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I climbed up the deck stairs and reached Reese right before his legs gave out. I caught him as he fell and sank onto the deck floor with him. I didn’t see his cane anywhere, which meant he’d had to walk on his own to get out here.
“Are you hurt?” I asked as I held him. He was breathing hard.
We both were.
“No. You?” He pushed me back so he could look at my head. I could feel blood trickling down the side of my face.
“I’m okay,” I said.
He jerked me into his arms and I felt him shake his head against my shoulder. “He had his gun pointed at your head,” he whispered. “I thought I wouldn’t… that I wouldn’t…”
“You did,” I said to him. “You saved me, Reese. I’m still here.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry.”
The whispered words hurt my heart. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I shouldn’t have—”
I cut him off by forcing him to look at me. “No, we’re not doing this anymore. No more fucking I’m sorrys, do you hear me? We’ve got a second chance, Reese. I’m not wasting even a second of it with regrets.”
Reese nodded. “Me neither,” he agreed.
“We’ll take it slow, okay?”
“Yeah,” he agreed, then he hugged me. “But not too slow, okay, Dad?”
“Not too slow,” I murmured in agreement. I glanced up as Gage stepped up onto the deck, still holding Charlie. He dropped down next to us and wrapped his free arm around me. I had no idea how long we stayed like that for, but it wasn’t until Nash walked through the door with Phillipe at his side and the two men joined in on the embrace that I finally knew everything was going to be okay.
And in that moment, we truly became the family none of us had been expecting, but that we’d all needed just the same.
Epilogue
Everett
Four months later
“Stop looking at me like that,” Reese said as he cast me a glance.
“Like what?” I asked.
“You know like what.”
“Sorry,” I murmured. “You’re my kid. I’m going to worry.”
“I know,” Reese said patiently. “But if it makes you feel better, it’ll be a straightforward job.”
I sighed. I knew Reese wouldn’t know what it was like to have that near-constant niggle of worry in the back of his mind until he was a father himself.
Even the idea of my son having that kind of future someday – a man who loved him unconditionally and a child or children they could shower with all the love and attention Reese should have had growing up – eased something in my soul.
He’d have that.
I had to believe that.
The past four months had been a mix of ups and downs. Reese had found a sense of family with me, Gage, Nash, and Gage’s father and daughter, but there was still something missing for my son. He carried a lot of guilt about the events of the night we’d been attacked. When he’d learned that the men had, in fact, come after him after they’d recognized his picture on the news, he’d been completely devastated and he’d tried to do what had always served him so well in the past.
Run.
We hadn’t let him, of course, but no amount of reassurance from any of us that we didn’t blame him for the events of that night had completely assuaged him of his guilt. And while he hadn’t run, he’d withdrawn into himself more and more as time went on. In some ways, it felt like I was losing him all over again.
Which was why I was hopeful that even though I was worried about him getting back to work, it would give him back some of the sense of balance he’d finally started to feel in the weeks we’d had before the attack. Physically, he was completely recovered in that he could walk and run, but mentally he was struggling with the change in his physical appearance. His arms were terribly scarred, enough so that he avoided wearing short-sleeved shirts, even when he worked out. His chest didn’t look as bad because of the skin grafts, but it would take time before you couldn’t tell the difference between the grafts and the normal skin. My son wasn’t a vain man, but the disfigurement fed into the deep-rooted insecurities he’d carried for most of his life that he wasn’t good enough. Those were feelings he wouldn’t just be able to get over.
Ronan and I had both urged him to talk to a professional about the trauma from the physical scars he carried, but he’d adamantly refused. He carried the mantra that I’d lived with for too many years after losing Pierce.
I’m fine.
While Reese continued to struggle with his recovery, the rest of our family was doing relatively well. The fallout from the attack had been instant and chaotic. We’d been lucky that the local police hadn’t been able to figure out that the attack had been anything more than a violent home invasion. But since I’d been involved, the FBI and Secret Service had taken over. At that point, I’d had to call in a few favors to ensure that Reese’s name wasn’t publicly linked to the men. Reese had argued with me that I shouldn’t have used my position to protect him, but I’d put the argument to rest when I’d pointed out that I’d done it to protect our entire family. Too much attention on Reese could potentially lead to attention on Gage and what he did for a living, which could’ve led back to Ronan.
