“Anymore? You mean now?”

“Yes.”

“As in right now?” he asked, still unsure.

“If that’s okay with you. I don’t mean to assume.”

He closed his eyes and rested his head in his hands, leaning forward almost onto his toes.

“Be careful,” I said, holding him back by the arm.

He puffed out a cry, and then he pulled me into his arms. Soon, he began to sob, and I held him. The muscles in my back began to burn, but I didn’t dare move. If he needed me, I would sit in that position for the rest of the day, holding him.

His shoulders stopped shaking, and he took in two deep breaths, pulling back and wiping his eyes. I’d never seen him in so much pain. Not even the night I left. “I do love you,” he said with a faltering breath. “And I’m going to be better. I can’t lose you, too. It’ll break me, Falyn … I might already be broken.”

I leaned over to kiss his cheek and then the corner of his mouth. He stiffened, unsure what to do, worried to do the wrong thing. I pressed my lips against his, once and then again. The third time I parted my lips, he kissed me back, holding each side of my face. We hadn’t touched in months, and once we started, we couldn’t stop. We were crying and kissing, hugging and making promises, and it felt right.

Taylor held his forehead to mine, breathing hard, relieved but once again cautious. “Is this for now? Is it going to be different when we get back to Colorado and go home to the same problems?”

“We’ll be working on the same problems, but it will be different.”

He nodded, a tear dripping from the tip of his nose. “It will. I promise.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

ELLIE

I SWIPED LEFT ON MY EREADER DISPLAY, turning the page, and then adjusting my body when Tyler stirred. He’d been asleep on my right thigh for two hours, and Gavin on my left for three. I wasn’t sure why I moved. Trying to adjust after one of my boys did to make them more comfortable usually just made them uncomfortable, and they would shift again. For whatever reason, I thought I’d know what would make them more comfortable than they did, and I was almost always wrong. It was in part a control issue and maternal instinct. I needed to feel I was helping to make them comfortable, when in reality if I’d just sat still, they could have done it themselves.

I skimmed down the page, absorbing ideas about coping with death, helping others to cope with death, and the comfort in the belief held by a Ph.D. that our energies move on to the next life. I wasn’t sure if that made me a transcendental new age fruit loop, but it made me feel better, and as far as I was concerned, that was my purpose—to exist and heal wounds in the healthiest way I could.

I’d been grappling with finding peace in Thomas’s death, in the lies, and in the danger we’d been put in. I tried not to think about Gavin’s picture being one in the more than a dozen photographs scattered on the passenger seat of the vehicle carrying three mafia hitmen, or that his picture had likely been spattered and stained by their blood. The same dark red in color as Gavin’s, and not long ago surging through veins of a man who was once a boy; whose only difference from me was a series of bad choices, spurned by childhood experiences marred by his parents’ bad choices: a cycle that was never broken.

My heart ached for the men who would have murdered my child without a second thought, and that was unnerving as well. I’d given up anger, and with that release, I found myself without the tool I needed to hate. I could hate them, but it was difficult when I’d spent so many years viewing adults as children and studying the origin of their actions. I’d never considered that in my discipline to view the world in a new way, I would struggle with having expected emotions that would have come so easily to me a decade earlier.

Still, those men I couldn’t hate weren’t imaginary. They’d come to Eakins with guns and a very real threat to our family. It was easy to blame Thomas and Travis for bringing them there, but that would require placing the blame on someone else’s choice. Thomas and Travis might have made their own choices based on the Carlisis, but they were on the right side of this. Their only other choice was to allow the Carlisis to avenge Benny’s death. I was a person who detested violence, but sitting in a room with my sleeping husband and son, I realized there truly was a time for everything.

The only solution was to stand and fight.

That recognition both devastated and empowered me, as each new understanding did. I swiped the page again, feeling my cheeks burn with the tears that had begun to spill over. I sniffed and wiped my nose, waking my husband.

He saw my face and sat up, tucking a stray strand that had fallen from my bun behind my ear. “Elle,” he said, barely above a whisper. “What is it?”

“Just reading a sad part,” I said.

He smiled. He teased me often that I was the only person he knew who cried over non-fiction, but growth was rattling, and I often had to leave the bruised pieces of me behind, no matter how attached I’d become to them.

“What part is that?” he asked, settling in next to me.

“That Thomas and Travis’s choice was reasonable, and it must have been so hard for them. They’ve been walking this earth so conflicted.”

Tyler thought about my words and then sighed. “Probably.”

“It’s hard to see the light in circumstances like this, even if you’re holding the candle.”

Tyler chuckled and then turned to me. “Did you read that?”

“No.”

“Your brain amazes me. Your thoughts are poetry.”

I breathed out a laugh. “Sometimes, I guess. It’s important to find strength in pain.”

Tyler kissed my cheek and then reached for our son. Gavin was the perfect balance of Tyler and me—at peace when he was angry, wearing pale, soft skin encompassing a kind, brave spirit, and an analytical mind. I ran my fingers over the short cut he insisted upon to look more like his daddy, making his lids flutter. His warm russet eyes embraced the dark. Just like us, he would live through his worst before being his best, and I both dreaded and welcomed the challenge. I’d spent a lot of time earning the right to be his mother.

“He’s been sleeping for a long time,” Tyler said.

“I don’t think he got a lot of sleep at the hospital. He needs it. His body will wake when it’s rested.”