Page 19 of Fighting For You
I’d known it was coming. Her decline was steady and predictable. The team had done everything they could. She’d given up her fight and I couldn’t fault her for it.
“I love you so much, my Jude boy. Please don’t hide away. Open that big heart wide.”
Gravity pulled me to sitting and I slumped forward, resting my elbows on my knees and holding my head in my hands. For all the years I’d spent in kit with body armor and gear weighing me down, nothing had ever felt heavier than grief.
First, losing the little bit of Jess I’d had when we were friends and the total destruction of my relationship with Kurt—it’d been on a ticking clock for years, but the end of it still hurt. Then losing the man who raised me, the best man I knew, and someone who’d been more father than grandfather. And now, the woman who’d been with me my whole life. The only other person who’d chosen to stay by me, even after her husband couldn’t when he passed.
A soft trill of a meow made me look down. Bones butted his fluffy brown and black mottled head against my knee, then jumped up. In two swift leaps, he landed on my shoulder, his claws notching into my trap muscle with what I imagined was his version of gentleness, and then he settled into his spot. Front white-socked paws rested on one shoulder, face tucked into them, soft white-furred belly wrapping across my neck and his rear end and hind paws bunched up on the opposite shoulder.
The older he got, the more space he covered, and as a mutty cousin of a Maine Coon, he was a very large kitty. Lucky for him, he’d adopted a rather large man for his human.
And lucky for me, I’d found myself a curmudgeonly and yet surprisingly sweet little beast who had a keen sensefor human emotion and seemed to need to comfort me when he felt my mood darken. Not quite the certified anxiety support dog Bear was for Stone, but I’d take this from him whenever he gave it.
Something about a cat’s weight made the drag of sadness feel a little lighter. The physics might not make sense, but the easing of the tightness in my chest and throat was proof enough.
I tipped my head to one side, lightly knocking my head against the fluffy tufts of his ear. Another little meow emerged.
“Love you, too, Buddy.”
The words came out rough, like so many had lately. It was why I’d come here to the cabin.
Actually, my bosses sent me here, so I wouldn’t pretend I’d come of my own volition. When I’d gone inside to dump the tech and weapons Pop and I had used for the mission, Wilder, Bruce, Adam, and Tristan had all been there. Kenny came in behind me as though they needed a sweeper to make sure I complied with their ambush.
“You’re going to the cabin. You need some rest,” Bruce said, setting his hand on my shoulder and squeezing.
After having Pop tear into me and shred me in the parking lot, and being fully aware they’d quite possibly overheard the whole thing, I was about as raw as I had been since the day I’d lost Omi.
Words, as they so often did, failed me, so I’d made a sound of assent. I didn’t have any fight in me after the last forty-eight hours. Jess’s barrage of honesty—however much I might’ve wanted to believe she was exaggerating her anger for effect, I knew it all came from her genuine belief in what she’d said—had sideswiped me.
I’d awakened on that trip, but by the time we got backand things split down the middle, jagged edges between us cutting up any energy I’d won from butting heads against her, I’d lost all ability to explain or defend or do anything other than take her brutal honesty.
“You and Bones head up there and find some quiet. Read, roast marshmallows, breathe in the mountain air. Get some space,noton a mission, and come back when you’re ready,” Doc encouraged, and I suspected, demanded.
Though couched in a suggestion, I could safely guess he had instigated this.
These men had comforted me while I wept for the loss of the last person who knew me my whole life. They stood with me at the funeral—served as pallbearers and helped fill the pews of the church along with the residents of Silverton Springs Retirement Community.
My jaw ached as emotion flooded in, their tenderness and care for me so at odds with how I blustered around seemingly without care for anyone else. Pop had said it, and she wasn’t wrong. I’d been so focused on myself for so long—on surviving and making sure Omi was okay, and now…
Now, what?
Wilder spoke quietly but with his usual no nonsense. “Go. Rest. Grieve. Come back when you’re ready.”
An order, then. No hiding it.
“Well, honestly, I’m going to need you to come back before the film fest because we do not have the bodies without you, especially if anyone else gets sick like Cookie did. If that crap rolls through all of us, we’re going to need you.” Kenny shoved my shoulder and gave me a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Sweet kid. He was trying hard to be light for me, and I loved him for it, but I could see how this month had strained him. Any confrontation with death or grief took the windout of his breezy sails and reminded him too much of his own life. He’d been as present as he could, and every one of these men had stepped up to help me.
So now I sat in my cabin with my giant cat draped over my shoulders like a fur stole and waited. What realizations could I have in this brutal silence? What healing in the isolation I’d only just learned to step out of?
In the past, I might’ve tried to avoid these crashing waves of grief hitting when I least expected them. I might’ve seen them as weakness and pushed myself harder. I’d fallen into the trap this last week when I said I’d take the job at Snowberry with Pop. I’d thought maybe being forced to work with her would be good for me—it would help kick me out of the sadness and help me battle a more palatable foe.
I’d heard the voice whispering I was doing it for myself—not to recover, not to fill a gap Saint needed my help with, not to feel useful again after losing the person I spent the most time with—but to be nearherin a way we couldn’t avoid.
She was a piece of the past I could reach for, a way to remember who I’d been before I’d lost my grandparents and the only family I’d ever had. The only family by blood, because I did have family still, but this ache came from that cellular isolation I faced now. Everyone else was gone, and some straw-grasping instinct in me had thought being around Pop would let me escape the reality.
There was nothing left of it now, though. No part of the friendship we’d had, no part of anything good left. I knew it well enough in my head, but I’d hoped, knowing that voice might be right.
