Man of Honor (Passion in Paradise Book 4) (25 page)

“Honor, with patience
and the right help, you can have what I found, too,” Harmony whispered as
Patience reached her side.  “Just think about it, okay?  I mean, what would you
say if this was Heaven we were talking about?  Wouldn’t you want me to get her
the help she needed whether she wanted it or not?” she implored, reaching
forward to squeeze Honor’s wrist as Patience moved to her side.

“Don’t!  Don’t do
that?  This didn’t happen to Heaven, and I expect you and Jake will make damn
sure it never does!” Honor clipped, jerking her arm from Harmony’s grasp.

Looking up, Honor
could tell Patience wasn’t exactly pleased to be here.  Dressed in bright
yellow track pants and a turquoise tank top that said ‘Bite Me’ across her
breasts, she noticed that today her sister’s hair held indigo highlights – a
much better look than yesterday’s emerald hue.  “Patience,” Honor muttered
under her breath.  “You wanna add your two cents, too, I suppose.”

“Not gonna lie, I’m
not sure about this whole thing we’ve got going on right now, but hey, I’ve
never been good at holding my tongue.  So, look, I’m not sure that I agree with
how Aunt Orla and Zeke chose to have this out with you, Peanut,” she remarked, using
the pet name for her sister as she shot a slightly scornful look toward where the
sheriff stood beside her own husband, Abel.  “However, I will say that you’ve
had the dark cloud hanging over your head long enough.  I know you like to keep
our family stuff quiet, but maybe talking to somebody could be beneficial.  An
impartial opinion, you know?”

“And could
you
see
yourself confiding your innermost feelings to a stranger, Patience?” Honor
asked indignantly.  “Really?”

“Heck, you get a
couple shots of tequila in your sister and she announces the intimate details
of our life stuff voluntarily to the world at large,” Abel pointed out, winking
at Honor.  “Or have you conveniently forgotten that two thirds of the town was
convinced I was a lousy lover before I finally got her to marry me.  Patience
never met a piece of information she didn’t think was for public consumption.”

“He’s kinda right.  I
do
have a problem with the random overshare here and there,” she
confessed, sticking her tongue out at her husband.  “But, you, little sister,
have a problem with any kind of share.  I think having somebody like Bree might
help.  What could it hurt to try?” Patience offered with a slight shrug of her
shoulders as the last McKinnon sister slowly made her way toward Honor.

“It’s not the trying
that will be painful, Patience.  It’s the remembering and the reliving that
will kill me.”

“You’re already dying
inside, though, Honor.  Do you think we don’t see it?” Faith asked, gesturing
between the three sisters standing side by side in front of her.  “We do. 
Every day.  And it is torture for all of us.”

Honor pressed her
lips together as she fought a sneer.  What the hell did Faith know about
torture?  Nothing, that’s what.  She knew Faith had experienced pain when Cain
had acted like an idiot a few years ago.  He’d been hurting, suffering from
PTSD and had broken their engagement for a time.  With hard work, a lot of love
and a little help from their family, they’d found their way back though.  But
nobody had ever harmed a hair on Faith’s head.  Nobody had shoved her to the
ground and used her as a punching bag.  Nobody had violated HER body over and
over again!  Who the hell did her sister think she was?  “Faith, I love you,
but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, I do,” the
other woman argued impatiently, pushing her chin length hair over one ear. 
“How do you think it feels to watch the little sister you have only ever wanted
to protect just grow more and more distant and withdrawn?  You’re 24 years old,
Honor!  You should be out enjoying your life, but instead you wrap yourself up
in your family and work here at the café.  Listen, we all know how much you’ve
been through… how bad it feels….”

“Do you?” Honor
interrupted sharply, unable to take hearing anything else out of her sisters. 
“Do you know how it
feels
, Faith?”

“I…I think so,” Faith
said with a nod, her light blue eyes confused at her sister’s harsh question.

“No,” Honor denied
with a snort and a rough, empty laugh as she rose from her chair to face her
sisters and the room at large.  A sea of faces tracked her as she propped her
hands on her hips, the soft flannel of one of the lightweight long sleeve
shirts she’d stolen from Zeke hanging around her body. “In fact, I don’t think
any
of you know how I feel!  But you
all
want me to talk about my
feelings
,
right?  So,” she said, holding her arms aloft at her sides as she slowly spun
around, letting everyone see her, “Let’s do it.”  Taking a step closer to
Faith, Honor met her stunned sibling’s eyes with a raised brow.  “So, you think
you’ve got an idea of what I went through, do you?”

“I…maybe I shouldn’t
have said…”

“Stop,” Honor snapped
throwing up a hand as Cain pushed away from the wall to take a step closer to
the McKinnon sisters. 

 “Honor, she didn’t
mean to imply…”

Turning her head to
narrow her eyes at her brother-in-law, Honor shook her head.  “But she DID,
Cain.  So, I wanna know… from
any
of you, really, which one of you has
had their face shoved in the dirt while what felt like dozens of hands ripped
your clothes off your body?  Who here has had her face pushed so far into the
mud that you tasted it months later?  C’mon!  No?  Nobody?” she asked when her
sisters remained mute and not a single person so much as twitched in their
seats.

“How about when they
pry your legs open and take what you never offered them!  When they steal the
one thing that was
just
yours – your soul,” Honor shouted, so angry and
hurt that her family would stand against her and force her into this position. 
It was wrong and she knew she’d regret it, but she wanted to hurt them the way
they’d hurt her. 

“What about when they
took their fists and beat you until your body was in so much pain that you
thought every strike would be the one that ended you?  Did any of you ever lay
there and pray that you’d just
die
so the pain would finally stop?  Oh,
I know!” Honor snapped her fingers dramatically.  “Which one of you can still
feel the cold steel blade of a knife slicing your skin when you close your
eyes?  Which one of you gets nauseated every time you smell a man’s sweat
because all you can remember is that while an animal was rutting on top of you,
he dripped sweat in your face,” she screamed.  “Come on, Faith.  Don’t be shy! 
You
know
how I feel, right?  And everybody here seems to think they’ve
got some kind of claim on my memories.  Isn’t that right, Sheriff?” she asked
Zeke hatefully, her livid eyes meeting his wounded gaze. 

Faith’s breath
hitched as silent tears spilled down her face.  “Oh, God,” she whimpered.

“Damn it, Honor,”
Cain cursed, shrugging off Zeke’s restraining hand when the lawman went to hold
him back.  “That’s cruel and unfair.”

“Don’t you dare talk
to me about
fair,
Soldier Boy!  But you are
right, Cain!  It is
cruel!  This whole orchestrated event was cruel from the start, but you all
wanted to pursue it.  Especially our wonderful local Sheriff standing beside
you,” she barked at the other man before pivoting back to face her sisters. 
“You’re crying,” Honor noted dispassionately, taking a stumbling step backward
and bumping into her empty chair.  “You’re all crying,” she said, her eyes
slowly traveling from one sister to the other and finding each had tears
rolling down their faces.  “Tears don’t help, girls.  They don’t stop when you
cry.  They
laugh
,” Honor whispered painfully as everyone stared at her
in shock, devastation etched in their faces.

“Honor, I’m so
sorry,” Harmony began shakily.

“Too late for an
apology, Harmony.  You all asked for this.  Now, you have to hear it.  Every
single ugly detail.  And you all need to just accept it.  Not one of you have
any idea what it’s like to wake from the nightmares, open your eyes into the
pitch black darkness of your bedroom and lie there, terrified to move,
convinced that every shadow in your room is a monster just waiting, poised to
tear away another hunk of your soul.  You don’t understand what it is to feel
like one of those ghouls is waiting for you around every corner you turn, ready
to rip another pound of flesh away from your body!  Quite frankly, none of you
know
shit
about this or about me.  Not a single blessed one of you,” she
breathed, shaking her head from side to side as she looked from face to face,
each one appearing more staggered than the last. 

“You don’t know how
this feels.  You can’t fathom how dirty and ugly I feel every day.  I haven’t
felt clean in
eight years
and I don’t hold out a lot of hope that the
next eight will be any different!  You don’t know how I have to work up the
courage to look at myself in the mirror each morning.  How I try to avoid it so
that I don’t have to see the stranger looking back at me.  Do you think it’s
easy?  That I want to be this way?  But unlike you, I’ve accepted the way
things are.  I am as I am.  ‘As is’, people!  So, do me this one favor.  Don’t
you ever try to tell me you know how I feel because you don’t!  You don’t and
I’m grateful that you don’t.  I wouldn’t wish this kind of awful on my worst
enemy.  You’ll all go home tonight with your
perfect
husbands to your
perfect
homes to be with your
perfect
babies,” she informed her sisters with
blunt honesty.  “From the outside looking in on it, those seem like pretty
perfect
lives.  Congratulations. I’m happy for you.  Now, let those of us that
don’t have that live their lives the best way that we can.”

“But…” Faith began.

Honor nailed her
sister with a hard look.  “Just don’t, Faith.  You said that I don’t live my
life, but the fact is that I’m just not living my life the way you want me to
do it.  The way
any
of you want me to do it.  What you don’t understand
is that the fact that I have been living it…I AM living it….is a miracle. 
There have been so many freakin’ times that I just wanted to close my eyes and
not get up again, but McKinnons don’t
do
that.  We rise.  We get up off
the damn floor even when we’ve been kicked down.  I
know
I did!  But how
I choose to live MY life after enduring the flames of Hell ought to be my
business.  I work so hard because if I slow down, I’ll crumble!  I’ll
remember!  I’ll have to
think
about all that’s been taken and all I’ve
lost, and I do my best to never do that!  So, I stay busy.  I work hard.  I
love my family.  I find joy in the things I have left.  My business.  The
babies.  And up until now, my family.  You people are not my judge and jury.”

Turning to look at
her aunt and uncle, Honor took a deep breath.  “If you feel like you need to
cut ties because I won’t do things
your
way, do it.  I can’t stop you. 
After today, I don’t even want to stop you,” she admitted wearily.  Looking
around at the sea of faces… her aunt and uncle, her sisters, her
brothers-in-law, Diego, Maggie, Ice, Slade, Mack, Bree, Sunshine, Verlena,
Bale, and so many more...it all suddenly became too much as her eyes came to rest
on Ezekiel.

Slowly walking toward
him, each step was more painful than the last as every bit of pain, anger and
hopelessness boiled in her chest, coalescing into a throbbing mass of heated
rage she’d never experienced before and never wanted to feel again.  “You did
this to me,” she whispered, staring into his eyes.  “You!”

“Honor…”

“No one that says
they love me could have put me through this,” she went on, each word tasting
more bitter than the last.  “You don’t love
me,
Ezekiel.  You want to
turn me into someone you
want
to love.  I’m not her and have no desire
to be.  Even more so after today.” 

“I
do
love you
and all I have
ever
wanted to do was help you,” he swore solemnly. 

“Then you failed!”
she sneered, needing an outlet for her hostility.  As the tall man stood over
her, Honor knew she’d found one.  He was, after all, the reason all of this was
happening.  “You did accomplish a
few
things here today, though,” she
informed him with an unpleasant smile.  “Things that I would have sworn were
impossible.”

“Yeah?” Zeke said
huskily, his pale gray eyes soft on her face.  “Hit me with them, Kitten.”

“Oh, I’d love to hit
you, Ezekiel.  In fact, I’d like to run a knife through your guts just like
those assholes did to me…what was it?  Nine times?” she asked, maliciously
enjoying the direct hit she’d landed against him when he flinched.  “But, I
won’t.  I’m going to let you suffer.  Just like the agony you just inflicted on
me.  See, you managed to take away the one thing I valued the most:  my
family.  You made them choose a side and they chose yours.”

“Honor, there’s only
your
side here,” Zeke replied raggedly.  “We all love you.”

“Bullshit,” Honor
cursed, recoiling.  “Don’t you dare tell me this was for me, Zeke.  This was
for YOU.  It was about what YOU wanted for me.  But, you showed them all… you
let them see how weak and pathetic I feel most of the time.  Thank you
so
much
for that!  You’re a real hero!” she screamed, slamming her fists against his
chest.  “You made them all look at me,” she shouted, gesturing behind her at
the gathered friends and family.  “You made them hear the ugliness that makes
up my life.  I don’t share that shit for a reason!!  And it was all pointless. 
I STILL don’t want any freaking therapy!”