Drowning to Breathe (42 page)

Fuck.

I wanted to go to him.

Wrap him up and take it away.

Same way I’d been attempting to do for years.

Watching the way his entire body heaved just about ruined me. But I kept silent, respecting what he asked.

“All it did was pile on more guilt. Every decision I made just hurt someone else. The lies I told. The secrets I kept.”

Disgust lined his face. “Since I was eight years old, I’ve been reliant on you. You took that burden and wore it like it fit, and I just let you because I didn’t think I had anything else.”

He looked toward the ceiling. “Then Shea showed up and finally gave you something truly worth fighting for. Someone who would
appreciate
it. Someone who gives you just as much as she gains. It made me realize how much more is out there, Baz. Everything I’m missing and everything it costs you by me being here. Shea and Kallie…they deserve all of you.”

His gaze dropped to the bag on the floor. “I have to go.”

Grief fisted my throat. “No, Austin. You gotta know you mean everything. Just because my family has grown doesn’t mean there’s not room in it for you. I can’t stand the thought of you leaving me.”

A somber smile just touched his face. “I’m not leaving you, Baz. It’s just time I found myself. Told you before, the way Shea looks at you? Someday…someday I want someone to look at me the same way. And when she does, I want to be strong. Someone who can stand up for her the way you stand up for Shea. And I’m not that guy, Baz. Not yet. I’m nothing but a broken little kid living inside this body, trying to pretend I’m a man.”

The words cracked. “I’ve got to find a way to be him or
I’m not going to make it
. Can’t continue to go on like this.”

The expression on his face twisted through me like a dull, bitter blade, this kid showing so much innocent hope and so much seasoned fucking pain.

Longing desperation.

Scared the hell out of me to think of him out there on his own in this fucked-up world.

But I finally got it. What he’d been trying to tell me before.

My feet felt heavy when I took two steps forward and pulled my baby brother into my arms. He heaved out a breath and buried his face in my chest. I wrapped my arms around his head while he clung to my waist and just fucking sobbed.

For a second, it felt like I was holding that same eight-year-old boy who’d wept that day. That fucking devastating day when we’d lost everything. The day when everything had gone to shit and we knew things were never gonna be the same.

Just like we knew it now.

Things weren’t ever gonna be the same.

Finally, he tore himself away, eyes red and bleary and blurred.

He sniffed and I gripped him by the sides of his neck, squeezing in emphasis. “No matter where this world takes you, no matter where you go, I’ll always be your home.”

He grasped my wrists. “I know.”

Taking a step back, he bent over and grabbed his bag and slung the strap over his shoulder, still clutching the worn monkey to his chest.

His eyes were downcast when he edged around me.

“Just…” I called, this old piece of me breaking free, feeling like he was ripping it away. Like this kid needed to take a part of me with him.

And God, if that’s what it took for him to finally
break free
of this past, then I’d let him.

“Keep in touch,” I finally said. “I need to know you’re okay. Where you are. For my own sanity.”

For a moment, he paused with his hand on the knob of the door, before he turned to look back at me from over his shoulder.

The smile he projected was soft and thankful and somehow resolved.

Then he dipped his head in a nod and my baby brother walked out the door.

I PULLED TO A
stop at the curb and cut the engine. A smattering of stars hung in the darkened sky. They peeked through the spindly branches adorned with the few remaining leaves that had long since turned red and gold, those tall trees stretching out to brush the high eaves of the historic white house that rested in the heart of Savannah.

A feeling of ease and welcome swept through me. Like everything dialed to wrong had suddenly been set to right.

You’d think after years of traveling, out on the road living in a damned van trying to make it big, five days wouldn’t make a man homesick.

You’d be wrong.

Lights glowed from within the windows of the old, majestic home. The sight of the porch swing where I’d spent so many nights rubbing Shea’s feet and talking to her belly after we’d tucked Kallie into bed quickened my heart, that front door calling out for me like my marrow had become ingrained in the wood.

I stepped from the Suburban in the same second that front door swung wide open.

A streak of blonde flew down the sidewalk. All those wild, wild curls struck like white flames in the moonlight.

“Daddy!”

My quickened heart damned near burst.

I hustled around the front of the truck and scooped Kallie up just as she was hitting the end of the walkway. I swung her around in circles, lovin’ the feel of making my Little Bug fly.

She squealed and clung to my neck. “Daddy, don’t you dare drop me!”

I hugged her close. Squeezed her tight. “Never.”

She settled and stilled, like she was washed in a wave of comfort as she tucked herself into my chest. I could feel her little heart going boom, boom, boom as she found her own ease.

“I missed you so much,” I murmured into those untamed locks at the top of her head.

“Me, too,” she whispered back.

She flashed me one of those brilliant smiles. Though now that smile was missing two front teeth. Considering Christmas was rolling up fast, I couldn’t help but relentlessly tease her about it in song.

One-hundred percent not my fault.

Uncle Ash
started it.

Go figure.

I hooked Kallie to my side and let my needy gaze travel to the doorway.

Shea leaned up against the jam.

She was wearing a tank top and some of those short, short sleep shorts she liked the wear, a cascade of blonde falling down her shoulders, those tempting strands a couple inches longer than they were when I’d married her just over a year ago.

Her adoring expression screamed so many things.
I missed you. I need you. Home—this is where you’re supposed to be.

Like her dial had also been shifted to
right
.

My wife was cradling our tiny son, rocking him in her arms as her head tilted to the side in the softest welcome.

That sweet, sexy mouth tipped up at the corners.

Shea.

Shea.

Shea.

My spirit never got tired of singing it.

With Kallie still tacked to my side, my feet were moving.

Drawn.

Had been since the second I’d seen her.

I’d just had no idea that being drawn to all that dark, into her light and heavy and soft, was drawing me right into
life
.

My boots thudded up the wooden steps, becoming a heavy echo as I crossed the porch.

Tenderly, I caressed across my son’s head before I moved to settle my hand on Shea’s neck. Her pulse thrummed like content and thunder beneath my touch.

She exhaled something that sounded like relief. Ease and comfort and perfect harmony.

“You have any clue how much I missed you, baby?” I asked, voice raw. Coarse with five days of pent-up need.

She peeked at me, driving me mad with that coy, playful grin. “Um…about half as much as I missed you?”

Chuckling, my thumb set to tracing her jaw, my famished eyes roaming her gorgeous face.

A familiar stir of devotion ran hot in my veins, words dropping even lower. “You think so, huh?”

“Mmhmm. Considering I didn’t stop thinking about you for one second while you were away, I’d think giving you half would be generous.”

The girl was teasing me with the soft, seductive lilt of that Southern drawl.

My entire body hardened, thinking just how fucking sublime it was gonna be to get lost in hers.

Sleek legs and hungry hands. Complete. Body and soul.

Couldn’t wait.

“Have to say, think you’re way off base, Mrs. Stone. Got to L.A., and there I was, missing my family for three extra hours. Torment.”

I smirked. Time change and all.

The laughter that trekked up her throat was flirtatious, and she started to sway in my hold, while she kept our son in the protective cocoon of her arms.

“And we had to wait for you three extra hours to get here tonight. Torture,” she fired back with another grin.

My insides fluttered like all those butterflies Kallie loved to talk about.

But this?

This was ripping wings.

A battering beat of loyalty and dedication and need.

I prodded my girl’s chin, lifting her to me so I could dip down and kiss the
one
who’d seen
this
inside me.

Someone worth something more than sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Someone better than one-night stands and an empty soul.

The one who’d trusted in it.

Believed in it.

She received me with plush lips, soft and sweet and tender, the briefest flash of her tongue fueled by desire. I lingered there, kissing her a little deeper than maybe was modest. But fuck, who could blame a man who had a girl like this?

Kallie giggled, little body wiggling in my hold, plucking me from the salacious direction my thoughts went strayin’.

“Daddy,” she sang like she was givin’ me a good scolding with that precious voice. “Too many kisses.”

I cut her a guilty albeit unremorseful smile, before I dropped my forehead to my wife’s.

Emotion grew thick, this feeling swamping me as I turned my gaze down to the child we’d created.

God.

He was incredible.

A miracle.

Connor Julian Stone.

I dropped a quick kiss to Kallie’s temple. “Let me say hi to your brother, okay, Little Bug?”

Never wanted her to feel like she now came second. Like she were less when that was impossible.

Like she totally got it, she nodded in her sweet way. “’Kay.”

I set her on the ground and turned back to my son.

Wide grey eyes locked on mine, and Connor gave me this gurgling sound and a lopsided, crooked smile.

God, felt ’em both right in the center of my chest.

“Hey there, little man,” I said quietly as I lifted him from Shea’s arms.

I held him out in front of me. Just needing to take him in.

Then I brought him near, softly kissed the corner of his mouth.

Tiny fingers dug into my face as he curled into me, one of those giggles he’d just figured out how to make bursting free and sinking right into me.

Joy.

So much joy.

“Were you a good boy for your momma?” I cooed.

Nope. Couldn’t help that, either.

My kids had me all wrapped up, twisted and tied and tangled in baby blue ribbon and pink butterfly bows.

A ripple of gentle laughter floated from Shea. “He’s always good…just as soon as we make it through the two a.m. feeding.”

Hated knowing things got rough for my girl when I was gone. I lifted a brow in question, rocking Connor slowly where he was all tucked up like a frog stuck to my chest. “April hung around while I was gone, yeah?”

After Shea and I’d gotten married and Austin had set out on his own, it didn’t take us all that long to figure out L.A. wasn’t going to be the place we raised our kids. The guys…they were always careful with my girls. Protecting them the way I trusted them to. Cooling shit off and acting like responsible adults while Shea and Kallie were around.

And there was no doubt about it. Shea and I would’ve made a home wherever the world took us. But these old walls called to us, echoing the sounds of Shea’s childhood and shouting out the hope of our future.

Like somehow Shea was made up of Savannah and then Savannah had gone and sank right into me.

This was where we wanted to be.

April had found a place of her own a couple miles away. She was usually all too eager to stay with my family when I had to be out of town.

“Most of the time.” Shea arched a brow, eyes going wide as if she was keeping back all the juicy details, and mouthed, “She met a boy.”

“No?” I countered, incredulous.

“Yes.” She uttered it like was the most scandalous thing trending on Facebook.

Kallie hopped around beside me, tugging at my arm to get my attention. “Yep! Yep! Yep! Auntie April stayed for two whole days and we had a sleepover in my room since Connor sleeps in her old room.”

Her tone got serious. “But she said she didn’t mind. Not at all. At all!” Her prattling shot right back to double time. “It was so super fun! Almost as fun as I had at Marley’s sleepover on Friday. Daddy, did you know I got to ride on Marley’s bus all the way to her house?”

Those words flew from her tongue at warp speed, an adorable tumble of excitement and adventure and country flare. Now that she was in kindergarten, that chatter seemed to come nonstop, her days with her new friends supplying her all kinds of new stories to tell.

Some would ask if someone like me would bore of it.