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“It’s just a very sad thing when you realize that no one’s ever going to take care of you like that again. Because only my dad ever...”
She stopped talking, her words getting choked. He couldn’t relate because he didn’t know what it was like to be able to count on someone to take care of him at all.
But right then he felt her loss. He knew it must be devastating. How could it not be? To have had something like that and to lose it... It made his chest feel all torn up and bloody just thinking about it. Poor Charity. It made him want to wrap her in something soft. Give her whatever she needed. But definitely a cup of tea. No one had ever really taken care of him, but he could say that he hadn’t taken care of anyone else, either.
His brothers had protected him. Especially Gus. But there was a hard edge to that reality. To the way that they had been with one another, always.
It wasn’t the same as care in the way that she was talking about.
Gus had wanted to make him tough. It had been a matter of survival. Especially for Lachlan.
So he had taken his brother up on that. It was what they’d all had to do to survive living in the McCloud house.
Why have so many kids? Why have so many kids if you hated them so much?
Maybe their dad hadn’t hated them, either. Maybe it was an extension of that same manic love he felt for their mother. Maybe all his feelings were just...
Poison.
The thought made Lachlan wince.
Maybe that was part of why marriage had been so healing to his siblings. Maybe it was part of why having children fixed something inside them.
Because they were proving they could do it. Right and healthy and...not all that their lives had been.
Maybe proving it would fix this feeling.
It made sense.
It made a perfect kind of sense.
They got out of the large truck and started to walk toward the house, and Charity faltered, stumbling. He reached out quickly and grabbed hold of her arm, holding her so that she was upright and steady. She was so slender and small, his hand wrapped all the way around her forearm, his fingers overlapping. Her skin was soft.Shewas soft. He eyes glittered as she looked up at him in the darkness.
“That’s why we need to leave the porch light on,” she said. “I slipped on a rock.”
“Be careful, Doc,” he said, releasing her slowly. “I don’t know how to stitch you up.”
She laughed, a breathy sort of sound. “I’m definitely not letting you come at me with a needle and thread.”
“As well you shouldn’t. I am definitely not to be trusted.”
She went ahead of him toward the house and he smiled, into the darkness, simply because it did something to ease the tension in his gut.
He could use that.
He was riled up from what had happened at Ed’s place. He knew that he didn’t see behavior like that because he was a man. He’d grown up around here, too. He’d been just a kid to all these older people. Not only that; they might have reason to distrust him because he was his father’s son. Hell, he almost couldn’t blame them if they did.
But hedidn’tget treated like that. Ed had even been happy to see him. Lachlan was able to be a man in his own right, sure and confident in his opinions because he had shown up and was a man. Which wasn’t fair because she deserved respect.
That was what had him all tense. Having to look that bullshit straight in the face. He didn’t like it one bit. He didn’t like it at all.
Charity pushed the door open to the house after unlocking it and flipped open the light. It bathed the whole living room in a warm glow, and that empty chair in the corner felt like a slap to him, so he could only imagine how it felt to her. Poor thing.
“Have a seat,” he said.
“You’re not so bad,” she said. “I guess this is why I keep you around and give you free medical care.”
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but I am basically your lab rat.”
