Page 120 of Reacher
“No. It’s just that I want to help you, and you’re fighting me. Let me help.”
He looked lost for a moment.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Sit with me. Talk. You know I won’t say anything to anyone.”
He sighed as he sat beside me. I still had his hand, so I squeezed it to encourage him.
“Jesus… uh… okay… so Rossi, the mobster guy? He wants me to force Tori and Ryder to get married for real, becauseapparently they’re ‘living in sin’ and ‘shaming the fucking family’.”
“Seriously? Are they living in the dark ages?”
“He reminded me how much they’ve helped us lately, like it’s now my duty to snoop into Ryder’s life, and force him to marry his old lady, like they both haven’t been forced into enough things already.”
Another nightmare added to the load on his shoulders. How much more could one man take?
“Do you want me to talk to Tori?”
His eyes finally came back to mine, and he looked stunned.
“Really? You’d do that?”
I moved closer, ignoring the twinge of pain from my stomach.
“Yes, of course. Leave that one with me. Okay, next problem?”
He snorted. “You gonna fix them all, woman?” He wasn’t being mean, in fact, he sounded relieved.
“Gonna try.”
“Ice is the other problem. I think we’re losing him.”
I shuffled closer again, letting him pull me into his side, his warm arm around me.
“In what way?”
He pondered that for a moment, trying to put it into words.
“He’s struggling with clean living. Says we’re making it harder for him by sharing his workload. That he needs to stay busy. Is that what we’re doing? Are we hurting him by trying to make life easier?”
“Honestly? Being busy will make it easier for him to fight the urge to use again, but possibly nothing will stop him going back there. What about counselling, or some kind of rehab program?”
His silence spoke volumes.
“You don’t want to broach that with him, do you? You’re worried that it’ll make it worse. Do you want me to speak to him too? Actually… will he find it easier to show me some of what hedoes, rather than his brothers for now? I at least have a starting understanding of some of it, so maybe I can help him train the others then?”
“Woman, you really are gonna try and fix all my problems, huh?”
“You don’t need to say it like it’s a shock. I love you, Reacher, and I want to be here with you. I want to be your old lady. I want to…oh shit…”
He shot me a worried look.
“Have you made yourself bleed again?” He started pulling at my t-shirt, well, yet another of his t-shirts that I’d commandeered.
“No. I just remembered something.”
He just raised his eyebrows at me.
