadn’t just maimed their enemy. Adelyn had honey badger energy, and everyone knew honey badgers don’t care, and they take no shit.

Adelyn set a plate in front of Emma beside her short metal cup of orange juice, still not looking at me. I tagged myself into the game anyway by popping a kiss onto the top of Emma’s head, then peering over her slim shoulder. My brow arched as I reconsidered my earlier confidence about being able to make pancakes for breakfast. A lightly browned pancake in the shape of Mickey Fucking Mouse, complete with two big round ears added to the perfect main circle, looked up at me, patiently awaiting its inevitable fate. Adelyn had added two mini-chocolate chips for eyes, a piece of banana for a nose, and a semi-circle of yet more mini-chocolate chips for the smile. There was even an artfully cut, ripe strawberry arranged in the center between the two ears like a bow.

Apparently, I’d misgendered Minnie Mouse.

Yeah, I was going to have to build up to pancakes. Maybe start with scrambled eggs since there was a hearty helping to the right of Minnie’s ear as well as a neat side of bacon that Emma probably wouldn’t finish. Sweets almost always came first on the list of a kid’s priorities, and my youngest niece’s breakfast had the caloric count needed to fuel a grown man for a week. I was confident I’d be able to confiscate her leftover bacon the way I used to steal Adelyn’s when she was this age and didn’t care about the benefits of protein. I wouldn’t try that with her now. I liked every part of my anatomy where God had put it.

I moved around the counter to stand by Emma’s bar-height chair, eyeing her skinny arms as she poked a fork into her eggs. She offered a sunny smile when she looked up at me as I took the seat beside her, one brown eye nearly obscured by the butter she’d somehow managed to smudge on her eyeglasses even without taking an actual bite of her pancakes yet.

"Hi, Uncle Sam.”

“Morning Emma.”

“Did you sleep ok?”

My lips twitched slightly because that was a loaded question asked in a very polite little girl voice. “Yeah, I slept ok, honey. Must’ve been the Beanie Baby.”

She beamed. “I told Mami you’d like that one. It used to be my first favorite, but now the flamingo is my first favorite, so I thought you’d like the chameleon because he’s like you.”

What now?

My lips twitched because even knowing the Twilight Zone that a kid’s mind could be, I had to ask. “Oh yeah? Why?”

Emma answered around a mouthful of chocolate as Minnie went blind to her own future deconstruction. “In your pictures you have on colors that mami said camouflage you just like chameleons camouflage themselves when there’s something scary around that can eat them.”

From the mouths of babes…If only she knew just how many times that’s exactly what I’d had to be; a chameleon who blended into unfamiliar surroundings to get in, do a job, then get out without raising newsworthy alarm bells.

“Like honey badgers,” I said, my lips twitching into a grin when Emma nodded enthusiastically, thankfully too young to speak smartass.

“And lions.”

“And tigers, and bears.”

“Oh my!” Emma said, finishing the famous quote with a happy whoop of sound escaping around the mouthful of pancake she shifted to one cheek like a cheerful squirrel. “That’s one of my favorite movies. I dressed up like Dorothy last year for Halloween, but my red shoes don’t fit anymore.”

“We’ll have to get you a new pair then,” I said, holding up my hand for the high-five when she prompted me by raising her own. Her palm felt sticky, but there were plenty of sinks in the house, and I could deal with tacky hands for a little bit if it helped me bond with my niece.

“Smells good in here.”

“Uh huh. Addie made pancakes. Are you having breakfast with us?"

I considered my answer as I glanced up in Adelyn’s direction. Her glare from across the room threatened to reduce me to a pile of ash. The eggs honestly looked runnier than I personally liked, but no one had asked for my opinion. Even if Adelyn had, after last night, I’d be keeping my fucking mouth shut till I had a better idea of what I was dealing with here. Keeping the peace seemed worth the sin against my taste buds.

I smiled. "Sure, if there's enough for me."

"There isn't," Adelyn assured me, dumping the still-steaming, nonstick pan into the sink where a traitorous pile of scrambled eggs clogged the drain in a mini mountain through the suds like a forlorn caricature of a band of rubber ducks. "You're a big guy, and we're out of eggs," she said, ignoring the little globs floating up mournfully in the sink's rising water line. "The other plate is for Mami."

The hand set on her narrow hip dared me to challenge her. It also dragged my attention to her outfit, and I felt my jaw tick.

Yesterday’s fashion statement had been a firm negative. This one was in the double digits below a negative. She was wearing the same standard Vans again—with those stupid white socks that barely showed above the top of your sneakers, and always ended up bunched around your toes— but her jean shorts had so little material to them, assuming they’d been made from scraps of other torn jeans wouldn’t be a huge mental stretch. Her belly button was covered today, but her skintight t-shirt was white, with a black, screen-printed silhouette design of birds flying in a standard V formation. The words, ‘Flock Off,’ were scrawled across the front in a hot pink color.

I doubted that Sofia had approved that outfit, but like I’d told Max last night, I didn’t have veto powers.

Yet, a little voice in the back of my mind amended. I had to do laundry eventually. If it turned out that Sofia felt the same vehement hatred toward that outfit that I did, well, men turning white laundry pink by accidentally washing it with a lone red sock or underwear was a stereotype for a reason, and one we always used to our advantage in cases like this.

"You can have some of mine, Uncle Sam."

A forkful of scrambled eggs that looked even more limp up close, forced itself into my line of vision from Emma's direction, interrupting the silent standoff between Adelyn and me.

"Thank you, sweetheart, I appreciate that." I gently pushed Emma’s still loaded fork back towards her, then leaned over impulsively to press a kiss to the top of her head. Her hair smelled like strawberries, like Adelyn’s had when she was a little girl.

"Why don't you finish your breakfast and I'll just have whatever's left over, okay?"

God knew she wouldn’t get through more than a quarter of the carb nightmare on that plate, especially considering that she was already slowing down the speed of how quickly she chewed between bites. She’d eaten all the chocolate chips off of the pancake first, the banana nose and the strawberry bow, as well as a third of Minnie’s left ear. She hadn’t touched her eggs or bacon, so I had high hopes I’d end up with breakfast scraps that wouldn’t leave me hopped up on sugar.

Emma nodded, then refocused on eating. There was a grumble of sound from Adelyn's corner, but she finished fixing Sofia's plate without another word to either of us. I moved to help myself to a cup of the fragrant fresh coffee in the pot, not bothering to look in the refrigerator for milk since I liked it black as death and unsweetened. I returned to the island, then sat in the barstool besides Emma’s, just watching her quietly for a moment as I sipped the Cuban coffee Sofia apparently still liked. It was a small, stable comfort in this new world of what-the-fucks.

Emma ate with her left hand, maneuvering an orange crayon with her right to fill in an oddly formed shape. She hummed ridiculously off-key to what could’ve been anything from a Disney song to the Star-Spangled Banner, as she colored. Both she and Adelyn had changed so much from my memories. Emma had a heavy fringe of bangs that hid her eyebrows and brushed the top edge of her glasses unless she pushed them back with a small hand; something she seemed to do frequently, judging by how much butter and syrup was coating the tips. Her face was heart-shaped, less refined than her sister's. Dark hair was braided into one thick tail down her back today instead of being plaited into two like it had been last night. The little plastic balls on her hair tie— the same blinding shade of orange as her shorts— wrapped around the bottom of the braid and clicked against the metal back of the bar stool every time she moved. Both girls had their mother's olive skin and big, almond-shaped eyes, but Adelyn had inherited the deep blue of my family that looked even brighter because of the bottle born, teenage rebellion falling around her face. Previously, she'd always had light brown hair like Connor and me. There was also a hint of wave to it like mine when it got too long. Either girl would've easily been mistaken as my kid, which made sense because Connor and I were identical twins. But it was a surreal experience to see our family genes manifesting themselves in two people I no longer knew.

"That looks nice, Emma," I said to break the silence. "I like the..." I peered closer. "Orange flowers?"

"You do?" She added another distorted blossom to the page. "Good. Then Daddy will like it because you're like the same person. I'm making it for him to take to heaven."

Adelyn was an angry blur as she zoomed out of the kitchen, leaving Sofia's plate behind. I blinked, but Emma didn't seem to notice, continuing to color happily, completely unaware that her innocent commentary might’ve unintentionally kicked a hole the size of Texas in the moment of uneasy peace between her sister and me.

"We're not really the same person, honey. We just look a lot alike. Most brothers and sisters resemble one another, like you and Addie do."

"But me and Addie don't look exactly alike," Emma argued as she picked up a purple crayon. "You and Daddy do."

I was spared trying to explain genetics to a first grader when Adelyn reappeared in the doorway. Her eyes were suspiciously pink rimmed when they met mine, but her black eyeliner was still pristine.

"Emma, you need to finish getting ready so we can go to Lauren's."

"That's Addie's friend," Emma informed me. "She has two sisters. Hannah is my age. Becca's just a baby, but she laughs a lot when you tickle her bare feet."

"Come on, Emma. I left your pink sneakers by your bed. Make sure you brush your teeth before you come back down."

Emma slid off the stool, leaving her picture behind. "Okay, Addie. Uncle Sam?"

"Mmm?"

Emma apparently spoke monosyllable because she tipped her head to one side like a thoughtful puppy before saying, "Are you going to live with us now?"

Agreeing to anything even semi-permanent right now without having some kind of plan which had to include speaking to Sofia, was a mistake. I knew that. But when those big brown eyes met mine with unconcealed hope, I nodded slightly. "I'll be sticking around for a while, kiddo."

After a little half wave and a brilliant, happy smile, Emma bounced out of the kitchen, leaving me alone with Adelyn.

I remembered my older niece as an awkward, sweet kid with knobby knees and a smile that lit up the room whenever she saw me. Right now, her knees were obscured by the sizable granite island between us when she moved directly across from me, and there wasn’t a trace of a smile on her pretty face.

"Seriously? Are you a sadist like Dad was? Do you get off on breaking promises and making little girls cry?"

After last night I hadn't been expecting sweetness and light, but the venom in Adelyn's voice still caught me off guard. "Jesus kid...you go straight for the jugular."

"I don't like to dick around when it comes to my family."

"That mouth make you many friends?"

"I don't need any more friends. Especially not ones who walk out on us."

"Adelyn—"

She cut me off with a slap of her palm against the granite. "No! You don’t get to walk in here like you know what’s going on because you fucking don’t! Emma's too young to remember those nights when dad lost his shit and went after Mami and me; how he slammed her against the hallway wall so hard one night, that she bruised most of her ribs and broke her clavicle. We had to take her to the ER. When we got there, Dad made me lie to the police in the ER and say that she fell down the steps. He told me if I didn’t, Emma and I would end up in foster care.” Her lips thinned almost to a straight line. “It sucked, but then she had to lie to the police the time dad hit me the face for calling him an abusive asshole; he gave me a black eye and a busted my lip. Mami said I slipped getting out of the shower,” she said, her sorrowful words translating into a bitter snarl.

I felt those words crawling up my spine, turning into a solid column of tension.

Son-of-a-fucking-bitch...

Adelyn exhaled hard, but I didn't break the silence, partially because I was hoping she would end the conversation herself, possibly by telling me to go fuck myself. I’d have preferred that to this heartbreaking monologue, but Adelyn wasn't doing me any favors.

"The last time he hit mami, I locked the door to Emma’s room because she was just a baby. Then I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife from the kitchen drawer. Dad had a beer in one hand and was drinking it at the same time that he was kicking Mami while she was down on the ground in the living room. She was curled into a ball and his reflexes were slower because he was so drunk. I ran over when he threw his beer can at her head, then got in front of her. Mami was begging me to stop when I swung the knife out at dad and told him I’d cut his balls off if he got near us again. He said I was a little bitch just like Mami, and I told him to fuck off and get out. And you know what he did next?”

I didn’t even want to imagine, but apparently it was a rhetorical question.

“He smiled at me,” she hissed. “Smiled!" she repeated, slamming both hands down onto the granite island hard. "He told me he wished I actually had the balls, then left with his whiskey bottle in his hand." Her wide blue eyes were suspiciously shiny, though no tears fell.

Sweet fucking Christ, Connor, what the FUCK did you do?

I wanted to shake my brother as I asked him that question, but he was dead, so he got to escape the reality of seeing a female version of us when we were that age, bristling with the same self-righteous rage that had gotten us into so many fights with the neighborhood bullies who’d thought two abused kids were easy prey. They’d eventually learned otherwise, but we’d taken more than our share of beatings. Since girls could throw punches too, I didn’t want to see history repeating itself with my niece.

"I'm glad he's dead." Adelyn moved away to start loading the dishwasher, her back to me as she spoke. Dishes clattered, threatening the lifespan of the earthenware. "If he came back and hurt us again, I'd have killed him."

My eyes closed for a moment before I opened them again and said, "You don't mean that, Adelyn."

Adelyn's voice was flat. "Yeah, I do."

And she did. I remembered being flooded with that same wrath; knew how the rage built; how it bubbled up inside your very core until all you wanted to do was let it explode out and smash the unfair world to pieces. Basic training and years of a disciplined Army life had mellowed me, taught me self-control, but those conflicted feelings never completely left you. Adding the concrete, black-and-white thinking of a kid into the mix didn't help the situation at all.

"And now we're having this stupid funeral that's going to make Dad out to be some big hero."

"Addie..."

"Stop," she interrupted again. "You don't get to call me that. We all know you're only here because everyone expected you to bring Dad back home. If you really loved us as much as you used to say you did, you'd have finished your last tour and come home before he used us as his personal punching bags."

"I swear to God I didn't know he was hurting you until last night. Your mom never told me, and if I’d known I wou—”

“Would’ve what?” she asked, cutting me off mid-sentence to fill in the blanks herself. “Come home? Fucked him up and thrown him out? Finally STAYED with us? Maybe you would’ve done all those things,” she agreed, cutting me off again by chopping her hand though the air before I could respond. "We’ll never know. It’s still too little, too late," she said in a flat tone. “He’s dead now, so we don’t need you swooping in to play hero.”

I exhaled slowly. There was so much to unpack here, and I didn’t know where to start. Five years ago, a hug might’ve been a good opening, but Adelyn was standing too close to the Butcher’s block of knives on the counter for my piece of mind, especially considering what she’d just shared about wanting to do to my dead doppleganger.

"Adelyn,” I started, then paused for a minute, trying to organize my thoughts. “As little as it means right now, I'm sorry. You're right. I should've come home earlier, and I should’ve been a part of your lives so that even if your mom hadn’t ever told me what was happening, I’d still have found out eventually and made it stop. I swear to God, I would’ve ended it, because none of that was ok, and it definitely wasn’t deserved. But I didn’t catch it. Like you said, I wasn’t here. That's on me, and I’m sorry. Staying away was a mistake, but I swear it wasn't because of any of you."

"Then why'd you punish us for it?"

"Because sometimes people are really damn good at being fucking stupid, kid." My sigh sounded more like defeat than I cared to admit. Cursing around a kid wasn’t my finest moment, but considering her own tirade a few minutes ago, I doubted that she’d tattle on me to Sofia. "I let my issues with your dad keep me from coming around when he was here. Eventually I was gone for so long, I just stayed away, thinking you'd all be better off."

"We weren't." She paused, those blue eyes meeting mine, though there was a hint of hostile interest in her eyes as she leaned her hip into the edge of the island, picking absently at the corner of the Minnie ear that Emma hadn’t even eaten half of. "Why were you so mad at Dad? What did he do to you?"

Oh, what hadn’t Connor done to me… what hadn’t I fucking allowed him to do because he was my little brother by five entire minutes, which meant he’d been my responsibility since the damn womb. I could probably write a bestseller about sibling codependence at this point. Aloud, all I said was, "What happened between your dad and me doesn't matter, Adelyn. It was our damage and we handled it poorly. So poorly, it affected the rest of you and that was wrong."

"Was it because you're gay?"

My left eyebrow arched. "Why would you think that?" Connor had always made semi-caustic comments to both Max and me about our lifestyle choices, but he'd never said anything in front of Sofia and the kids while I was around.

Addie’s slim shoulders lifted and dropped in response as she finally broke off a small piece of pancake and popped it into her mouth to eat it before wiping her fingers clean on a napkin. "He was always so macho and judgmental about people and sometimes when he was drinking, he said really cruel, fucked up stuff about you and Uncle Max. Then one day you just stopped coming home and so did Uncle Max, even though he still sends us birthday and Christmas cards every year. He just never came over again, so I figured that maybe Dad said something about the two of you being gay because he was a prick that way." She shrugged again.

Max keeping in contact with my family was news to me, though not entirely surprising considering that he’d known Sofia for as long as I had and been around both my nieces since they were born. He was family, but so was I, and I hadn’t been there for them while he had. That stung in an almost humiliating way and I’d ask him about it eventually because we didn’t do secrets, but I could only handle one situation at a time.

"No, it wasn't about anything Max, or I did. It was something between your dad and me that doesn't matter anymore. We should’ve dealt with it years ago. We didn’t, and I regret that I let it divide my family. I want to fix things now, or at least try to, if you’ll all just give me that chance. Please.”

Just when I thought my niece's expression was softening, her eyebrows pinched together as she scowled at me.

"Whatever. I don't really care what your excuse is, so don't think you can just come back into our lives and stir up our shit, especially Emma's. She still thinks Dad was rescuing people over there."

"He was saving people Adelyn. Whatever else your father might've sucked at, he was good at his job. He saved a lot of people."

"And how many did he kill?"

My pause was blood in the water.

"I bet he liked that," Adelyn growled, her hands curling tightly into fists on the island counter. "The news always says you guys get your rocks off killing innocent women and children. He wanted to kill us a few times. I guess us being alive means we just got lucky."

"Hey!" My voice came out louder than I expected, and I didn't realize I'd gotten out of my seat and moved around the counter until Adelyn's fearful, kohl lined eyes met mine at close range. They were so wide that I could see the glaring contrast of the whites surrounding the blue. That deer in headlights expression reminded me that she was just a kid, no matter how brassy her damn balls were. I forced my tone to gentle as I kept my hands where she could see them; one on the island and the other loose at my side. Adelyn had seen her father as a monster, but the truth was that I was more dangerous than Connor any day of the week when the occasion warranted it, because I’d been trained to be. I could snap my niece’s slender neck before she even took another breath, because she was so much more fragile than most of the grown men who I’d taken down in a similar span of time. Max hadn’t been wrong in calling me a spooky, motherfucking-boogeyman. But I never intended for Adelyn, Emma, or Sofia, to catch even a glimpse of that man. He was as dead as my brother was, or so I’d keep telling myself until I could pretend to believe it.

"I can only imagine how tough it is for you to see his face whenever I walk into a room, Adelyn,” I said quietly. “Every time that I look in the mirror, it wrecks me too because now I know it’s the face of someone who hurt you and your mom. Unfortunately, I can’t do much to change that other than growing a beard and maybe stealing some of your hair dye. But I’m hoping that eventually, you’ll start seeing me again. The uncle who’s always loved you, your mom, and Emma, and who is going to do everything in his power to make this right."

Adelyn’s lips twitched slightly at the mention of the hair dye, but it was still thousands of miles away from a real smile. A lone tear slid down her pale cheek, but I didn't dare wipe it away.

"I get that I messed up, Adelyn, and I’ll keep apologizing as many times as it takes you to believe me. But I swear to God that I will never hurt you or your family the way your dad did, and I’ll never allow anyone else to hurt you either. That's all over. Do you hear me?"

I sighed inwardly when she didn’t answer me, but I kept my tone steady as I repeated myself. "Adelyn, do you hear me? It’s over. I will never raise a hand to any of you, ever. Do you understand?"

A terse nod was her only response this time, but I’d take it.

"Good. That’s a start. And don't listen to the damn news unless it's coming from someone who's actually held a rifle to protect complete strangers."

She watched me silently as I sat down again on the closest bar stool without getting too far into her personal space. "Look, without getting into political garbage that’s mostly bullshit anyway, I'll tell you that there's always good and bad in the world, on all sides. Every minute of every day is a choice that people have to make."

"Way to sum it up, Plato."

I ignored the sarcasm. "Sometimes my choices sucked kid and I wish I could take them back. Other days, I'm just fine with the decisions I made because it meant that I didn’t die, and neither did any of the guys on my team, or the people we were sent to protect. Don't know if that makes me a good person or a lousy one, and frankly, I don't care anymore. None of it matters now because at the end of the day, I'm just a guy who made the piss poor mistake of walking out on my family because I couldn't handle my personal shit. And I'm sorry."

Adelyn bit her lower lip as she abruptly pushed herself away from the counter. "I need to take Emma to Lauren's."

"Addie..."

She didn't answer me, just headed for the door. "Mami expects you to go with her to the funeral home, so you better get shower and get changed. You stink."

Standing up silently, I ignored the verbal jab and grabbed a glass from the cabinet to fill it with the orange juice I filched from the fridge. When Adelyn couldn't make me react, she rushed out of the room again.

Next time I saw Max, I'd show him where he could shove his domestic family delusions.

***

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

– Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Things were always clearer in hindsight. When Sofia and I'd first arrived at the funeral home, the straight-backed, hardwood chair with the ornately embroidered blue seat cushion, had seemed the obvious choice to keep me both relevant to the conversation, and in an upright seated position for as long as this meeting took. Unfortunately, according to the numbers on my watch, almost an hour had passed and the funeral director was still droning on about floral arrangements and headstones. At this point, the overstuffed armchair way off in the corner of the room would’ve been a smarter decision.

I managed to muster enough self-control to resist the urge to rub my hands over my face or put them over my ears. The last time I'd been to a funeral home was right after my mother's death when I was 15. The only thing l I remembered about that day, aside from the feeling of rage I'd felt over my mother’s death, was the brick building the funeral home had been housed in. Two black hearses had been parked outside along the side of the building like solemn sentries. I’d stared at those two cars from the alley facing them as I’d kicked the brick wall as hard as I could, needing the pain to ground me. Connor had coped though a monologue of profanity in between taking drags off one of the cigarette’s he’d filched from our dad’s pack when he wasn’t looking.

I'd been wearing my oldest, scuffed-up green converse sneakers with a hole above the big toe. I hadn't been wearing socks and the gritty texture of the brick had chafed the exposed skin in that same spot every time I'd kicked the wall, but I’d kept kicking until my skin had cracked and bled. It’d given the well-intentioned neighbor who’d brought Connor and me to the funeral home to help my dad with the arrangements, a reason to take us home and get me cleaned up. I’d been fine with the pain, but I’d been even better with getting away from the heavy floral scent of the funeral home. I’d long ago thrown away the sneakers, but macabre nostalgia meant I was still nauseated by the heavy perfume of the gardenia plants in the director’s office; beautiful, natural art meant to distract the grieving from the fact death lurked beneath all these elegant surfaces.

"¿Sam, qué piensa usted?"

Sofia's soft tone broke into my thoughts. I blinked, not sure what she was asking my opinion about until I glanced over at the funeral director. He indicated the glossy brochure she was looking at. Perfectly coiffed from the top of his head to the tip of his toes, his tasteful gray pinstriped suit and moss green tie looked expensive. Dealing in death was obviously lucrative in Florida. Probably had something to do with all the retirement communities

I shifted in my seat, trying to focus on the conversation I didn’t give one, let alone two shits about. "I don't know, Sofia."

Her eyebrows drew together as she stared down at the brochure. This was an unnecessary hardship for her to go through. The casket that Connor had been transported in was already more than my brother deserved. If I'd been bolder, I would've told Sofia to dig a hole in the backyard, dump Connor's ashes into it, add some kindling and kerosene, then let Adelyn light it up. It would’ve been satisfying, but not helpful, so I deflected instead. "Lo que usted piensa es la mejor, Sofia."

My sister-in-law didn't look convinced that the choices she made would be the right ones, but she finally pointed at the page with a fingernail that was bitten down so far, her skin curled over the ragged edge. "We'll go with this one."

A few signatures put an end to that portion of the conversation, but the process of selecting a headstone came next and I tuned out as completely as I could. Though the military was picking up some of the burial cost with all the honors and trimmings, funerals were expensive. I was helping Sofia cover the remaining balance, preferring whatever life insurance money she received be put in trust for the girls. I’d handed her my checkbook before we’d left the house because this was one instance where I had absolutely no desire to know what my money was buying.

When Sofia and Evan started discussing a photo memory board, I felt my ears begin to ring like fucking recess had been called. After all the recent panic attacks I’d endured, I knew what that meant. I had to get out of here because I didn’t want to explain to my already traumatized sister-in-law, that in a few minutes, I was probably going to end up in a corner somewhere, rocking like a small, disturbed child. Swallowing hard, I excused myself, squeezing Sofia's shoulder as I stood up to let her know I was taking a walk before I ended up curled in a screaming ball by the gardenias. "I'll be right back. Le prometo," I promised.

She nodded, reluctantly releasing her death grip on my hand so I could wander down the hall to find a bathroom. My steps lost their steadiness when I was out of her sight and my gait probably would’ve gotten me sentenced to walking a line if there’d been a cop around. Fortunately for me, the corridor was empty, though the scent of perfumed corpses mocked me from every corner. Knowing that part was all in my head didn't help my growing nausea. When my shoulder pushed the bathroom door open with such force that it slammed into the wall, the momentum made me stumble. I gagged, barely managing to catch the edge of the sink to keep myself from falling. I clutched the shiny porcelain edge like a lifeline, sweat sliding down the back of my neck. The tops of my ears felt hot, and I let my head dip below my shoulder blades, trying to regulate my breathing so I wouldn’t pass out as the room spun around me like a carnival ride operated by an unhinged carnie.

I was getting better at handling my panic attacks when they hit, but last night's nightmare, coupled with this morning's confrontation with Adelyn had annihilated any pretense that I was in control of my shit. Gagging around the panic rising in my throat again, I stumbled into the nearest stall. Since I hadn’t touched Emma’s leftovers after the altercation with Adelyn, nothing came up except a bit of bile tinged with the flavor of the cup of coffee I’d drunk. After a few minutes, my throat felt rough and raw from the dry heaves. I closed my eyes again, ignoring how unhygienic it was to lean my forehead against the cool porcelain of the toilet bowl. It looked clean, but at this point, it really didn’t matter. I'd have licked the inside of the damn thing if it would've helped orient me. Fortunately for my intestinal tract, I didn’t have the energy. I just flopped onto the floor, shifting my weight to settle sideways in the stall with my head resting back against one side, my legs almost touching my chin since I had to tuck up that tight to fit in the cramped space. I didn’t care. It was quiet in here.

The sound of the bathroom door opening then closing with a less audible sound than my own entrance, made me tense, but the light knock on the bathroom door just a few seconds later echoed loud as a gunshot in my ears. Muscle memory overrode panic, and I went for my firearm instinctively with the blinding speed of years of practice, forgetting in that flash of panic, that I'd had to give up my military issued weapons in Afghanistan after I was relieved of my duties.

My head thunked back against the bathroom door hard when I shifted my position again so my back was to the stall door, as if I could just wish away whoever the fuck was on the other side with the old, out of sight, out of mind trick. I was hoping to all that was holy that it wasn’t the funeral director out there, because I didn’t want Sofia to seem me falling apart when she was barely keeping it together herself.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I exhaled slowly as I tried to regain my bearings. Just breathe, Sam, I thought. Breathe, dammit. You're not in the Army anymore. You're on civilian ground. You're safe. The only person who might kill you here is the little Goth Barbie/Honey Badger hybrid related to you, and she’s not here right now, so FUCKING BREATHE, man!

"Hello? Are you all right in there?"

The voice was male, deep, and whiskey smooth. A subtle Spanish accent like Sofia’s softened it, hinting that his otherwise perfect English wasn't his native language, just like hers wasn’t. Not Evan, thank God, since his accent had been middle America all the way.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I lied. My knuckles were whiter than the grout between the tiles dancing beneath me. "Just a stomach bug or something."

"Or something," the man agreed. "Why don't you open this door so we can talk?"

"Dude, I'm okay." Anxiety reduced my vernacular to a teenage whine. "Seriously."

There was the briefest pause, then what sounded like a soft snort. He wasn’t happy with me, but too bad. I wasn’t thrilled with myself.

"You seriously don't sound okay, dude. If you don't open the door, I'm going to get someone."

"I just need a minute."

"Can you please open the door?"

Despite the phrasing it wasn't a question and I exhaled hard. Jesus H. Christ! Couldn't a guy just pass out in peace? I eyed the edge of plain black sneakers beneath the door, but they remained firmly planted. I considered waiting him out and silently started counting in my head, but by the time I’d reached 25, the sneakers still hadn’t moved. I sighed under my breath because I believed his threat about going to find help if I didn’t comply, and I didn’t need that world of shit dropped on me right now.

I exhaled hard, then leaned my weight more heavily against the door for stability as I awkwardly got to my feet in the tight spot. My fingers fumbled with the door, jamming the simple mechanism as my makeshift sanctuary suddenly became claustrophobic as hell now that I was trying to get out instead of locking myself down. All that kept me from hitting the floor when the door finally opened, were the lean, strong arms that steadied me when I staggered out into them.

"Careful now," my Good Samaritan said when I stumbled. His arm tightened firmly around my midsection, keeping me so close against him that I could make out the lines of a lean, athletic build, solid enough to keep me upright—instead of taking a face first dive into the bathroom tile— and the hint of his cologne which was something woodsy and masculine. I didn’t wear cologne often enough to know what the scent was called, but whatever it was, it definitely smelled better than the anxiety acrid sweat soaking my t-shirt probably did.

“It’s ok. Careful now,” he said, using the same steady, gentle tone that I used to soothe Adelyn after nightmares when she was a little girl.

Just like that, I felt nauseous again. I hadn’t been around to keep Adelyn safe, and now instead of the happy, well-adjusted kid she should’ve been, she was a lost and angry, feminine version of her dad and me.

As if he sensed my growing panic stemming from the heaviness of that crushing self-disgust, the man’s grip on me tightened to keep me from trying to bolt. He leaned forward just enough to get my left arm up and over his broad shoulder, before he straightened up to maneuver us out of the bathroom after he’d bumped the door open with his hip. I didn’t ask him where we were going as he walked us down the hall and around a corner. Right now, I didn’t give a fuck. He could walk me into traffic if he felt like it and I’d consider it an act of mercy.

The red letters of the EXIT sign were something that I registered only hazily before I heard him say, "Survey says you're definitely not fine."

Gentle humor laced my mystery man’s voice as he pushed the metal bar on the door with his free hand to get us outside. The sunshine was too bright, but the soft breeze immediately cooled the sweat on the back of my neck and beneath my gray t-shirt as he kept moving us further away from the funeral home. I wasn’t expecting the small, quiet area of benches surrounded by lush greenery that weren’t the palm trees and tropical style plants used frequently in Floridian landscaping. It definitely looked more calming than the inside of the bathroom stall had, but I could still feel my heart racing as he led us toward one of the benches.

"Watch your step there. I keep telling Evan, the funeral director, that he needs to replace those paving stones, but he believes letting people break their necks out here will help his business."

My attempt at chuckling sounded more like wheezing and stole too much precious air, so I just nodded.

"Ok, easy, almost there. A nice firm bench to plunk down on while I call 911."

Fuck.

Those words registered loud and clear. Evan finding me wrapped around the toilet bowl would’ve been bad enough. Blaring lights and sirens from an ambulance pulling up to the funeral home where there shouldn’t have been any live customers, was a hard pass. I didn’t want Sofia to know about my PTSD, but my self-appointed Superman needed to understand the situation and get on board real quick because I wasn’t going to the hospital.

I wheezed out my words around another breath. "Don't… need… an ambulance. Panic attack. Will be… okay... give me a minute."

"Panic attack?"

He sounded like he was gearing up for a round of twenty questions, but I freed one hand to fumble at my collar, hoping a little show and tell would do a better job of getting my point across. The dog tags jingled against my chest as they plopped free, gleaming brightly in the sun.

Long fingers slid into my line of vision as he carefully rolled the standard ball chain between his fingers. "Ah, all right, this makes some sense now."

Thank fuck because I had my head between my legs and couldn't be bothered to give him a play by play.

"PTSD?"

I nodded and felt him squeeze my shoulder.

“Ok. It’s ok. You’re ok. Everything’s going to be ok. Take slower breaths, nice and easy. If you hyperventilate, I'm going to have to call EMS and you won't be able to stop me, passed out like a big rug on the grass."

That amusement was back in his voice, but the long sweeps of his palm along my spine were so soothing, I didn't care if his humor was at my expense, or that he sounded like he was coaching a Lamaze class at a psychiatric asylum.

"That's it. Just let yourself ride it through. This sometimes happens to someone I know. He's not on active duty anymore, so it's gotten easier over the years. When do you go back?"

"I don't."

It was obvious he read the tightness in my tone when he paused for a long stretch.

"Ah... I'm sorry," he said finally. "Are you doing all right?"

His tone of genuine concern stung worse than the derision I usually reserved for myself. By nature, I'm a private person, and years following military protocol of not telling even when they asked, didn't help. Aside from Max, I hadn't told anyone about the forced discharge. Not even Sofia knew, and I didn't plan to tell her until I decided whether or not I was going to cut and run or stay in Florida. Max was the person I trusted most in this world, and not even he'd been able to break through my walls last night. But for some reason, those time-strengthened barriers felt weak right now. I tensed as I realized that I suddenly wanted to reveal every secret I'd ever kept to this stranger with the kindest voice I'd ever heard.

I bit the tip of my tongue and gave just enough of an answer to be an appropriate follow-up, without removing an entire level of my protective mortar.

"My brother, Connor, was killed in action recently. I'm home for the funeral." That wasn't the only reason, but sharing more than that would steer this conversation deeper into territory that was already uncomfortable. It was time to make my exit. "Listen, thanks for your help bu—"

"It’s going to be alright, Sam.”

Even though I'd been answering to my name for almost thirty-five years, it took a second for me to register it. A half-dozen questions were on my lips because I didn’t hear a questioning lilt in his voce. When my head snapped up so I could look into the man’s face, I had every intention of grilling him with as many questions as I could.

They never made it out of my mouth.

Old adages claimed that the road to hell was paved with good intentions. Considering how often I felt like I was in hell lately, it seemed ironically appropriate that on my journey, I’d run into at least one angel among the demons.

Although I'd been raised Catholic, it'd been a while since I'd prayed. After everything I'd lived through over the years, it was obvious that if there was a God, He wasn't listening to me, so His whens and whys were a moot point. But the Almighty seemed determined to reassure me of his existence today, emphasizing that whole bit about everything He created being good.

My savior smiled as if he could read my thoughts, his gaze warm and steady on mine; definitely of the angelic ilk. He hooked his arms over the back of the wooden bench, his body language as open as his smile under my scrutiny. The wide-set eyes I looked into were a rich hazel that leaned more toward green, framed by thick lashes. They stood out against skin bronzed a deep honey gold that was probably natural considering his accent. Bright, even teeth in a chiseled jaw were framed by dark, day-old shadow that couldn’t hide the dimple sunk into only his left cheek. His thick, black hair was clipped longer than mine and streaked heavily with natural, silvery highlights despite looking at least ten years too young for any gray. That subtle sign of age didn’t detract from the fact he was sexy as fuck. My mystery man would’ve prompted Max to school me about the benefits of dating ‘Silver Foxes,’ but in this instance, I probably would’ve listened.

The Almighty had outdone himself, but that need to keep us humble showed when the sun turned the slightly oversized curves of the man’s ears into almond toned half-moons like the plastic ones that belonged to Mr. Potato Head. That small flaw would've made me smile if I wasn't so focused on how the hell he knew who I was. I'd have remembered meeting a man this hot.

He must’ve caught the confusion in my expression, because he held out a hand. I eyed him for a moment before I slid mine into it. His grip was confidently firm, though his palm was softer than mine. Not weak or girly, but definitely lacking the trigger calluses on my own fingers.

"Sorry about that. Didn't mean to catch you off guard. I'm Ben Santiago, a friend of Sofia's."

"Doesn't explain how you know who I am."

“You showed me your dog tags,” he said with a slight smile before he added, “And Sofia’s also talked about you before, and shown me some family photos. She told me that her brother-in-law was in the Army, and that he was coming in from Afghanistan for Connor’s funeral. She and I are close, so we talk often.”

His words were casual, prompting me to cock an eyebrow. The scenery was pretty, but if he was interested in my family, the number of hoops he'd have to jump through would be epic. I’d dropped the ball on protecting them enough as it was.

"I see."

Ben's smile lifted higher on the side that was home to his lone dimple as if he was reading my mind again. "We're just friends."

"I didn't ask."

"But you were thinking it." He looked unfazed by the defensive note in my voice. "And I understand. I'm a stranger to you. They're yours, and you're the type of man who protects his own."

My eyes narrowed because being saved by someone in the psychiatric field would be my fucking luck. No wonder he could channel Lamaze coach/ sanitarium steward so well. "Are you a shrink?"

Ben smiled again. "No. But you're long-time military. So, it stands to reason that you probably looked out for the men in your unit like brothers. Those protective instincts would naturally carry over to your own family."

"For someone who says he's not a shrink, you talk like one."

Ben’s warm smile became an even warmer chuckle, obviously unoffended. "My best friend is a child therapist. I work at Maplewood, the local halfway house for teenagers, and I read a lot, so I guess that's a killer triumvirate." Ben smiled at my obvious skepticism. "We do offer counseling services at Maplewood, but I don't have a medical degree, so all I offer are my ears. We're just a safe place for kids who need someone to listen. Everyone has to vent sometimes."

The subtle emphasis he put on that last part made my brow quirk. "Are you saying you think that's what I need?"

"I don't know. Do you get many chances to talk about your feelings when you're doing the stoic American Hero routine in bathroom stalls?" He ignored my soft snort. "I run a broad-spectrum adult support group on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Both are open sessions. Anyone is allowed to come by and share. Nothing leaves the room." He reached into his pocket to pull out a simple brown wallet before fishing out a small white card that he extended toward me.

"Sort of like open mic night," I said, ignoring the card.

"Only with better coffee. We even have caramel and vanilla flavored creamers. And cookies. Everything’s always better with cookies.”

Ben patted my knee. It was a casual touch, but I felt the heat lingering long after he'd reclaimed his previous position. He left the card on my knee, and I smirked. Very smooth. Fortunately for my sanity, I didn’t have a sweet tooth.

"I'll think about it."

"Okay. I'll take what I can get. Maybe you can get Sofia to join us, too. Adelyn just joined our youth nights."

My lips twisted into a wry smile. “Prepare to hear plenty about how much she hates me. She's not shy."

"Her dad just died. She's allowed to have angst be her middle name for a while." Ben leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "So are you. It's probably going to be a difficult transition for you, conflicted as you are about where your loyalties should lay. Sofia called me early this morning and said she finally told you about you about the domestic abuse, and that you had no idea before. I’m sorry. I can’t even imagine how difficult it must be to process all that. Connor was your brother, but they're yours, too."

I stiffened immediately, putting the card on the bench between us as the comfortable mood was broken. “What's the point of going to this group then? You've already got my number."

"I like to get my information from the source." Ben's tone was a gentle contrast to my defensive one. "Sofia's always said you're a very private person. I respect that, but between processing your PTSD and the fact one person you loved was hurting others who you also love, there are bound to be some intense feelings that can bubble up and choke you if you're not careful." He paused, not breaking eye contact. "Are you having any nightmares since leaving the field?"

"That's none of your business."

He ignored the hostility. "I'll take that as a yes. Try the group, Sam. All our people have been through something that still haunts them, including me, and sometimes I have to share too. I practice what I preach so if you come by one day, maybe you'll see what I mean. If nothing else, you might find a place there since I can see in your eyes that you're unsure about whether you have a home here anymore."

"Wow." My smile felt forced and anxious. Gastrointestinal upset was creeping back into my midsection. When it rained, it poured. "You can't help yourself with the shrinky talk, can you?"

An uncomfortable silence slid between us. The sun had finally broken free of the haze that had blanketed the sky this morning and I could feel its warmth along the back of my neck. I didn't turn toward the intense rays, afraid they would trigger memories from my nightmare like Connor's skull glowing bright…

Ben sighed, dragging my attention back to his face. "You're right, that was intense. I'm sorry, Sam. I just like your family and want to help you all get through this as best I can.

"Yeah, I get it. You're a bleeding heart who needs to help, but I'm doing fine. Just had one rough day."

I was startled when Ben suddenly shifted his weight with almost feline grace, bracing his hands on the wooden seat of the bench to support himself as he leaned into my personal space. He didn’t touch me, but he was close. Close enough that I could smell sweet cinnamon candy on his breath. Close enough for him to be able to stroke a hand down the side of my face if he decided to move one from the bench. Close enough to kiss me if he wanted to…

My pulse jumped into my throat as that last thought lingered too long for my comfort after I realized that I almost wanted him to. I wanted this fucking random guy with an apparent savior complex, to kiss me outside of a goddamn funeral home...

I swallowed hard. Connor and I’d been identical twins and he’d always been referred to by women as, ‘hot,’ so I was good-looking enough that aside from two random, nameless hookups before Devlin, when Max had been unavailable, I’d had to be pretty proactive at turning men down whenever I was off base on leave, and frequented gay bars. But I hadn’t been with anyone other Max in years, not since Devlin. After he and Connor had betrayed me by cheating behind my back, I hadn’t wanted the hassle or the risk of fallout if I opened up to anyone that intimately again. Max was my only constant because I knew how carefully to tread on that line to keep things stable. Safe. But right here, right now, sitting securely on this damn bench with Ben, I felt like I was teetering on a fucking tightrope strung across skyscrapers above a pool of sharks.

I inhaled deeply. It was warm enough today that I couldn’t distinguish the humid heat around us from any heat that might’ve been radiating off of Ben’s body, but right now all the stress had apparently made me lose my mind because I suddenly wanted to reach out and tangle my hand in the hem of Ben’s t-shirt and pull him toward me into my lap. What’d I’d do once I got him there, weren’t details I’d worked out yet because being this attracted to someone I’d just met simply because he had a kind voice, hadn’t called EMS or left me hugging the toilet bowl, didn’t make any fucking sense. My brain was screaming, ‘DANGER, Will Robinson!,’ but my dick wasn’t listening.

I swallowed hard, my heartrate beginning to pick up again, though it wasn’t from panic this time. I felt my lips parting slightly, instinctively, when Ben’s gaze swept briefly over my mouth like he was paralleling my thoughts.

Shit.

"Want me to call you on that bull?” Ben murmured. He was still so close I caught that whiff of cinnamon on his breath again. I wasn’t sure if it was from gum or a mint, but if he did decide to kiss me, I’d be happy to go on a self-guided tour and find out.

“I warn you though, I've had plenty of practice with teenagers who have perfected the art."

I blinked when Ben’s words infiltrated my mind with a blessed distraction.

“What…what the fuck?"

He grinned. "If we were at Maplewood, I'd have to fine you a quarter for that. Normal curse words are a dime, but the F Bomb gets special monetary consideration." Ben slid to his feet. I ignored my immediate disappointment, absently noting that he’d left the business card on the bench.

I didn’t try to give it back to him.

"Come to the center one day. With Sofia or by yourself. There's no shame in needing help."

Ben looked like he was going to say something else, but, at that moment, Sofia exited the funeral home and made a beeline for us. Her expression brightened when she saw Ben.

"Aquí estás, Sam. Fui preocupada de usted cuando usted se fue." She slid a gentle hand along my arm after I’d neatly palmed the card and stood, sliding it into my right back jeans pocket. I patted the hand she still had resting on my arm and nodded.

"Everything's fine," I assured her, knowing she only slipped into complete Spanish when she was nervous.

She eyed me for a long moment as if she was winding up her mom radar which had also served as a bullshit meter long before the girls had been born. But apparently the smile that felt fake to me, convinced her, because she nodded then turned to smile at Ben. "¿Está todo bien?"

"Estamos muy bien. Sam y yo acabamos de hablar. ¿Cómo usted está soportando todo esto, Sofia?"

Ben assured her that we were fine, and Sofia responded to his question about how she was coping, but I got no more than a gist of the conversation after that as they went back and forth for a few minutes in rapid-fire Spanish. I was completely fluent, but when their lips kept in sync with the speed of Sofia's graceful hands narrating her words after she’d moved the one from my arm, I just admired the pretty noise.

Ben was the one to end the conversation. "I hate to run, but I need to get going. I'm meeting someone here in a bit to help her with her mother's funeral sermon. I can't say that writing moving eulogies is my strongest skill, but it's one of the priestly duties I can't get out of."

He had my full attention now. "You're a priest?" I knew I'd been out of it when the panic attack hit, but to miss that sort of detail might be an indication of bigger problems.

Ben caught me eying the smooth column of his bare throat above the blue t-shirt he had tucked into his jeans, and chuckled. "Yes, I'm an Episcopal priest. I’ve been here about 10 years but I’m always learning new things and trying to improve on what I already know."

"You didn't mention this group was a church thing."

"Did I have to?" He arched a thick eyebrow, catching the curt note in my voice. "Anyone is welcome, whether they believe in our faith or not. And on that note, I really have to go. Sofia, I'll call you to go over the final details, okay?"

"Si, Padre Santiago. Gracias por todo que usted ha hecho.

"It's my pleasure, Sofia. You have my number. Feel free to call if you need anything at all."

Ben's amber-green gaze returned to me and though it had to be my imagination that the smile he turned on me was warmer than the one reserved for my sister-in-law, my body still heated in instant response like it had on the bench. Knowing Ben was a priest made me feel like a kid caught with their hand in a cookie jar. However, the brief pang of guilt I felt wasn’t because I’d ogled a priest. It was because for a moment, I’d almost been annoyed that my gentle, overwhelmed sister-in-law had interrupted us.

"It was nice to meet you, Sam. Have a blessed day, you two."

We both watched Ben walk away, but I'd have bet my life it was for very different reasons. I foresaw a cold shower in my future because between complicated feelings about both a dead ex, and a sexually open, but emotionally unavailable best friend, my dance card was too full to add on a sexy clergy member.

Sofia turned toward me. "Are you really all right, Sam? Your face went white in the funeral home."

"I'm fine, honey. Sorry I bailed on you. Do we need to go back in?"

"No." Brown eyes met mine with tired resignation. "We're good. The rest will be taken care of for us. I just have to get something for Emma to wear. She outgrows clothes so quickly." She looked up at me. "Would you mind coming with us? It shouldn't take long, and Emma seems more relaxed with you around."

I got it. She was one click away from the drop-off point on an emotional roller coaster. I was in the little car right behind hers but apparently, I was hiding it better than I thought.

Sofia sagged against me when I slung my arm over her shoulders and pressed a kiss to the top of her head like I used to before my stupidity had gotten the better of me. I’d always had a soft spot for her, and she’d been like a sister to me even before she and Connor had gotten married. I had to make things right with her as much as with Adelyn.

"Sounds good to me."

"I promise it won't be too terrible. Emma hates shopping."

"She's a kid after my own heart. I should probably grab a few things too. These are the only jeans that I own. I got so used to BDU’s and fatigues that I forgot about civilian armor and now that I retired…." I let that little nugget of new information slip out deliberately then paused to give her time to respond to it. I hadn’t intended to tell her yet, but after everything Addie had said this morning, I couldn’t leave until I knew they were ok.

Sofia blinked. “You retired?”

I didn’t blame her for being surprised because until recently, I’d always been convinced I’d be career military. But this wasn’t the moment to go into details because she had enough on her plate and didn’t need me tarnishing the hope I saw in her eyes by telling her that my ‘retirement’ had been mandatory.

“Yeah… and if you’re ok with me staying with you for now until I find my own pla—”

The slim hand that Sofia placed over my mouth stopped the rest of that sentence from leaving my lips. She smiled warmly at me, then shook her head. She obviously read the confusion in my expression because her smile turned into a full out grin.

“You have your own place. With us. We can change whatever you want to turn the guest room into a better space for you. You’re our family and we’ve missed you, so we won’t let you run away this time. Promise me you’ll stay with us.”

She didn’t move her hand so all I could do was nod. I got another warm smile before she moved her hand, then slid her arm back through mine as we walked back to where she’d parked her SUV.

"I have to work on Addie a little. Emma seems like she can be bribed with pancakes. But they both seem like good kids.”

“They're great kids,” she agreed. “I don't know why Connor never saw that." She fidgeted with the buckle on the strap of her purse with her free hand until we got to the car, and I opened the passenger door for her so she could get inside. After she was settled, I went around to the driver’s side to get in and start the engine so we could get the AC running before we were overwhelmed by the hot as balls humidity that was intensifying with every hour that passed.

"I’d considered letting Connor be buried in Arlington Cemetery,” Sofia said, glancing over at me as she continued. “He loved it when we went to DC that one time. I just don't know if I want to put the girls through the trip. They've gone through enough..."

She paused again. Her eyes squinted into half-moons against the sunlight streaming through the windshield, the hard flow of cold air from the vents lifting the ends of her long hair gently. "Do you think I'm doing the right thing, Sam? Part of me feels Connor doesn't belong here. I don't know if he ever did."

We shared that opinion, but admitting that would've opened a door I wasn't willing to walk through right now. I’d already told her I was staying. The rest would have to happen in baby step increments.

"I think having the plot here is a good idea. When the girls get older, they might want to visit him."

Unlikely considering Emma probably wouldn’t remember much of anything about her father by then, and Adelyn already remembered too much of the ugly. I didn’t know about Sofia because sometimes love was fucking stupid. My mom had never left my dad even though she’d gotten it worse than Connor and I had most of the time.

"Maybe. It's just hard to know what choice to make."

"You're making the right one," I said as I checked my mirrors before slowly pulling out of the church’s parking lot, conscious of traffic on the busy street we were merging into. I caught Sofia looking at me with the hint of a smile when I made sure the coast was clear on her side before I made a right turn out of the lot.

“What?”

"You met Padre Santiago?"

It was a simple question, but I could hear layers of curiosity in the lilt of her tone. She'd have to draw her own conclusions. There was no way in hell that I was going to tell Sofia about the PTSD when she was already crumbling beneath the weight of her own collapsed world.

"Yeah, I needed a cigarette break," I lied, trying to look abashed under her disapproving look. "We ran into one another outside and started talking." I paused as a thought occurred to me. "He said he's an Episcopal priest?"

She nodded, answering the unasked question. "I converted from Catholicism to the Episcopal Church after Emma was born. Similar doctrine, but a little more tolerant of all people."

I felt my lips curve into a smile as I read between the lines.

"Thanks, Sofia. You and the girls have always been supportive."

She patted my shoulder. "God doesn't care what I call myself, so I'd rather be around people who don't judge my family for loving whoever makes them happy." The tips of her lashes almost touched the top of her cheekbones as she glanced sideways at me.

"Father Santiago is gay too."

I wasn't expecting that, though now that subtle glance he’d briefly given my mouth possibly held a meaning I didn’t need to entertain because even if Ben wasn’t a catholic priest, he was still a priest, and that meant he was off limits. At least to me, so my hormones needed to get their fucking shit together.

"Really?"

"Mmhm. He actually told me once that it was one of the reasons he chose the Episcopal Church; he didn't want to have to hide who he was."

"I can understand that."

Her expression softened in sympathy. "Was it that difficult for you in the military?"

I shrugged. "Not really. You know I've always liked keeping my personal life private. Discretion became second nature after a while. "

"We have that in common…”

She paused, letting that sentence hang there for a moment. I waited her out because I wasn’t sure if it was an actual opening or not, and I didn’t want to trap her in an uncomfortable situation while we were in a moving vehicle. But when she glanced over at me and nodded ever so slightly, I took it as a green light.

“Did your parents or any of your friends know what Connor was doing to you and Addie?”

Sophia shook her head. “You know Connor always had a temper, and that we were on and off so many times because of it, but he was never physically abusive. Not until…”

She hesitated and I immediately knew what she didn’t want to say.

“Until I stopped coming home,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway.

“I don’t blame you, Sam. It wasn’t your fault. Connor always had that violent possibility in him, and I knew it even before he slapped me the first time. I should've left then but I didn’t. Instead, I hid the truth from my friends, and from you and Max.”

I nodded slightly since that reminded me of Adelyn’s earlier revelation in the kitchen. “He never told me he was keeping in touch with you.”

“I think he did it more for your sake, to help keep a bridge between all of us until you were ready to come home. Please don’t be upset with him. I didn’t want you to feel pressured, and Max was always confident you'd come home one day.” She paused as we came to a stop sign, her slim fingers briefly touching my thigh. “So was I,” She added softly. “I missed you. Aside from Addie and Emma, you’re the only family I have left.”

I swallowed hard around the sudden lump of my throat. “I’m so sorry, Sofia.”

“I know… “ She paused again. “Can I tell you something?”

I nodded, but a quick glance sideways took in how pale her face had gotten. She’d also rolled her hands into balls that rested on her slim thighs. Whatever she wanted to tell me needed my full attention, so I pulled the SUV into the next parking lot I saw, which was attached to a McDonald’s. I parked the car and killed the engine, before undoing my seat belt so I could turn in the driver’s seat just enough to face her.

“I’m listening.”

“I…it’s…it’s a terrible thing to say…”

“Sofia, whatever you need to say to me, I can handle it.”

She offered me the smallest of smiles, then shook her head slightly. “It’s nothing you did,” she said, and I could hear how thick the words were through the tears I couldn’t see because she’d dipped her head when she’d started talking.

I reached for her right hand like I had the first night after she’d picked me up in the airport, holding it securely. I sucked at words, but this I could manage because we’d known one another so long, her touch was familiar.

“When I was notified that Connor had been killed in action, my first thought was, thank God, it’s over.” She finally looked up at me and the tears that weren’t already sliding down her cheeks were making her brown eyes swim. “I know it was wrong.”

“Sofia, I”

She shook her head to cut me off. “No matter what Connor did, he was human, and one deserves to die like that. But I was relieved that he was never going to come home again. I was also happy, not because he was dead but…” She hesitated before adding, “because I knew it meant you’d come back, even it was only for a little while.”

For a moment, I didn’t think I’d be able to respond because the lump in my throat suddenly became a boulder. Sofia had always been as emotionally open as Connor and I had been stunted, and apparently even now, vestiges of that woman still existed inside her despite the differences in her physical appearance. I didn’t know what to say, because there really were no words needed to affirm any of that; it was all true.

“I’m staying,” was all I could say, but it seemed to be enough, because Sofia nodded and wiped her face with the side of her hand. “Thank you, Sam.”

“Don’t thank me for what I should’ve done years ago.”

“I’m sure you had your reasons…” She paused, and I knew she was struggling with not wanting to ask, but I nodded slightly anyway because it was the right thing to do even if I didn't want to open that door. There was a flicker or recognition in Sofia's eyes like she knew what that minute physical invitation had cost me, and her hand flexed in mine as she squeezed lightly.

“Connor… he never told me what happened between the two of you, but I’ve known him as I’ve known you, so I also knew the toxicity he was capable of. He wasn’t always and easy man to love, but you always tried. You watched over him and when he wasn’t there for me and the girls, you always were. You’ve always loved all of us, so for you to turn your back on all of that... I knew that whatever he’d done, it had to be something terrible."

"Sofia..." I paused, but she spared me the effort of trying to come up with the right words by squeezing my hand.

"Do you remember when we took the Camaro to California?"

It wasn't something I could forget. I'd loved that that car. A 1988 Camaro IROC-Z convertible had been the epitome of cool in my world when I was a teenager needing an outlet for all the anger our home life constantly instilled in me, even if it had fallen into the “piece of crap," category after years of abuse from previous owners who hadn't appreciated her. Connor and I enlisted in the Army before we got a chance to restore the car completely, but she'd run well enough to take us and Sofia cross country after we all graduated from high school and they’d had a rare break from being teenage parents because her parent had agreed to watch a then baby Addie.

We’d almost ridden that car into the ground with only a week and a half to cast off responsibility. For Connor and me, having that level of freedom after growing up in a house where we were constantly torn down was liberating. There were no worries about an alcoholic father going on an epic bender or staying up all night with a needy baby girl prone to colic, who’d been born to parents who were still kids themselves. For that week and a half, it’d been just the three of us against the world; happy, a little reckless, and absolutely free.

I nodded, my mind briefly flashing back to one specific memory; driving with the top down along the steep cliff faces of the PCH in California, blue water reflecting a flawless sky, stretching out for miles both in front of us and behind. Sofia had been sitting in the back seat, wearing cutoff jeans almost as short as Adelyn’s, a yellow halter-top, and oversized white sunglasses. Her long dark hair had blown like a banner in the breeze as we whipped around rocky corners way too fast considering they had a kid back home, but we’d been flying high on teenage immaturity. Sofia had upped the ante by leaning forward between the seats to steal a kiss from Connor as I drove. He’d winked at me over her head, then dragged her petite form over the seats. Sofia had squealed, and I’d cursed as the car swerved a few times before finding the grip of the road again, so we didn’t end up smashing through the pathetic excuse for guardrails. Their laughter had echoed in my ears even as I’d used some choice language. We’d felt untouchable for the entire trip, but you always need to come home.

"I remember. Best time of my life."

The corners of Sofia's mouth lifted just short of a smile as she nodded. “One of mine too. We were all so young and we still had so much possibility in front of us. I held onto those memories with fondness for years, but then one night, about a year after the last time we saw you, Connor and I were arguing. It got ugly and I asked him why he was so angry all the time. I begged him to talk to me, to tell me how I could make things better for him. I was willing to try anything, Sam. Couples therapy, moving to another state where we could make new memories with the kids. Anything. Instead….” Her voice wobbled for a moment, yet she kept that odd little half smile, like it was painted on because she couldn’t handle another emotional costume change right now. "Instead, Connor said that life in Afghanistan, doing what he did, was like going 180 miles per hour on the PCH; that endless rush of adrenaline you feel around every turn, where one miscalculation can end everything. He said he felt more alive there, like everything was more real, and that coming home to the girls and me..." She swallowed hard but held my gaze as her fingers flexed in mine again. "He said coming home to us felt like hitting a wall."

For years I’d thought God has forgotten about me after he put me on this earth but apparently, he’d always had my back because if I’d known any of this while Connor was alive, the bomb that killed him wouldn’t have had the chance.

“Sofia… I’m so sorry," I said again. I wished I had more to offer because she deserved more, but that was all I could think of.

"I tried Sam," she said. "Each time Connor lost his temper and lashed out, he said he was sorry and that he'd try harder. I believed him and hid the abuse as long as I could, but then he went after Addie…” The pain in her eyes made my jaw tighten.

"I should've sheltered my daughter, Sam, and instead, Adelyn had to defend me. She was just a little girl and I didn’t tell the police what Connor was doing. I covered for him instead of putting her first. And yet she still stood her ground to defend me that last night, small and skinny in a tank top and her cat print pajama pants, screaming as she threatened to castrate her father…” She finally looked away from me and slid her hand out of mine, her shame obvious. “I couldn’t help her. When Connor finally just walked away and the door closed behind, Adelyn sobbed. She wouldn’t let go of the knife though. She kept it in her room for months, and since that day, I’ve never seen her cry again. Not once. She talks back and yells, and all of that other typical rebellious teen girl behavior, but never tears… She just shut off. That’s why I’m glad that she agreed to join the youth group.” Sofia paused, pulling her long hair into a ponytail with a little band of black elastic that she’d had wrapped around her wrist. "You’ve seen her… how she dresses, how she talks...”

Oh yeah, I’d gotten a front row seat to the ages and stages of unhinged teenage girl this morning, though in Adelyn’s defense, anyone who survived the things she had, got a few passes. Frankly I considered the fact that Connor had still had a dick to fuck Devlin with after that night, was a show of remarkable restraint on her part.

“Her grades have dropped in school, and she barely passed her sophomore year,” Sofia said. “She used to be a straight A student. Now it’s all death metal instead of the acoustic guitar she’d started taking lessons for last year. She’s just a different kid. I don’t know how to get through to her because it’s my fault.” She inhaled deeply, held it for a few counts, then slowly exhaled. I knew that trick too, but I’d gotten really good at being more discreet about it.

“I know that on some level she hates me, but as much as that hurts, if she can open up to someone else, I'm okay with it. She just can’t keep it in. It’s not healthy and I don’t want it to poison her. She’s still just a baby."

A baby barracuda.

I shook my head. “We all make mistakes Sofia. You were trying to survive. All of this is Connor's fault, not yours.”

“I just wish he’d talked to me, but he was so closed off.”

"We were twins, and even I didn't know everything about him, Sofia. People are complicated."

She nodded as she turned back to face me. “He hurt you too.”

“He did,” I said cautiously, my own body tensing.

A loaded silence lapsed between us. To my knowledge, my sister-in-law didn't know about Connor switching teams. I might've followed the unspoken protocol of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but Connor had been an artist at subterfuge. Even I hadn't suspected he might be gay until I'd found him with Devlin.

I stopped that train of thought before it could derail.

"What he did to hurt you.,. was that the reason you stopped coming home?"

I'd known that would come up eventually. Adelyn had raised the question with vitriol, but Sofia's hesitancy made it more difficult to answer.

Eventually I said, "Yeah, it does. But please don't ask me why, Sofia, because it won’t change anything other than possibly making things worse. Connor already broke your heart and your kid’s.”

And mine.

“You knowing all of the damage that went down between Connor and me, will only break it all over again and I don’t want that. I’m here to try and fix things. I don’t know if I can, but I have to fucking try. But I can’t do that if the past is where we start. So please…. Don’t ask me. Please."

I wasn't prone to begging. Only once in my life had I really pleaded with anyone. I'd been eight at the time, watching my father put my mother's head through a wall.

For an awful moment I thought Sofia would push. Tension flowed between us. If she asked again, I knew I'd tell her everything even if it destroyed any chance of us rebuilding our relationship. I owed her that much.

When her hand came up to rest along the edge of my jaw, I was sure she could feel my teeth grinding themselves into dust.

"Just promise that it wasn't me."

I shook my head. "It wasn't you. There wasn't anything you could've done to help Connor. Sometimes we just come back from our tours as different people."

"Have you?"

"I hope so."

Sofia's eyes met mine, lips curving slightly, though it didn’t reach her eyes to lighten the shadows. "I wish he'd just talked to me," she said again. "Maybe I'd have understood better than he thought."

That was all she said, but in that moment, I knew she'd known about Connor, or at least suspected. I also knew she'd never make me say it out loud just because I'd asked her not to.

Sofia didn't fight me when I pulled her forward into my body as much as I could within the confines of the car seats. She hooked her chin over my shoulder, and I smoothed a hand up and down her back slowly for a moment. I could make out the outline of every one of the vertebrae in her spine beneath the thin layer of her blouse and felt the vibrations running through her slim frame to mine when she started to sob without any sound.

"It's going to be okay."

Weak, clichéd nonsense, but there wasn't much more I could say. My brother had been a complicated man, a shitty husband, and a lousy father. Now he was dead. Making meaningless, soothing noise seemed as good a solution as any.

I don’t know how long we sat like that, but by the time Sofia pulled back and settled into her own seat, I had a serious crick in my back from being twisted awkwardly. When Sofia pulled open the glove box to fish out what looked like a handful of napkins from various fast-food places to dry her eyes, I shifted and covered the discreet crack of my back in the soft whoosh of sound when she blew her nose.

“I’m sorry. I think I made you soggy.”

I looked down at my t-shirt when she gestured with a clean napkin. The front of the soft jersey material was now just as damp as the back was, but I’d take her tears over my own sweaty panic any day of the week.

“It’s alright. Ben said I need therapy. This was therapy. We're all good and you saved me from going to his support group.”

Sofia smiled. This time, despite her red rimmed eyes and pink nose, it looked genuine. “He won’t let it go that easily. He takes his pastoral responsibilities very seriously.”

I snorted softly. “The whole shepherd looking for wayward sheep thing? Yeah, I got that when he tried bribing me with flavored coffee creamer and cookies.”

This time, Sofia’s small smile became an actual chuckle. “He has a sweet tooth. For a while he was bringing over donuts for Emma and Addie whenever he came over to talk with me. He’s a good person, but if you’re the type that doesn’t like to open up, it can feel like a lot.”

“And since you’ve known me since before I could grow facial hair, you know that I’m going to avoid him like the plague.”

“Good luck. He’s persistent.”

“I’ll manage. I need all my strength to survive Adelyn. If it makes you feel any better about your complicated relationship with her, know that she hates me more than she’s frustrated with you. Not even one of her big fake eyelashes would be batted if I got taken out by some random space station doorknob debris.”

Sofia chuckled again as she wadded up her soiled napkins in a ball within a Domino’s pizza napkin. I wouldn’t have taken her as a big supporter of fast food, but I guess when you had two kids and were the sole financial support for them, you figured it out as you went along.

"Fortunately for you, she gave up on the no carbs diet she was into a few weeks ago, and can once again be bribed with donuts most of the time. It’ll also keep her mouth full for about 5 minutes of peace we can all benefit from.” She offered a slight smile. “I love my kids, but a donut apiece, at least once a week, is the key to my sanity. Does that make me a terrible mother?”

“Nope, it makes you a rock star. I’ll make sure to plug in the number and address of every possible bakery and donut shop in the area, into my cell’s contacts. I’ll pay extra for door-to-door delivery. We’re talking a ridiculous tip.”

Sofia chuckled, visibly relaxing. “We should stop at the bakery near the house then,” she said. "It’s our favorite. They bake the donuts and they’re made to order so they’re always warm. Emma likes to customize hers with strawberry icing, marshmallow drizzle and sprinkles.”

“Rainbow or chocolate?”

“No preference. She just likes sprinkles. I hide the jar from her in the house because she can, and has, eaten them with a spoon before.”

I made a face because yeah, no. I wasn’t a health nut, but I was a firm believer that anything with red dye in it or a Santa’s long list of ingredients I couldn’t pronounce, including anything that ended with “ose,” was a no go.

"Is Adelyn's favorite still Boston cream?"

Sofia looked surprised I remembered. Hell, I was surprised. But if talking about pastries helped guide me back into my old life, sign me up. After all the tears and angst earlier, I would look into buying shares in a damn bakery if sugar and sprinkles made the Trammell house go round.

"It is, but I'll grab a powdered Bavarian cream filled, too, just in case she wants to complain about something. She loves both flavors."

"And what about you?"

"An old fashioned." Her smile was self-deprecating. "Plain, just like me according to Connor."

Just like that, we were back to square one.

I made a left onto the highway and as we drove, I glanced over briefly, my gaze tracing Sofia's delicate features. Stress made her skin translucent, almost ethereal against the dark curtain of her hair. Just because women didn't float my boat didn't mean I couldn't appreciate that she was a beautiful woman.

"My brother was an idiot."

Sofia turned toward the passenger window so I couldn't see her face. I thought I heard a hint of a smile in her voice though when she said, "Amen."

***

A word to the wise ain't necessary. It's the stupid ones that need the advice. —Bill Cosby

 

A hot breath rushed past my ear, alerting me I wasn't alone, even before soft lips trailed down the side of my neck and raised goose bumps along my bare arm. I was lying on my left side, my back to the other man in my bed who had a strong arm draped possessively across my waist, his long fingers splayed across my abdomen. My immediate assumption that it was Max was corrected by the long fingers that skated over my flat belly. Even in the dark, they were more tanned than my desert darkened skin and Max’s fairer complexion.

Devlin.

I tensed at once, knowing it was a dream. Devlin was dead, but that didn't affect his persistence. His arm tightened around me to prevent me from rolling away, pulling me back firmly so his body molded tightly to mine and there wasn’t a way for even air to get between us. I could feel the hard length of his cock wedged up against the bare skin of my ass. I didn’t normally sleep without at least a pair of shorts or sweats on, but apparently my subconscious thought my birthday suit was sexier.

Over and over again, Devlin’s lips silently caressed my cheek, kisses grazing my jaw and the side of my throat, asking for both permission and forgiveness, probably because that last time I’d seen him, I’d been more willing to kick his ass than to kiss him. But in a dream, there were no promises or hearts to be broken so I let my inhibitions slip. Indulging in an erotic fantasy about a dead, cheating ex, beat the ones of watching his face explode any night of the week. I could do fantasy sex, but forgiveness… I wasn’t sure I was capable of that, not even when it was my own mind orchestrating all of this.

There were so many things I needed to forgive Devlin for, but it was a moot point. I hadn’t tried to reconcile when he was alive, and I couldn’t absolve him now that he was dead because I wasn’t ever going to visit his grave in Chicago where his family lived, to ‘get closure. I definitely wasn’t going to launch into a dramatic monologue of exoneration in what was inevitably going to end up as a wet dream. Unless of course, this took a dark turn and Devlin’s face blew up.

I opted for channeling fucking Peter Pan because with a few happy thoughts, UP I’d go, at least until the sky decided to fall.

Devlin stopped me from turning my head to encourage his mouth to work its way up to mine by sinking the sharp edge of his teeth into the lobe of my ear. The small pain blossomed into pleasure when his tongue stroked over the injured spot in sensual apology. One of Devlin’s legs crept over mine as his fingers slid along my abs then drifted lower, his fingertips barely brushing my skin.

"Close your eyes," he murmured against my ear, his voice so smoked out with arousal it was almost unrecognizable. "And don't open them until I say so."

Considering how dim the lighting in the room was, that seemed unnecessary, and it was tempting to disobey him just to see what he'd do. Devlin had always tried to dominate me in bed, and I usually egged him on even though I nailed his fine ass as often as he did mine. Tonight though, this dream version of him was gentler. Slower. More deliberate in his seduction. It felt disingenuous, but my options were to go with the horny fantasy flow, or to risk possibly inciting a nightmare. I wasn’t going to go with door number two, so fake dream lover Devlin it was, even though I’d never been a Mariah Carey fan.

I closed my eyes and felt the mattress dip as Devlin rolled me to my back. I tensed as he dropped a slow trail of kisses down my belly, licking lazily around my navel. It all felt so good, yet so wrong, because we didn’t do this often; this slow exploration of hands and mouths. Our usual modus operandi was fast and filthy. Part of it was preference, and some of it time constraints, but past that, war zones just weren't a good place to cement happily ever afters. From personal experience we both knew that all it took was one bullet and someone could become a widow even before she became a wife. We both lived that reality once, and it had forever colored how we approached spending time together.

The Devlin apparently invented by my own imagination didn’t seem to be thinking about any of that now, and the slew of unhurried kisses he traveled along my hip invited me to shut my mind off and just feel. Reminding myself this was just a fucking dream, and that there wasn’t any real reason not to enjoy it, I let Devlin continue. And he did, with patient sensuality, exploring every inch of my throat, pecs, and the small disks of my nipples that had already pebbled because of his attention. I’d considered getting them pierced because they were already so sensitive I thought it would intensify sensation, but that’d been impossible in the military. The large tattoo on my back of eagle wings protectively curled around a watercolor background in red and blue to highlight the dog tags with the call signs of all my fallen teammates—a tattoo I’d gotten inked a few months after that horrible night when my entire world had literally blown up— had been a source of contention with brass when I’d been approached for Delta. They’d wanted me to remove it because it was a clearly identifiable mark if I wasn’t wearing a shirt, but that’d been the only time I’d defied any command. I’d told them that they had the option not to recruit me, just like I had the option if they did recruit me, to make sure that it wouldn’t matter if I got caught on a mission, because dead men didn’t talk, and I was prepared to make sure my captors wouldn’t be the ones ending the story.

That had been the end of that discussion and I’d kept the tattoo. Devlin knew it’s history as well as all the lines and shadows of it, though he never touched it. I needed to hold on the memory of that night, to own and learn from it. Devlin just wanted to forget that tragedy completely, so we’d compromised by turning off the lights whenever he took me from behind.

In my mind’s twisted little drama, every one of Devlin’s kisses was a wordless apology I could ignore because silence was golden and so was his touch. The real Devlin had known every inch of my body as well as his own and knew exactly what I liked and how to slam me hard and fast into a toe-curling orgasm, or edge me for what felt like hours, like he had once in a blue moon. This Devlin was making a hybrid of the two, and my cock was fully on board at this point. Hard hands and soft kisses were an incredible sensory contradiction on their own as Dev explored every inch of my body. He lingered on the thin skin of my inner thigh, close to my sack, though only his breath ever ghosted over my skin, not his hands or his lips.

With my eyes closed, every sensation Devlin fed me was heightened. Without touching my dick, it was nonetheless very much a part of the equation when his lips finally trailed down the inside of my thigh as he spread my legs for him with a hard nudge of his shoulders so he could settle between them. He licked up the crease of my inner thigh, before finally sliding beneath my sack. My breath caught as he gave it a light nip. I hissed, sinking my right hand into his dark hair as I felt him smile against my skin.

We needed to move this insanity along. I didn’t care that this was a dream anymore. I just wanted one of us to be inside the other, like yesterday.

I tugged his hair a hundred yards away from gentle, but before I could try to drag him up my body, Devlin’s own hand moved mine out of his hair, only to pin it hard beside my body on the mattress before doing the same thing with my left hand. I protested. Devlin ignored me, refusing to be rushed. My subconscious had gotten that much right. Devlin had always been stubborn as hell, only listening to me in a professional capacity where it actually mattered. We’d bumped heads on almost everything else; sports, TV shows, food, and of course sex. Deciding who was on top had always been a rock/paper/scissors throwdown. Devlin always swore that he’d never bottomed for anyone before me. That may or may not have been true but either way, his assumption that I was always going to be on the bottom, made me double down on insisting that aspect of our love be a 50/50 split. I’d always switched easily with Max without any hangups and still did, but it’d been the principle of the thing. Right now, being on top was a low-level priority. Nibbling, taking his time, Devlin worked his mouth up until the heat of his breath made my back arch in that direction.

"Devlin," I groaned, drawing his name out into a multisyllable purr. He showed his approval by licking my cock once, then swirling his tongue around the flared head like it was an ice cream cone. My teeth sank into my lower lip when he teased beneath the crown of my cock the way I liked. My hands flexed restlessly beneath his firm grip and hips impatiently undulated to meet every stroke of his mouth.

"Come on, man. Let go so I can return the favor. You can keep doing what you’re doing. Just sit on my face while you do it."

A puff of laughter wafted warmth over my cock, but before I could complain that he was ignoring me, Devlin sucked my entire length down, hungry and eager, till it hit the back of his throat. For once he didn't gag, just hummed like he'd never tasted anything better, and my entire body went up in flames. For the first time tonight, I was glad that my eyes were closed, because the firework display behind my eyelids was amazing.

"Just like that. I fucking love your mouth. Keep doing that and it’s not going to take long."

I wanted more. Needed it like a drug. We'd fucked dozens of times before, more enthusiastically than this, but not one of those encounters measured up to the intimate intensity we were building now. All it’d taken to experience the best sex we’d ever had, was for him to be a fucking dreamworld ghost. Fucking A.

Devlin didn't respond. Instead, he slid slick fingers through the crease between my cheeks. Somewhere around the time he'd been driving me out of my mind, his fingers had apparently made the acquaintance of invisible lube. They forged a new friendship with my ass as Devlin teased me higher, circling my entrance with a slow, wide arc until that intimate puckered skin gave beneath his touch. He didn’t bother with only one finger, knowing that I liked a bit of sting at initial penetration. Two fingers slid fully into my ass, twisting gently, then harder as he worked me open. It wasn't long before I writhed on the bed, damn near speaking in tongues as I fucked myself on his hand to try and push myself over the edge. He was going to kill me at this rate, leaving nothing behind but ash when I burnt up for him.

I paused immediately because that was absolutely the last fucking visual that I needed considering how he and Connor had died. I tensed and Devlin must’ve felt it because he instantly stopped. Less than a millisecond later, he released his grip on my wrists, and I felt his big, strong body sliding up smoothly to cover mine. The palm of the hand that had been holding me captive, was warm as he gently laid it over my eyes when I started to open them. Fingers as calloused as my own kept me still.

“Shhh… whatever you’re thinking, stop.”

“Let go,” I said, anger kicking panic out of the way when my mind made it real clear that lucid dreaming apparently meant I lost all actual control over said dream.

“I’ll let go when you let go,” Devlin repeated. “It’s alright, Sam. It was my fault, not yours.”

“No shit. You fucking broke us!”

I wasn’t talking about Devlin and me, and he knew it. He and I had never been serious. Our arrangement had always been about loyalty, not love. We’d both known that and been ok with it. But Connor… I’d loved my brother in spite of his many flaws. I’d always forgiven his hot-headedness and almost Supernatural ability to find trouble in the most unlikely places. Connor had been the type of person who could pick a fight with crows in an empty cornfield. Nonetheless, he’d always had my back.

Until he hadn’t.

No matter how much I’d loved and protected my brother throughout our entire lives, none of that had mattered when for whatever reason, Connor decided he wanted Devlin. Instead of just talking to me about it and admitting that his homophobic bullshit was exactly that so they could move on with my blessing, they’d gone behind my back. Both of them. That had been the straw that put the fucking camel in traction and shattered a bond that nothing else had been able to even scratch before that betrayal.

“If you weren’t dead, I’d fucking kill you,” I snarled. I tried to buck up because my hands were free, but I found I still couldn’t move them.

“I know,” Devlin murmured. “You deserved better.”

I had deserved better. That was true. What was also true, was that I was fighting with my fucking sub-conscious in an impromptu, self-driven therapy session and losing.

I managed to curl my hands into fists as the invisible weight holding them suddenly disappeared, giving me a millisecond to come up with a plan; 1.) Push this contrite representation of Devlin the fuck off of me and knee him in the balls, and 2.) Fip my brain the bird as I tried to figure how the fuck to wake up, because this was some Micky Mouse bullshit.

But I didn’t get the chance to do either of those things, because Devlin suddenly closed the distance between our lips and kissed me hard, fusing our mouths together as he sought entrance to the warmth of mine with the same skill he’d always had. Traitorous muscle memory kicked in and my lips parted just enough for Dev to work the slick warmth of his tongue into my mouth. I wanted to bite his damn tongue off, not moan at the sensual onslaught as he explored every inch of me, coiling our tongues together. His other hand remained firmly over my eyes as he suddenly dropped his weight, pinning me into the mattress aggressively with all that hard muscle that he’d kept ridiculously well-honed. He’d always said he hit the gym hard so that he could be at his most effective as a soldier, but I’d always secretly suspected he also did it so he could overpower me like he was right now.

Fucker.

I wanted to be pissed. Needed to be pissed, but we were pressed together so tightly that when I exhaled, I could barely get a full rise to my chest where he crushed it. He shifted enough to wedge himself between my thighs again and my breath caught when I felt the slickness of pre-cum coating what I knew from real world experience, was an extremely impressive cock, up against my hole. I couldn’t see well enough the dark to see if Dreamworld Dev packed the same kind of heat, but I could feel how hard he was when he rocked against me with surprisingly gentleness; 180 degrees of unexpected since just a few minutes ago when he’d been so aggressive, I’d seen this ending differently. Real world Dev had been a son-of-a-bitch in so many ways, but he’d never have forced himself on me, no matter how rough we played. We’d both respected the word no. This Dev was a different animal altogether and if my former therapist could shrink me right now, he’d probably come up with a long-winded explanation of this being a manifestation of my anxiety and guilt over Devlin’s death and fear over what his death and Connor's meant for me now when it came to trusting anyone again.

He might’ve been right, but I’d still have told him to go fuck himself.

“Devlin…”

“Tell me to stop again, and I will.”

My head was beginning to spin because this fucking dream was redefining the term, mindfuck.

I opened my mouth to tell Devlin to step off, but I paused, trying to think about this as rationally as I could considering I’d fallen down the fucking rabbit hole at some point. I’d been willing to let this apparition of my own conflicted mind fuck me stupid before I’d started poking holes in the fantasy to remind myself Devlin was dead. Which he was, but focusing on that hadn’t gotten me anywhere thus far, so maybe I needed to follow the advice of the head-shrinking community for once and confront my anger head on. It wasn’t like it’d be the first time we’d gone for an angry fuck to work things out. Devlin being dead just meant there wouldn’t be any wet spots on the sheets to avoid later.

I responded by kissing him hard, aggressively taking what he gave me almost immediately as I finally moved one hand and curled it around the back of his neck. I sucked Devlin's tongue into my mouth, stroking it with mine the way I knew he liked, before I drew back so I could nip his lower so sharply, it’d have throbbed later he hadn’t been a figment of my imagination. I didn’t sooth the sore spot with my tongue like I used to, just bit him again, harder this time. I couldn’t see his face in the dark, but I tasted the metallic hint of blood when I lightly licked his lower lip.

He was still pressed against me, so hard he could’ve etched glass, and I let my hand drift down from the back of his neck to his waist. I wrapped my arm around him securely at the same time I got my leg between his so I could flip us, the mattress protesting as I manhandled Devlin to get him beneath me. If I was going to lose my mind, then it was going to happen on my own damn terms.

Devlin’s sharp inhale went straight to my cock, but I didn’t stop to gloat. Instead, I rolled him to his knees, a slap to his ass the signal for him to steady his hands on the mattress. Like all couples, casual or otherwise, we’d had our own love language, and it'd included some very physical hand signals in the bedroom.

My quick fumbling along the top of what vaguely looked like the shape of a nightstand in the gloom, produced neither a condom nor the mysteriously covert lube Devlin had used on me earlier. I swore, because I’d never gone bare in real life. That was a level of intimacy I’d only ever wanted with one person, and he enjoyed playing in too many damn sandboxes for that to be safe. But Max wasn’t here, and this was a damn mental matrix of my own making, so what the hell.

My hips pressed firmly against Devlin's ass as I reached my right hand around to roughly stroke him off just a few times so my fingers got a light coating of the warm, sticky sign of his arousal. It made lousy lube, but it was better than nothing. I didn’t really care if a dry entry stung for him, but I didn’t want excessive friction giving me a rug burn on my dick. I rubbed my fingers around his entrance, finding that soft, puckered skin by feel alone. I worked one finger in slowly, letting Devlin adjust just enough for me to push the second in a lot less gently. He moaned anyway, bucking back against my hand to fuck himself on my fingers. I let him go for a few seconds, then stilled him with a hand splayed firmly on his lower back. It was my turn now.

Using my fingers as a marker, I bent down just enough to spit into Devlin’s hole, knowing that I’d hit my target when some of my saliva dribbled over the fingers still had wedged deep inside him. I spit one more time, my aim porn star worthy, then removed my fingers as smoothly as I lined myself up. My cock found the area between Devlin’s ass cheeks with unerring accuracy considering I wasn’t part cat and couldn’t see in the dark. I rocked forward a few times, allowing the head of my dick to rub and slide over his hole without ever actually penetrating, though my cock occasionally snagged his rim and got momentarily trapped, tormenting me as much as it did him. I shuddered as just the tip slipped in on an upward pass, and held myself there for a moment to build anticipation, before I shoved my cock into Devlin’s body as hard as I could.

We both moaned at the same time, but when he started to move a hand down between his own legs, obviously wanting the extra friction, I captured his hand in mine roughly and Dev fell forward into the mattress as he lost his balance. The pillows muffled the sound of his surprise, but the new position with his head down and tight ass at an inverted angle meant it was easier for me to seize his other hand as well. I tucked both of them securely at the small of his back, keeping them locked there with one hand as I crudely kneed his legs open wider. I knew I was being rough with him, but Devlin made another sound and it wasn’t of pain or upset. He’d always liked being handled a little more harshly than I did.

“Fuck,” Dev groaned. “Fucking tease. I forgot how strong you are.”

“Probably because you’re dead,” I shot back, because in batshit crazy land, snark was appropriate when you were plugging your dead, cheating ex.

It almost sounded like Devlin laughed, but then he moaned again. “Noted… Now give it to me.”

“You’re not the boss,” I said, catching myself at the last minute so I didn’t add, ‘of me,’ to the end like a damn grade school kid. The laugh that started to leave Devlin’s mouth never made it out because I pushed forward with a sharp snap of my hips, bottoming out without any warning.

Muscle memory and dream magic helping me set a harder, stronger pace. We moved together in sync, as if we hadn’t cut ties for over 5 years. The only sounds in the room other than the slapping of skin on skin, were Devin’s soft grunts and the low rumbling growl deep in my own throat. If this had been real, I’d have gone slower, asking him how he was feeling and adjusting my pace accordingly. None of those courtesies were on the table right now. Instead, I drove him down flat on the mattress and covered his body with mine. I loved the way he felt beneath me, the strength of his body forced into compliance as he strained back against me because even flat on the bed, Devlin struggled to lift his hips each time I thrust. He was more eager to receive everything I was giving him, than he ever had been alive.

Dream magic was amazing.

I relinquished my hold on his hands to grip his hips and get a better angle. I felt him immediately reach out to brace himself with one hand against the headboard that was rattling from our horny hijinks.

I rammed Dev hard, rougher than I’d ever been with anyone else, cruder than I’d ever been with him because I wasn’t worried about hurting him. This was a dream, and he was dead. Neither of those facts should’ve put me right on the edge of the orgasm I suddenly felt on the brink of having, my balls already drawing up.

I was almost there…

I wasn’t expecting Devlin to somehow flip us and get me beneath him again. Until this point, aside from the obvious discrepancies like Devlin being alive when he was very much otherwise, this dream had followed a semi-believable format. But now with some dreamland Hocus Pocus, I was suddenly on my back with him braced over me again. My legs were wrapped around his waist and my arms were carelessly sprawled over my head in a sign of submission and surrender that only Max had ever seen, because I trusted him enough to know what I needed and never to hurt me. At least not physically. But if that wasn’t strange enough, the previously dark room was now lit up with windows all around, letting in the warm range of deep oranges and pinks of a Floridian sunset. More than bright enough for me to see that I was no longer in bed with Devlin.

I’d have considered that a win, assuming I’d conquered my demon of ex’s past, if the hips my legs were wantonly wrapped around, hadn’t belonged to Benjamin Santiago.

My eyes widened and Ben’s smile deepened. He hadn’t touched me earlier at the funeral home other than to steady me, but now his thumb dragged gently across the curve of my lower lip, making my breath catch the same way it had when I’d realized I’d wanted him to kiss me on the bench.

As if Ben had read my mind, he adjusted his stance so that he could lean down and do just that. His mouth caught my confusion, swallowing it down as he reached for my left hand with his own, lacing our fingers together with a confident intimacy, I tensed, but his mouth was warm and confident as he explored my lips, then the recesses of my mouth after I granted him the permission he'd requested with soft nips to either side. I’d always thought Max was the best kisser I knew, but Ben blew him completely out of the water.

Ben didn’t dominate or steal. His nibbling of my lower lip was a request. The sensually slow glide of his tongue along mine was a promise. The long finger that teased my taint with the skill of a pianist, before slowly sliding in smoothy with the aid of that damn evasive dream lube apparently available to everyone except me, was a guarantee.

I moaned his name before I caught myself, my hips tilting up as my thighs spread wider to give him complete access. One finger became two, the sting dulled by the sheer desire for him to keep going and give me three so I could have everything he was promising. By the time Ben removed his fingers to wipe them on the edge of the bedsheet, my body was on fire from the inside out, my prostate humming from all the times Ben had expertly grazed it. He never released my left hand, just used his right to align himself up so he could press into me torturously slow, giving me time to accommodate the length of his cock. A humiliating whimper escaped my throat when he finally bottomed out, buried to the hilt. I hadn’t bothered to look at his cock earlier to see how he matched up to the other men I’d been with but considering that he filled me better than any of them ever had, in this case, size really didn’t matter.

Neither did the fact that Ben obviously wasn’t wearing a condom, because the warmth of his bare skin inside my body was amazing, more defined than even the thinnest ribbed condom ever allowed. My shaky exhale was fed into his mouth when Ben kissed me again. This kiss was slower. Softer. Just a brush of his lips against mine as he gave my body time to adjust to his sensual intrusion. He was waiting me out, kissing me over and over, urging me with each one, to kiss him back so we could trade slow, intoxicating caresses while he waited for my body to relax. As soon as it did, Ben snapped his hips and fucked me slowly.

I hadn’t thought it could get any better, but those long, sure strokes made me almost lose my mind.

Ghostly Devlin had tried gentle earlier, but it’d been an ill-fitting costume. Ben was a genuine dream interloper, that same level of compassionate, single-minded focus he’d shown me outside the funeral home, translating into bone-melting sensuality now, even as he picked up the pace; stronger, harder strokes that rubbed over my prostate like his dick had an invisible GPS embedded inside the tip.

Confident.

Hot.

Focused.

And completely determined to make me come my brains out..

“Faster,” I ground out, my fingers flexing in his when Ben grinned. “Harder.”

The smirk suddenly playing along his sexually full mouth said he clearly found my trying to top from the bottom entertaining, but he humored me anyway, picking up a stronger and harder pace. We moved together in flawless synchrony, and I was past being embarrassed at the stupidly desperate noises I couldn’t help but make every time he penetrated me.

“Good?”

“Better,” I said, deliberately trying to goad him into taking me over the edge. Ben grinned, obviously unperturbed because he kept his steady pace.

“Draw me a map then and I’ll make it phenomenal.” His grin said we both knew he didn’t need one, but if he was going to humor me, I was willing to play.

“A little to the left.” After he nailed that spot perfectly, I groaned. “Right fucking there. Now deeper.”

Been laughed, the sound vibrating throughout his body to mine. He kissed me again, then drove in harder, deeper, giving me everything I'd asked for and more. Damp with a faint sheen of sweat, his skin slid over mine, the friction warming every place we touched.

I didn’t know any priests other than the grizzled pastor from the church Max’s mom had dragged me to with their family on a few Sundays growing up. Father Giovanni had been a kind, but skinny troll of a man with thinning blonde hair and small eyes whose color had never really been easy to identify behind his thick lensed glasses. Suffice it to say that although he'd been kind enough, he was nothing like Ben who’d made my body respond even before this taboo eroticism. I’d felt the play of athletic muscle when he’d pressed against my body to help me outside. Felt his genuine concern and caring. Apparently, that level of compassion and kindness translated in my head to Ben doing things to me in bed that I wasn’t sure the Almighty would approve of. Good boys didn’t fuck like this on the first date, but apparently sexy Latino priests did. At least in my dirty mind.

Each time I tried to speak, Ben smothered my words with hot, drugging kisses that made my head spin and my body light up in ways Devlin had always just fallen short of. Sex with him had always been hot and energetic enough to make me feel him for days when I gave in and let him run the show, but we’ve never achieved since level of intimacy.

And that scared the piss out of me because Jesus H Christ, if this was how Ben fucked in my fantasies, what the hell would it be like if he nailed me with those long, focused strokes in an actual bed?

I wanted him. Needed him. For that brief moment with Devlin, I’d felt like I'd die if he didn't touch me. Being here with Ben, even in a dream, I knew I would.

My back arched when he rocked forward. The pace was too slow to make me come, but the deliberate intensity behind every stroke took my breath away.

Ben's focus was on my pleasure, but I could feel the way his body tightened against mine when I squeezed him tightly from within. The sound of our bodies meeting filled the room, a driving beat underscored by Ben's constant erotic encouragement, and the creak of the bed frame. A bead of sweat dropped from his forehead and dampened the skin of my clavicle. Leaning down, Ben licked it away, then led the trail right back to my mouth. He kissed me like I was oxygen he needed to breathe.

Being wanted like that, needed so much, put me over the edge.

My orgasm was hard enough to steal the last breaths Ben wasn't already claiming as his. I felt the hard exhale of his moan against my mouth just before his body tensed. When I felt the heat of his release fill me in what seemed like an endless circle of pleasure, I called out his name.

The world bled away, leaving me floating and aware of the erotic stickiness dribbling out of my ass, and the man who’d made that happen, kissing my temple as he said my name like it was a benediction...

 

* * *

My hoarse shout lingered in my ears when I sat up, slick heat coating my belly and the sheets around me. For the first time in a long time, my waking in the middle of the night wasn't fueled by terror, and the shouted name on my lips wasn't Max's or Devlin's.

Fuck me.

Exhaling hard, I rolled out of bed and padded into the bathroom to splash water on my face. My eyes in the mirror looked unfocused from the pleasure that'd left my body vibrating like I'd been shot with a thousand volts of electricity. Instead of going down, my cock was more than half mast, stupidly ready for round two. My skin felt warm, almost like Ben’s strong hands were still stroking along on my skin. Demi Moore could only wish Patrick had been this good, because then they could’ve bypassed Whoopie completely.

I'd had wet dreams before, but few of them had been so realistic. Missing a man I barely knew was ridiculous, but it didn't make it any less true.

I quickly cleaned myself up with a damp washcloth, then shut off the bathroom lights. I went back into the dark bedroom to pull on a pair of freshly washed sweats that smelled like the detergent in Sofia’s laundry room. The sweats were one of today’s purchases from my shopping trip with her and Emma earlier. They felt softer than I was used to because I never bothered with fabric softener when I washed my own clothes.

The slight breeze off the balcony connected to my bedroom kissed my skin as I opened the French doors. Gleaming bright white under the moonlight, the curtains provided a starting and return point for me as I made my way back into the room to grab both my cell phone and the box of cigarettes I'd found tucked into the lining of my bag earlier—a small gift from Max. Apparently developing lung cancer was better than drinking myself stupid.

I closed the doors behind me to block the smoke as I settled into one of the wrought-iron bistro chairs outside. My lighter and the cigarette pack were left on the table after I tapped one out and lit up. Sofia would castrate me if she found out I was smoking near the house, but I was wired enough to set the worry of discovery on the back burner. One hard inhale drew the smoke deep into my lungs, and that first hit of nicotine was the best homecoming I'd had yet.

My eyes closed as I leaned back in the chair. Beneath the cigarette smoke, I could smell the salt and sand that defined all beach towns. It was a fragrance familiar to me even after so many years abroad in worlds of sand, jungle and exotic spices. Alternating between drags of my cigarette and breathing in the scent of the sea, I slowly let the warm smell of Ben's skin and breath fade from my memory.

As a kid, the ocean had been a sanctuary for Connor and me. Our mom had taught us to swim almost as soon as we could walk. On the best days, when Dad didn't try and lose himself in the bottom of a bottle, we'd spent time together on the family boat—boat being a very loose definition for a bunch of rickety wood and scrap metal— fishing and singing along with his old boom box. Those memories, albeit rare, were mostly happy; sunny days, bright blue water, and my mother's laughter. If I closed my eyes, I could still see her face; beautiful and unmarred, backlit by the sun that brought out the same gold in her hair that it did mine. Those days became non-existent after she died, and whenever it was safer to face the wrath of Mother Nature than that of our father, Connor and I would ride our bikes down to the water's edge.

I opened my eyes before I could stir my past up. Instead, I looked at my cell phone resting on the center of the small bistro table. When I'd brought it out here with me, my objective had been to call Max and handle the semi situation beneath my sweats so I could get some sleep. I hadn’t planned to scan through my programmed contacts until I found Ben's name like I currently was.

From the frying pan into the fire.

It hadn't been my intention to keep his number, but I’d programmed it from the card after I had gotten home with Sofia and apparently the stealth tactics of my subconscious didn't limit themselves to dreams. Like my whiskey flask, having Ben's number close made me feel oddly better, even if I didn't use it. The problem was that right now, I wanted to. Every second that I didn't put the phone down, increased the temptation to dial. He'd said I could call him anytime, but I doubted that he actually expected me to take him up on the offer.

The little devil on my left shoulder dropkicked the nagging Puritan on my right, pointing out that, in a way, Ben had interrupted my night first by infiltrating my sleep with the sensual stealth attack that had popped me up like a jack in the box.

My flask was empty so I couldn't even hide behind the excuse of a drunk dial. But I pushed send anyway, before I could chicken out. I wasn't even sure what I was going to say when he picked up. Couldn't quite take the "Hey, I just soaked my shorts dreaming about you" approach. With the ringing echoing in my ear, I settled back in my chair and focused on the glow of the stars. On the fourth ring, Ben's light accent wafted over the line. Startled, I stuttered and responded with a perfunctory greeting before I realized that his voice was too carefully monotone. The loud beep of his voicemail picking up in my ear gave me a millisecond to come up with perfection.

"Hey, Ben, it's Sam. Sorry to wake you. You said to call anytime, so… this is me… calling." I paused as I rubbed a hand over my face for a second. Fucking A man. Get it together. "You don't have to call back.. Unless you want to. Yeah… ok…bye.."

After ending the call and exhausting every self-deprecating word I knew in English, as well as Spanish and Farsi, I added in the dirty ones in German and Russian that I’d learned simply because both languages were so guttural, that asking someone how their day was going sounded harsh. Actual swear words were even more satisfying.

I leaned back in my chair, then just waited for the phone to ring. Two hours later, when my phone's screen remained dark and the entire pack of cigarettes was depleted, I rolled to my feet and forced myself back into bed. All the while trying not to linger on the fact I'd had a harder time powering down my cell tonight, then when I'd known Max would call.