She undressed, showered. She washed the scent of Chase from her body, and if her tears mixed in the water, she didn’t worry about them. She toweled off, dried her hair, and moved to the bed. She crawled into the center of it and propped the extra pillows behind her back and held on to another. With the sheet and comforter pulled over her, she could almost imagine Chase was holding her.
Almost.
It would have to be enough.
The upstairs door to Chase’s apartment slammed with enough force that Jaci jerked against Cam’s chest where they sat on the couch, and stared at the ceiling.
The sound of boots stomping against the hardwood floor upstairs vibrated down, and her brows arched as she turned to Cameron.
What explanation was he supposed to give her? He stared at the ceiling, and his chest ached. He could feel the echo of the wild, tumultuous emotions raging through his brother and wished there was a way to make it easier.
“What the hell is going on up there?” Jaci asked slowly, frowning as he pulled her tighter into his arms. Cam thanked God he didn’t face the nights alone anymore.
Cam sighed at her question. “He’s falling in love.” If he hadn’t already fallen. Kia Rutherford had always been a weak spot with Chase. Cam did not doubt that Chase had always felt something for her.
“So that’s worth slamming his door off the hinges and pounding on his floor?” she asked skeptically.
Cam shook his head. “Not a bad thing, sweetheart. But for Chase, possibly, a little unfamiliar. He’s not going to handle it well at all.”
He stroked her arms, remembering how he had fought falling in love himself, how hard letting go had been, how difficult to admit to the feelings that had taken root inside him.
“I bet Kia’s not pounding the floors.” She sniffed. “Probably crying into her pillow. He’s going to break her heart, isn’t he?”
Cam pulled her closer. “Did I break your heart?”
“Dented it a little. Maybe.” She had shed tears for him, ached and hurt for him, but her heart had always been whole and had wholly belonged to him.
He smiled against her hair. “It’s a guy thing. It makes us vulnerable. All our pride, our emotions, and everything we are get tangled up around one person who could so easily destroy it. It’s the warrior instinct, losing a battle to a silken, soft, defenseless woman. We’re brought emotionally to our knees. Chase will fight it every step of the way.”
“Why?” She shook her head, leaning back to stare up at him, obviously trying to make sense of it. “Why would you want to?”
Cam shook his head. “That first realization that your heart, soul, strength, everything you are, belongs to someone else isn’t always easy, Jaci. Because a man realizes how easily it can be taken from him, either by death or by design or pure ignorance on our own part. That instinct, that knowledge, when it first awakens, is a damned frightening thing.”
“You don’t seem so frightened, Cam.” Her smile was all woman and made him harder than hell. But it also reminded him that he had fought those feelings just as hard as Chase was fighting them now. For different reasons, but he had fought.
“If I lose you, I lose myself, and I know that. But holding you, the pleasure and the need and the hunger hold the fears at bay. But have no doubt, any man who tried to take what’s mine would die. And if death should steal you from me, Jaci, then I’d follow you swiftly.”
He watched her eyes well with tears, watched a single drop ease from them.
“I love you the same, Cam,” she whispered. “Always. Forever.”
He held her to him, his gaze going to the ceiling again as he prayed Chase lost the battle he was fighting inside himself.
Losing Jaci would kill Cam. But having her completed him. It was a completion his brother and Kia deserved.
Chase stomped to the sink, jerked the whiskey from the cabinet, and sloshed the dark amber liquid into a shot glass before tossing it back and grimacing at the fiery blast that hit the back of his throat and flowed to his stomach.
Hell, it had been a long time since he’d done more than sip at the liquor. Many years since he had upended a bottle to see how much he could take in one long drink.
He’d set the liquor aside when he turned nineteen and had rarely looked back. Until now.
He thumped the bottle on the counter and turned away from it. He plowed his fingers through his hair and stared around the huge, open apartment. Living room, kitchen, and dining room were open, just as they were on Cameron’s level. Two bedrooms, bath, and washroom were roomed off, though, but were large, open, and airy once a person stepped inside. And there was space to add rooms if he needed to, if he and Cameron did as they had once talked about doing. Raising their families here, always a part of each other. Always brothers and family.
Those plans had been developed too many years ago. The drunken ramblings of two young men with nothing to hold on to but the future. At the time, Chase had known it was his dream, not Cam’s. Now Cam had a fiancée, and he was dreaming the dream, and here Chase sat, staring into the darkness amid the shit he had collected over the years.
Only in the past months had Cam begun picking from the family pictures Chase had kept when they sold their parents’ home and property to fund the rest of their lives.
Chase had sworn, the day they sold it, that he would never again lose something that belonged to him. Cameron, too, had needed to sell it, to sever all ties with the county, the small town, where he had known nothing but hell. For Chase, it was bittersweet.
He’d taken the collected memories, the quilts their mother had made, the family pictures and albums, the mementos that were priceless to him, and he’d stored them until they bought this warehouse. Until he had built the rooms and brought in the past that created him.
One of the quilts was on his bed and others lay over the back of the couch, as well as the spare bed. His mother’s prized bedroom suite was in the spare room. The antique dining set was carefully polished by the cleaning lady every week and sat peacefully in his dining room.
And here he was alone.
What the hell had he saved these things for? They didn’t fill the hole he had always felt in his life, and didn’t ease the bleak knowledge that there was no one to share them with. A knowledge he had only begun to realize.
I feel sorry for you, Chase. One of these days you’re going to realize just how damned little anyone cares for you!
That accusation drifted through his head. Joannie Lemaster, his first live-in lover, hadn’t exactly stinted on giving her opinion when he had walked out the door that night to return to work. He had been a federal agent, he had a job to do, and that night he had nearly died doing it.
He’d awakened in the hospital days later, and Joannie hadn’t been there. When he came home, she had been gone. He’d walked into an empty apartment, and the loneliness had slammed inside him.
Several years later he remembered waking alone, sitting up in the bed, his chest on fire, a dream of death and blood so vivid in his brain that his first thought had been of his brother. The next day, he’d received the call he’d been dreading since Cam joined the military.
Cam was near death. They hadn’t expected him to survive. He’d flown to Cam’s side, certain he was going to lose the last link to anyone who truly knew him. And it was his fault. When he returned to the States with his brother, his new live-in lover had left, just as Joannie had. That one he had even put effort into. He’d tried not to be distant. He’d called her when he flew out of the country and called her daily until the day before he flew home with Cam. And she hadn’t even told him she was leaving.