Unbearable

  Within seconds police rushed the room. “Freeze! Police!” I lifted one arm in the air, the gun still in my hand.

  “Booker!” Brent rushed over to me. “What happened? You only called a few minutes ago.”

  I gave him a quick rundown as one of his men checked Garen, while another called for an ambulance. He took Tess from me so my wounds could be dressed. Garen groaned off to the side. Good thing the SWAT team arrived, otherwise I would have put another bullet in him. This time it would have been in his head.

  “Any other injuries aside from the legs?” the medic asked as he applied a pressure bandage to my thigh. I about broke my teeth grinding them together to keep from screaming out. “Are those bullet holes in your coat?”

  I didn’t bother looking down. I nodded. “Johnson shot me twice in the chest, but I’m wearing a Kevlar vest.” The impact blew me back against the mirrors, knocking the wind out of me, but the bullets didn’t penetrate the vest. I could only imagine the bruises I’d have. I swore softly as the medic tightened the dressing around one of my legs.

  “Sorry,” he said, taping it into place.

  “Are you sure it’s only this shoulder wound on Tess, that she’s only fainted?” Brent asked, laying Tess down carefully next to me.

  “I couldn’t find anything else. She doesn’t do blood well. Faints every time.” I reached out to wipe the blood splattered on her face as the memories of my mother and sister ate at me. “I can’t do this anymore,” I repeated softly as I lay back on the mat, pushing away the nightmares.

  ***

  I sat in the dark, thinking. Not a good thing. The nurse left after giving me something to sleep. I don’t know why they bothered. They’d be back in ten minutes to take vitals or draw blood, waking me again anyway.

  All I did for three days was relive everything. I saw Tess’s blood-soaked shirt, her blood-splattered face over and over. In my dreams. Wide wake. It haunted my every moment. And of course, thinking of her only reminded me of everyone else I’d lost. My nerves were fried. Cole tried to get me to see a shrink from the trauma team, but I refused. I wanted to be alone.

  I convinced him to put me in an isolation room so I could drown in self-pity in peace. Mags and Seth came by, and when they saw the isolation sign in place, Seth knew it was my doing and not Cole’s. He called me on his cell and we had a heated discussion through the windows of the room over the phone.

  “This has you written all over it,” he snapped.

  I made a weak attempt to fight back. “Seth, I had surgery on both my legs. Why is it unreasonable to believe I have an infection?” The damage to my right leg was minimal, mostly muscle. Thankfully Garen was a lousy shot. The left leg had a small chip out of the bone and the most extensive damage. Cole said I’d have a couple months of physical therapy before I could walk without a cane. I hated the cane. It made me feel like an old man, but if I tried to walk without it, the pain about dropped me.

  Magpie paced back and forth as Seth continued to lecture me. Her stomach poked out a bit now. To see any kind of a tummy on her thin frame looked funny. She never could gain weight, no matter how hard she tried. I blamed it on her mother. Cole said it might be genetics. Whatever. Her mother was a waste, and as sour as my mood had been over the past few days, I didn’t want to hear it was genetics. I wanted to blame someone for everything.

  I also didn’t want to listen anymore to what Seth had to say. I knew he was right, but I continued to let everything churn and eat at me. I pretended my phone battery died, which he didn’t believe either. He stormed out. Maggie, with her soulful blue eyes looked at me. She mouthed, Love you, Garfield, and left.

  Lilah and Sofia came by a short time later. I waved at them through the window. Sofia brought a stuffed bear for me. She gave it to the nurse before they left. It broke my heart to see her sad little face as she waved her chubby fingers at me.

  Tess’s shoulder wound didn’t require surgery. Turned out she was up on her knees when I shot Garen’s hip out. The bullet grazed her shoulder after taking out his hip.

  It took nine hours of surgery to rebuild Garen’s hip socket. Both his hip and shoulder joints were completely destroyed and would have to be replaced after the bone healed. I don’t miss when I aim my gun. I wrestled with putting a bullet in his head, but years of training to shoot to stop, not shoot to kill, were embedded deep within me. Besides, unlike Garen, I wasn’t an animal, although I did hope that he’d live a long painful life of constant joint pain. Okay, so I wasn’t a complete animal.

  Tess didn’t have to spend any time in the hospital. They cleaned her shoulder, dressed it, and sent her home. She’d come by a number of times the first couple of days to visit me. Each time I made an excuse not to see her, claiming I had an appointment with a specialist or that I was extremely tired and could she come back another time. She stopped coming after the third day.

  Five days after my surgery I was discharged. Cole drove me home, and was given strict instructions, by me, to not let anyone know yet. I needed to get some rest because I certainly didn’t get any at the hospital. I was tired of chaos. I needed some peace and quiet.

  The next morning I rose early, unable to sleep. I let Daisy out. She took care of her business while I filled her food bowl. I let her back in and she ran straight to her food. “Slow down and enjoy it, girl.” I ruffled the fur on her head. She kept inhaling her meal. I hobbled over to the couch and sank into one of the recliners. I fell back asleep until the doorbell rang two hours later.

  I shuffled to the door, biting back several groans. I looked through the peephole and saw Tess standing there, looking beautiful in her green sweater. I love that on her.

  I reached for the handle, not looking forward to what I had to do, but it was time. The least I could do was tell her. That I owed her.

  “Hi. How are you feeling?” she asked. No hug, no kiss. She knew, or at least suspected, something was amiss.

  “Good. Come on in.” I waddled into the family room. The only sound was the click of my stupid cane on the wood floor. I dropped into the recliner with a grimace.

  “Are you okay? Would you like something for pain?” She sat next to me and touched my arm. I pulled way and folded my arms across my chest. It was going to be hard enough without having her touch me.

  “No. The pills don’t help with the pain. They just make my head foggy, and put me to sleep,” I explained as Daisy bounded into the room. She ran straight to Tess. No surprise. The dog loved Tess almost as much as I did. I stopped my hand from rubbing the ache in my heart.

  “Garen’s claiming it was self-defense.” She stroked the dog’s head. I could have sworn Daisy smiled. “He’s claiming you walked in on us in a compromising situation, and in a jealous rage you shot him.”

  “Seriously?” Idiot. “What about the clerk he killed over in Buffalo?”

  “An accident.” She clenched her jaw. “He said he was scared the clerk was going to shoot him and was trying to wrestle the gun away when it went off. Vintage Garen. Everything bad that happens is always someone else’s fault.”

  “He can’t think that will fly in court,” I pressed. She shrugged but said nothing else.

  With the exception of the grandfather clock in the corner with its rhythmic ticking, deafening silence filled the room. Even Daisy seemed to sense the tension as she slinked away.

  Finally, Tess cleared her throat. “I can’t thank you enough for saving me. I can never repay you.” She stared at her hands as she spoke instead of me. “And I’m guessing that you’ve had enough of my drama, and you want out.” Her eyes met mine. They mirrored what I felt. Heartbreak.

  “I can’t do this anymore, Tess. I left the MET because I was sick of the drama, the heartache. I want . . . no, I need a simple life. It’s why I chose real estate law over criminal or, heaven forbid, family law.” What some dysfunctional families did to each other disgusted me.

  “I see.” She stood. “And I understand. Garen may be in jail, but he’s hardly ou
t of my life. Who knows how long the trial will last? And he may even get off. It wouldn’t be the first time a guilty man walked free.”

  I struggled to get up and finally relented and used my cane. Tess’s face etched with anguish at watching me struggle. “I hope we can still be friends.” I wanted to kick myself the moment the words left my mouth. They were the kiss of death on any relationship.

  To her credit, she only nodded and turned for the door. “I’ll walk you to your car,” I said. She bolted ahead of me, slamming the door long before I got there. I hobbled into the kitchen and took a pain pill. I didn’t want to feel for a while.

  Chapter 36

  Tess

  My heart hurt. No matter what, I thought I could count on Booker. “I suck when it comes to picking out men. Absolutely suck.” I knew he was going to break up with me by the way he’d been acting. His ridiculous excuses for not seeing me at the hospital, the phony isolation stunt, were transparent. But to hear the actual words falling from his lips cut like a knife. If Booker had ripped my heart from my chest and stomped on it, it would hurt less. I wiped away the tears as they soaked my face.

  Now I had to go to Lilah’s and pretend nothing was wrong. She invited me over to help her plan a baby shower for Maggie. I thought it was a little early in the pregnancy to plan a shower, but Lilah was so excited about the baby, I didn’t point it out, not wanting to rain on her parade. So not in the mood for party planning at the moment.

  I sat in the car for a few minutes, reining in my emotions. I even applied some fresh mascara. After a few deep breaths, I headed for the door.

  I played it well. I smiled, made suggestions for party games, and even agreed to host one, putting myself in the center of attention for the first time in a long time. She had no idea I wanted to break down and cry.

  “Since both Cole and Seth will be working, I’ll have to make sure they move the furniture around in the living room the night before to accommodate the guest seating.” Lilah wrote herself a note in the margin of the yellow pad she’d been using to map out the shower. “I doubt Booker will be healthy enough yet to help. How’s Booker doing anyway? Cole said he’s in a lot of pain still.”

  “He . . . ah . . .” I took a deep breath as I forced myself not to cry.

  “What’s wrong? Is Book okay?” She wrapped a hand around my arm.

  “It’s not that. He . . . he broke up with me.” I tightened my jaw before giving her a recap of what happened. I impressed myself. I didn’t shed a single tear. In fact, my sorrow turned into anger the longer I talked.

  “He said he was sick of the drama, and he needed a simple life?” she repeated, sounding as exasperated as I felt. “Estúpido!” She slapped the table and stood as she went into a tirade entirely in Spanish, flipping her hands repeatedly in the air. She must have forgotten that I grew up in San Diego, and while I didn’t speak it well, I knew a lot of Spanish words. Thankfully, Sofia was in bed, otherwise she would have gotten a real education on how to cuss out a man in Spanish.

  Cole entered the kitchen, a look of confusion on his arched brow. “Lilah, what’s wrong?” He squeezed her shoulders.

  “Booker!” was all she said.

  Relief and a smile filled his face. “What did he do now?”

  “Broke up with Tess.” Lilah slapped her hand on her leg in frustration.

  “He told me he was sick of the drama, and wanted a simple life,” I explained to Cole.

  “I see.” Cole pulled out a chair for his wife, before sitting next to her. “I believe this can be blamed on his ‘save the world’ mentality. Booker’s obsessed with protecting those of us he loves. I know for a fact he’d lay down his life for me, without a second thought. For any one of us. Me or Lilah, Seth, Maggie. And now you.”

  “In that crazy head of his, Booker feels he failed his sister and his mom, and he’s afraid of failing us also,” Lilah said. “It’s an irrational thought. I mean, seriously, how can you defend your family against two punks with guns?”

  “And he knows that, too, deep inside, but Booker can’t let that thought go.” Cole shook his head, clearly worried about his friend. “Tess, did you know that Maggie lived with Booker at one time? Not in the romantic sense, this was strictly platonic. A brother and sister relationship, if you will.”

  “No. I know he has her dog, Daisy May.” I leaned back in the chair wondering what this had to do with me.

  “Remember Mags telling you that she and Seth wanted to wait until they were married before they slept together?” Lilah asked, somewhat calmer now thanks to Cole’s peaceful ways. I nodded. “Well, she moved in with Booker for a while, to make things easier on her and Seth. Anyway, everything started out okay.”

  “But about a year-and-a-half in, things fell apart.” Cole leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table.

  “It didn’t help that he and Seth were in the middle of a drug sting operation that went bad,” Lilah said, rubbing Cole’s arm.

  “Booker came staggering into my office one night at three in the morning,” Cole explained. Pain for his friend weighed on his face. “Book stumbled into my office ghost-white and sweating profusely. The temperature outside was negative two.”

  I stared mindlessly at the table while Cole laid out what happened.

  “Book insisted he was having a heart attack. He kept telling me his heart was pounding to the point of being painful. He collapsed onto the corner of my desk, not bothering to clear a spot, sending a file sideways onto the floor.” Cole took a breath, clearly bothered.

  “Was he?” I asked.

  “No.” Cole shook his head. “Panic attack. He and Seth were working undercover that night and were ensnared in a shootout. Seth went around to the front of the building without Booker knowing and he thought Seth had been shot. It threw Book into a panic.”

  “Panic attack. I had several of those over the past few years thanks to Garen,” I said dryly. “They can be debilitating.”

  “Extremely. It wasn’t until then that I noticed he’d lost weight, a good fifteen pounds, if I were to guess. Booker’s face was drawn and his eyes had dark bags underneath.” He sat silently for a minute, as if dwelling on the memory.

  “What does all this have to do with Maggie living with him?” I pressed, knowing I didn’t want to hear the rest of this. I didn’t want to feel sorry for Booker at the moment. I was angry, and I wanted to be angry with him.

  “I was pretty sure I knew what triggered the attack that night,” Cole continued. “He’d been stressing about Maggie’s safety for months, and it seemed to be escalating. The incident with Seth brought it all to a head.”

  “Stressing about Maggie?” I asked.

  “Yes. He mentioned a few weeks earlier that he wasn’t sleeping well. That he’d wake in the middle of the night and rush to see if his security system had been breached. Then he’d recheck each door and window in the house two or three times to make sure they were secure.”

  “Afraid that what happened to his family would happen to Maggie,” I said, as sorrow touched my heart. How awful for him. It broke my heart to know how much he’d suffered, and still suffered with that memory.

  Lilah set a glass of water in front of me, pulling me out of my thoughts. I thanked her and drained the glass, not realizing just how thirsty I was. Probably from all my crying.

  “So, what happened?” I asked.

  “We ran several tests, to be safe, but that’s what it was. Maggie moved out and back in with Seth the next day, and that’s when I moved in with them. Maggie hurt for Booker, and didn’t want to leave him alone, but she knew it had to be. That’s why he has Daisy. Maggie didn’t want Book to be completely alone,” Cole explained. “Booker slept for twenty-six hours straight that first night. I had him speak to a specialist, and she taught him some coping skills that helped tremendously. But in all honesty, Maggie’s moving out was all it took.”

  I sat quietly for a moment, thinking about what Cole and Lilah had shared with me. “Do you bel
ieve that the incident with Garen triggered the panic attacks again?” Feeling guilty, I fingered the glass instead of looking at them.

  “No, at least he swears he’s not had any,” Cole said, taking my hand in his. “Honestly, I think he’s scared that something horrible is going to happen to you, and he’ll lose you, just like he’s lost so many other people in his life. He needs time. That’s my professional and personal opinion.”

  I pushed to my feet. “So I’m supposed to wait around until Booker decides to get his head together?” Frustrated, I paced to the window above the sink and looked out at the stupid snow. Does it ever stop snowing here?

  “Tess, I didn’t tell you all this so you’d feel obligated to wait around for him,” Cole explained. “I just wanted you to have the full picture before you make a decision. You know me. I’m a fact kind of guy.”

  I smiled, remembering when Booker had said the exact same thing about him. After Cole learned he had cancer, he researched several different avenues of treatment. After deciding which one he believed to be the most promising, Cole presented his findings to the oncologist and told him that was the protocol they’d follow. Never once did Cole whine Why me or This isn’t fair. He saw a problem and took control of his situation.

  “I love Book, as much as I do my own brothers. He’s kind, compassionate, giving, extremely sarcastic,” Cole chuckled. “He’s also been through some pretty horrific stuff, and is struggling right now. But then again, so have you.”

  Lilah stepped to my side. Cole came next to her and leaned against the sink, folding his arms across his chest. “Only you can decide how you want to handle this,” she said. “Are you done with the guy? Or do you want to give Estup . . . Booker some time? The way I see it, it boils down to a couple of things. How much do you love him, and is he worth the headache?” She smiled softly. “I think I know what you’ll say. But remember one thing, Tess. You’re in charge of you. Not a man. Not any man, or woman, for that matter. Take control. Do what you have to do to reclaim your life, no matter what that is. We’ll stand by you, one hundred percent.” Cole nodded at his wife’s words.