Yes to Everything (37 page)

Rex was on one knee beside his Harley, his 9mm in his hand. Brooke was running toward him. One person was down on the ground twenty feet away with a semi-automatic weapon on the pavement beside them. Another person was crouching behind the truck they’d come in. Rex lowered the barrel of the gun and pulled the trigger, hitting the other shooter in the foot. The guy limped away from the vehicle and started shooting.

As Sidney cleared the door with Zane, they saw Rex shoot the guy three times in the chest and once in the head. It had all happened in less than ten seconds. Assured both men were down, Rex turned to Brooke and frowned. “What the fuck are you doing outside? Baby, you don’t run toward the gunfire! You run away.”

Brooke gave a hysterical laugh as she reached him, dropping to her knees in front of him, hugging him and crying. “I was so scared for you. Motherfuckers were shooting at my baby, my man…you think I’m gonna stay inside? I think not.”

She realized her hands were wet as Zane appeared beside them.

The big man said hoarsely, “Brooke, baby, let me check him. Let me check Rex, honey.” Zane tried to tug Rex to his back but his friend’s hands tightened on Brooke.

Rex’s voice was deeper than normal, gravelly, and suddenly she was terrified. “Brooke, listen to me. I love you very much. I’ve lived and loved harder in my time with you than all my life before that combined. Do you believe me?” She nodded in shock. “I love you and I wouldn’t change one minute. Not one fucking minute, baby.”

“Rex…Rex, what’s wrong? Baby, I love you too. With everything, with all of me,” her voice was barely audible as her mind tried to grasp the reality she couldn’t understand. Somewhere there were sirens and people shouting but nothing mattered but Rex.

Rex stroked her hair once, twice, again, his hands memorizing the feel of it. “Brooke. Don’t spend your youth grieving. Don’t you dare. Remember the love we have but don’t go through your life without love like I did for so long. Promise me, Brooke.” She was hugging him and shaking. “Promise me you’ll love again.”

“Rex, what…what’s wrong? I have you to love. I love you and you’re all I’ll ever need. What happened?” She tried to look down and he pulled her chin up.

“Don’t. Look at my face, Brooke. Promise me, Brooke. Please, it means everything for me to know you won’t go through life alone. Please, baby, I need to know. I love you. Promise me, baby.” His voice was hoarse, weaker.

Zane whispered, “Brooke, tell him what he needs to hear. Do it now, honey.”

Brooke whispered, “Rex…are you hit bad?” He nodded his head. “Rex, an ambulance is coming. They’ll be here any minute.” He shook his head slowly. She was murmuring, “Please no, please, Rex. Please don’t leave me. I love you. Please.”

His voice was weaker now, “Brooke, I love you more than my own life, more than anyone or anything I’ve ever known before. You loved me so well, so completely. You gave me so much. I don’t regret it. Tell me you’ll be okay. I need to know you’ll be okay. Promise me you’ll fight Brooke. Tell me you will fight grief and win. Swear it.”

“I…I promise to try, Rex, please, I love you, I need you. Don’t leave me. It’s too soon. I need you, Rex. We’re going to get married and have babies. Please don’t leave me, don’t leave me. I love you, I love you, I love you, Rex.” His grip was relaxing on her. “No baby, please hold on. Don’t let go, Rex, please…I love you.”

Zane was lowering him to the pavement and Brooke followed him down, holding on tight. “Love you, pretty girl. Love you.”

“No, Rex baby, please. I love you.” She curled up beside him on the ground as Zane checked his pulse, her head beside his as the last breath left his body. She said in his ear, “No one will ever love me as well as you, Rex. I love you so much. So much.”

Brooke didn’t hear the people around her. She didn’t hear the sirens of the ambulance and police cars pulling into the parking lot. The roar of two motorcycles entering the parking lot at top speed didn’t register.

She laid curled next to Rex’s body, her arm under the back of his head, her other hand smoothing through his hair. She kept her eyes closed and whispered how much she loved him with her forehead pressed against his temple. She was unaware that her lover’s blood was soaking into her hair and clothes on one side.

When the paramedics tried to pull Brooke away from his body a few minutes later, she resisted, then she fought hard, sobbing hysterically. Sidney pushed them away, screaming in fury.

She crouched beside her, saying gently, “Brooke, baby girl, come with me. Come with me, Brooke. Look at me, honey. It’s Sidney and I love you. I’m going to take you with me. Come on, honey.” Sidney’s voice and expression were calm as tears poured down her face.

“I can’t leave Rex. He needs me, Sidney,” her voice was gentle as her hands stroked over his face and into his hair.

“Brooke, he’s gone. Rex is gone. Come with me, baby. Rex wouldn’t want you lying on the ground and out in the open like this. You know he wouldn’t. Come with me, Brooke. Please, honey. Let me help you.” She held out her hands and Brooke stared at her unseeing for a long moment.

Brooke carefully took her arm from under Rex’s head, resting it gently on the pavement as she went to her knees beside him. She smoothed his hair, kissed his entire face. “You are so beautiful and I love you so much, Rex. You rest and I’ll be right back. Everything will be fine. You’ll see, everything will be fine because I love you and it has to be.” She lifted his hand and smoothed it through her hair before putting it carefully on his chest, holding it for a moment.

Absently, she took Sidney’s hands and Zane pulled both of them to their feet. “Come on, baby. We need to get you in the shower.”

“He’ll be alone. I shouldn’t leave him alone, Sidney, I should stay. He needs me, he needs to rest.” Her stare was fixed ahead, her pupils dilated, as she began to resist her friends. “I won’t leave him alone.”

Sidney was shaking as hard as Brooke was, “Honey, Boyd and Mack are here. Can they go with him? Is that alright?”

Brooke looked over her shoulder and saw Rex lying on the ground, his torso riddled with bullet holes, a huge puddle of blood around him. Mack knelt near his head, his hand on Rex’s forehead as he whispered a prayer, tears flowing down his cheeks. Boyd was barely hanging on.

“Rex…?” Brooke whispered and dropped like a stone.

Zane caught her, an instant before she hit the ground. She didn’t witness the pandemonium of swarming emergency personnel, arriving reporters, or the studio people who poured from the doors of the building in shock.

Brooke was incoherent as Sidney bathed and dressed her in clean clothes. She was unconscious when Zane loaded her in their SUV.

Brooke was in a daze through the memorial as friend after friend went up to talk about the man Rex Black had been. He’d touched more lives than he’d ever known. Every minute an agony until she stood to give her eulogy and wavered dangerously.

Mack moved like lightening to steady her and led her to the podium. Clearing her throat several times, she blotted her eyes and held the stand with both hands, keeping herself up with white knuckles. The media would treat her gently, talking about her struggle to keep it together while she spoke, about the tears that ran nonstop down her cheeks.

“Rex…Rex was one of the best men I’ve ever known. I say one of because he surrounded himself with other strong and good men like he was. He lived his life comfortable in who he was and what he stood for. Every man, every boy growing into manhood, should strive to be like him. To care for others without judgment, to be tolerant, and to give more than they receive. He became a role model for my brother, a father figure for my sisters, was a friend like no other, and showed me the woman I could be.

“He gave me the same devotion he gave his country as a decorated twenty-year Marine. I thought we’d have more time, so much more time together. To get married, have children, grow old together. He always worried about our age difference. As if he wasn’t beautiful, virile, perfect for me in every way. From the moment I met him, he made me laugh, made me blush, he protected me. He loved me for two glorious years and gave me so much in that short time. He loved me so well and always worried about keeping me safe. He gave his life to do that, to keep me safe, which is painful to bear.

“I ache with worry that he was in pain at the end. I don’t know because all he could think about was me. Even at the end, he thought of me first. I’m not sure how you go on from that. I will miss him more than I can express. I loved Rex with everything I have in me as a woman. I’m so grateful he accepted my love, for every minute I had with him. I hope he knows how much I loved him, how lucky I felt that he loved me, too. I hope he knows.”

She made it back to her seat with Mack’s help and her friends held her hands while she stared at her lap. After hugging her and kissing her forehead, Mack stepped up to the podium and took a moment to collect himself. As Rex’s lifelong friend, he would be the last to speak.

“Rex and I were friends for almost forty years. We were more like brothers. He was part of my family, having lost his own parents, and my family embraced his easy laughter and indomitable will. When we enlisted in the Marines together at eighteen, we met Boyd and Zane. We spent the next twenty years serving together. Rex literally saved my life and Boyd’s ten years ago when he walked through enemy fire to free us from cages. Zane laid down cover while Rex dragged and carried us, starved and broken, to safety. They’d been tracking us for six weeks after we’d been ambushed. That was the kind of man he was, the kind of man we all strive to be.

“After the Marines, we rattled around, unfamiliar with the lack of routine and orders to follow. It’s a common dilemma for career military and we fell victim to it like many others. We settled into the strictest routines civilians can ever achieve.

“Then one night, a young woman came to his shop and started a ripple effect that changed Rex’s life and the lives of his closest friends. Somehow, she opened her heart to a man twice her age and completely her opposite. She was beautiful, gentle, and adored by millions. He carried a lot of scars both visible and invisible, he was hardened…maybe even leaning toward cynical, and lived a solitary life for the most part. Thus began the unlikely relationship between America’s country music sweetheart, barely eighteen from rural Oklahoma, and a nearing-forty Harley-riding, tattoo artist, retired Marine from Chicago.

“The next day, Brooke brought her friends with her and we fell immediately in love with them. Suddenly, four men who’d lived their lives alone had these perfect creatures in their hands, these bright and beautiful women who acted like we were just what they needed. It happened so fast but when something feels that right, you don’t take a step back to think. Thank God we didn’t.

“Rex sometimes worried Brooke would regret giving him her love and her youth. But he told me once, ‘I’ll love her as hard and well as I can for as long as she wants me to.’ He had so many plans, so much he wanted to do for her. He was scared for her safety constantly. She’d become so popular. I’d always known if it came down to it, Rex would die to protect her. I know he feels good knowing he eliminated the threat that’s followed her for two years before he succumbed to his wounds. That he would do it again without hesitation.

“He had the chance to tell Brooke he loved her, to secure her promise to fight through her grief and survive it. The last words he heard were from the woman he loved telling him how much she loved him. That’s what carried him through to the next leg of his personal journey. I know it soothed him. That he wrapped her love around himself and took it with him. He was my friend and my brother. He was the man who made my current life possible. There is a void in my life he once filled. I love him, I miss him. But I know he died the happiest he’s ever been in all his life, secure in the pure love of his woman.

“Thank you, Brooke. Thank you for loving him. But don’t forget your promise. You gave your word. You know how Rex always stood behind his word. Fight and survive, baby. Live to love again. Share what your time with him taught you. We all love you and we’re here for you. Goodbye, Rex. God, I miss you, man.”

Mack stepped off the raised platform and crouched in front of a sobbing Brooke. He hugged her and she whispered, “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” He stroked her back and whispered to her, soothing her. She was shaking and so tired.

Travis brought her to her feet carefully as the three Marines, Jackson, and the Bradshaw brothers raised Rex’s casket and left the chapel. Brooke followed behind, her sunglasses unable to hide her tears. They rode together to the cemetery but she didn’t seem to realize any of them were there. Tears fell constantly, Jeanette and Sidney in perpetual pain for their best friend.

Jackson cared for Molly and Becca, worried about Brooke. No one was sure what to say, she was in such a fragile state. Dozens of reporters actually stayed back a respectable distance, film rolling the entire time.

During the twenty-one gun salute, Brooke’s body jerked between her friends with each shot. Young Marines folded the flag and presented it to Brooke who took it with quiet thanks and more tears.

The preacher said a final prayer and Becca tugged her big sister’s hand. “I’ll Fly Away, Brooke. We should sing it for Rex like we did Mama and Daddy. He always loved to hear us sing. Come on, Brooke.”

She wondered if her heart would survive it. Stepping forward, she knelt beside the grave and tried to start but her throat hurt. Becca started, Molly and Jackson with her. Brooke came in low and gradually gained strength, remembering how Rex loved to have her sing and play for him. The four of them got stronger, glancing up gratefully as the Bradshaw brothers joined in. Then other people began to sing and when it finished, she smiled carefully for the first time in days.

She launched into She Talks to Angels, the first song she’d sung at the bar on their first real date together. Closing her eyes, she remembered that night, the way he’d watched her while she sang. It was already clear to her she’d fallen in love with him, she’d felt so immature, only teenagers did shit like that. Then he told her he needed her, wanted her. Felt as scared and confused as she did.