Page 75 of Operation Rescue
She sucked in a deep breath and looked, not at the boy who had been the burning focus of her life the last ten days, but at the man who had held that spot for thirty years, since she was seven years old.
“I’d like to tell you something.”
Blaine shifted his gaze to her. “What we’re here for.”
“I just wanted to say that… I finally understand. I always knew you were a protector, but I didn’t get it, not all of it. Now I do. Not just the…adrenaline rush of doing something that has to be done, but the willingness to do it.” He held her gaze, and she saw a glow that wasn’t just the reflection of the fire in his eyes. She finished it. “Whatever’s necessary.”
Ethan snorted, loudly. They both turned to look at him. “Like you ever would,” he said, his disgust clearly aimed at her. “You coddle everyone, want everyone completely safe all the time. What kind of life is that, never taking any chances, ever? She never even stands up for herself—”
“Do you know why I’m still alive, Ethan?”
Blaine’s seeming non sequitur stopped the boy’s outburst dead.
“What?”
“You were only nine when I went down. Did you even understand completely what death meant, then? That it was forever, and everything, all the memories, all the things, would be forever tainted by that?”
She was staring at him then. He’d never talked about it like this, even to her.
“I know now,” was all Ethan said.
“So do you know why you didn’t have to learn back then? Why you didn’t have to go to my funeral and come home with the flag that was over the box they buried me in?”
She felt an echo of the old fear from that time. Ethan was simply staring at his father, brows lowered in that way she knew meant he was trying to figure something out.
“You got better,” Ethan said, sounding confused.
“Yes. I did. And there’s only one reason I did. Because someone else was fighting the battle I couldn’t. Someone else was confronting the doctors with every question I couldn’t ask, who fought them when necessary, stood up to them, made them do what was best, and not do a couple of things that would have done more harm just because their egos got in the way.”
“Fought doctors?” Ethan sounded quite puzzled.
“Specialists, mostly, who kept doing things that clashed with what other specialists were doing,” Blaine explained. “Only one person stood up to them. And that same person was the one who pushed, prodded, and had my back through month after month of rehab. The one who made me fight on even when all I wanted to do was give up. The one who would not let me quit. The one person who is the real reason I’m still alive and functional today. The one person who is why I was able to do what I did today. And she’s sitting right here, just taking those dirty looks and angry words you’re throwing at her.”
Ethan was staring at her now. She didn’t speak, couldn’t think of a single coherent thing to say. It wouldn’t have gotten past the tightness of her throat anyway.
“It seems,” Blaine went on, “that one of those assumptions you’ve made is that your mother knows nothing about fighting, about rebellion. That she knows nothing about reality and how it can bite. That seems to have become a habit with you.”
“How would you know?” Ethan snapped back defensively.
Blaine leaned back then. “And that one’s true, and my fault. I could have forced things, could have come more often—”
“You would have, if she hadn’t made it so hard.”
“I—”
He stopped when Erin put a hand on his arm. “No, he’s right about that. I was trying to make it easier on me, but that doesn’t change that it made it harder for you.”
Ethan stared at her, as if she’d shocked him. How? By just saying he was right? Had she truly been that rough on him? She took a deep breath and held his gaze.
“If I’ve been hard on you, Ethan, overprotective, it’s because I knew death was forever, and we’d come so close with your father. I knew, and I was afraid to face it again. I wasn’t brave enough to face it again. Especially with my son, the boy I love more than life itself.”
The boy’s shocked expression changed, slowly, into something more thoughtful.
“Your mother’s been to hell and back once already, with me,” Blaine said. “Don’t blame her if she doesn’t want to make the trip again with you. She loves you more than anyone in the world.”
“She doesn’t,” Ethan muttered.
“What?” Erin exclaimed, more shocked than he’d looked.
