Stonehill series collect.., p.68
Stonehill Series Collection, page 68
They both smiled, but Mallory’s didn’t last long.
“I feel badly leaving you, Mom.”
Annie shook her head. “You know what I hate more than all the pity I get? The guilt. You are allowed to live your life. I want you to live your life. I want to live my life. I want us all to start living again.”
“I can put off starting until after Thanksgiving, but I’d be gone before Christmas.”
Annie smiled. “Maybe Marcus and I will come to you? That’d be fun.”
“It would be fun.” Her grin widened. “Remember when you said maybe you’d come to San Diego to elope? A Christmas wedding in California would be lovely.”
She laughed. “I don’t know that we’re quite ready for that, but maybe someday.”
“I’m glad you guys are doing better.”
“I didn’t realize we were doing badly.”
“Come on, Mom. Up until a few days ago, you were more like friends than a couple.”
Annie nodded. “He had some guilt, and I had some insecurities. I think we’re moving past them. I hope we are.”
“Well, once I’m gone, that should help.”
“You aren’t in the way, Mallory. You’ve been wonderful.”
“Yeah. Except when I’m trying to feed you.”
They both laughed.
“I put you to work,” Marcus said, coming into the conference room, “and here you are goofing off with our girl.”
Annie smiled up at him. She no longer felt put out by him calling Mallory their girl. How could she be when it always made Mal smile? To be honest, knowing Marcus cared so much about her daughter made Annie smile, too. They really had started to feel like a family.
“Has she told you the big news, or did I actually get to hear it first this time?” Annie asked.
“You heard it first,” Mallory said. She looked at Marcus and took a deep breath. “California is calling. They’ve offered me a position again.”
“Well, you must have really wowed them, kid.”
“She is my daughter,” Annie said.
“When do you leave?”
“After Thanksgiving. But you and Mom are coming out for a visit as soon as I get settled.” She stood and hugged Marcus then came around the table and hugged Annie. “I’m going to go call them and set a start date. Thanks, Mom.”
“I’m proud of you, Mal.” When they were alone, Annie smiled at Marcus. “Sorry. I committed you to a trip to California without asking.”
He shook his head as he leaned down and kissed hers. “I wouldn’t miss it. We’ll have to plan it in advance, though. We don’t want to wait until the last minute to fly out, and we should go in the middle of the week. It will be mayhem at the airport on a weekend.”
She sighed. “I’m not going to lie. I’m a little scared at the thought of flying. All the lights and the people. I think it would be overwhelming for me. I’m afraid I’d freeze.”
“So we drive.”
“In the winter?”
“Whatever it takes.” Sitting next to her, he ran his hand over her back. “Show me what you’ve done here.”
She frowned as she looked at the tablet. “Not much, but I’ll get the hang of it.” She swiped the screen and showed him the flyer she was putting together. It wasn’t overly impressive in the scheme of things, but considering how much effort she’d had to put into it, she was pretty proud of herself.
He brushed her bangs from her forehead. “Good job, sweetheart. You’ll get better at this the more you do it. Once you get the hang of this, we’ll see what else we can dump on you…I mean, have you help with.” He winked at her. “I’ve been thinking about something. You were right. When you said I needed to reach out to someone. I’m going to have lunch with Paul and Matt. I hadn’t wanted to burden them with this, but I’m not sure anyone else will fully understand. They’ve been with me through this whole thing. They felt the same fears. They’ll get it.”
She put her hand on his face. “Thank you. Maybe I can stop worrying about you so much now.”
He put his hand over hers and turned his face to kiss her palm. “Why are you worrying about me? Hmm?”
“Because you aren’t as tough as you try to be.”
He sat back and widened his eyes, playfully shocked. “Oh, is that so?”
“That’s so. I’ve been telling you that for years.”
“I’ll show you tough.” He cupped the back of her head, pulled her to him, and kissed her square on the lips. “Now. What do you have to say about that?”
The thinly veiled lust on his face made her heart do a little flip. “Oh my, Marcus. That’s a look I haven’t seen in a while.”
“I watched you sleep for a long time last night. I was just thinking. Remembering. Every time the guilt and the fear started creeping in, I pushed those feelings away and focused on something good. That helped. Focusing on the good memories helped.”
“Good.”
He dragged his thumb over her lips as his eyes scanned her face. Her heart did more than a flip. It picked up double time as her body started tingling. He smiled sexily, and she returned it. Running her hand up the length of his forearm, she gripped his wrist.
“We’re at work,” she whispered.
“I know.” He leaned in and lightly pressed his lips below her ear. “That’s what makes it so fun.”
She wanted to tell him no, but then he kissed her neck again and her body nearly melted where she sat. “What, exactly, is it about being in the office that turns you on so much?”
He chuckled seductively. “You are one seriously sexy boss.”
A throat clearing loudly made Marcus lean back.
“So, sorry to interrupt your completely inappropriate work meeting,” Mallory said with a grin, “but thought you’d like to know I confirmed my start date for December second. I’m going to go book a flight while you get back to, um, making flyers. Shall I close the door?”
“Yes,” Marcus said, while Annie said, “No” at the exact same time.
Annie tried to glare at Marcus, but she couldn’t. Her heart was too light. Putting her hands to his face, she leaned forward and put her lips to his.
Marcus sighed as he ran out of small talk to make with Annie’s brothers. They all knew they were there for heavier conversation. He had started to doubt if he wanted to talk to them about this, but it was important to Annie, so he had to try.
“I told Matt about your dreams,” Paul said.
Marcus chuckled. “You O’Connells. Nothing is sacred with you, is it?”
“Family is sacred,” Matt said. “And for all intents and purposes, you’re family.”
Marcus nodded. “Thanks.”
“Are the dreams any better? After talking things out with Annie, I mean.”
“A bit. I’m working on pushing out the bad thoughts and letting in the good, but… That day,” he said quietly. “It’s never going to leave me. Not completely.”
“I still see her like that,” Matt said. “With the bandages and her face so distorted. Scared the hell out of me.”
“Me too,” Paul admitted. “Did she tell you how I coped?” He glanced at his little brother. “Whenever it’d get to be too much, I’d go sit in front of the old house and think about when we were kids.”
Matt scoffed. “Why’d you want to think about that?”
“Because that’s how I remember her. You were pretty young when Mom died, Matty, but I remember Annie before she turned into a mother hen—always fussing and pushing and reminding us to keep trying.”
Matt dropped his sandwich. “I would go to the baseball park. Sit on the bleachers and remember how she used to always find a way for us to play. I hated having to wear secondhand pants and shoes, but I always got to be on the team, and that’s what mattered. Not back then. Back then I was pissed I didn’t have the best of the best. But now I know playing is what mattered. Man, I gave her a hard time when I was a kid.”
“You didn’t know better,” Paul said. He looked across the table. “How’d you cope, Marcus?”
He drew a breath. “I didn’t. I guess that’s the problem. That’s…that’s why she’s pushing me to talk to you guys now. Because I haven’t coped. I just pushed it down and got through the day and did what I had to do.”
Paul nodded. “And now it’s catching up to you.”
Marcus picked up a fry but then tossed it down. “I relive that day every time I close my eyes. When I look at her, when I look into her eyes, I see them as they were when she was shot. Blank.” He ran his hand over his face. “I try to push it away, but it’s there. When we try to get close…” He stopped and looked at them. “You really want me to talk to you about this?”
“Yes,” Paul said, and Matt nodded.
“When I caught her, when I eased her onto the floor and I was leaning over her, I thought she was dead. She looked dead. She wasn’t talking, and her eyes were just flat. Empty. I thought—” He stopped when the emotion caused his chest to tighten. “I thought she was already gone. I kept begging her to hold on, but I really thought she was already dead. I don’t think I understood that she was still alive until the paramedics got there and found a pulse. I can see her lying there as clearly now as the day it happened. Whenever we’re close, when I’m holding her… That all comes flooding back, and I can’t… How am I supposed to…” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I know she’s hurting because she thinks this is about her disabilities, but it’s not. It’s not Annie. It’s me. How am I supposed to make love to her when every time I get close to her, I think about her dying in my arms?”
Silence hung over the table long enough that Marcus scoffed. “She thinks talking to you guys will help. I was worried I’d just add to what you are already going through.”
“Stop,” Paul said. “You aren’t adding to what we’re going through. You think we don’t have the same thoughts? You think I don’t look at her and see her like she was after surgery? Bruised and bandaged. We thought she was dead, too, Marcus. I know it’s not the same because we weren’t there, but the doctors all but said she was going to die. We lost her, too. What you are going through isn’t that different than what we have gone through. The thing to remember is that she is still alive. She’s still with us. When you’re holding her now, she isn’t dying in your arms, Marcus. She’s living. As much as she can given what happened.”
“I can’t imagine what you went through,” Matt said. “Seeing her get shot like that had to have been horrifying. How often have you asked yourself what you could have done differently?”
“About ten times every minute since that day.”
“Have you realized yet that you couldn’t have done anything differently?”
He lowered his face and sniffed, trying to stop his grief from surfacing. It didn’t help. He had to clear his throat and push the tightness in his chest down so he could breathe again. “Logically, I know that. I walked into the room, said her name, and he pulled the trigger. I didn’t even know what was happening until it was too late. But in my heart?” There was that damn emotion again. He bit his lip, almost controlling himself until Paul put his hand on his shoulder. Marcus choked out a quiet sob. “I was there to protect her. I was there to keep her safe. And I didn’t.”
“You couldn’t have,” Paul said softly. “Marcus. You couldn’t have. I don’t know what to say to help you ease your guilt. But I do want you to know that none of us, not even for a moment, blamed you for what happened to Annie. We know you would have taken that bullet for her. I don’t doubt that for a second, but that’s not how it played out. She got shot, but she beat the odds, and that’s what we have to focus on.”
“It should have been me,” Marcus said quietly. “She should have been trying to get the sale. She should have been safe in the kitchen. Not me.”
“Does Annie feel that way?” Matt asked. “Does she wish it had been you?”
Marcus scoffed. “You know better. She doesn’t think like that.”
“She’d take a thousand hits before she let anyone she cares about take one,” Paul said. “And she loves you, Marcus. She would never want to see you hurt.”
“I know that. That’s why I’m here. Dumping this shit on you guys. Because she can see that I’m hurting, and that’s hurting her, and the last thing I want is to make things more difficult for her. She’s going through enough already.”
Paul shook his head. “You aren’t dumping.”
“Here’s the thing,” Marcus said. “My brain knows I did everything I could, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling like I should have done more. The guilt is eating me alive. Every time she takes a step forward in her recovery, the happiness I feel for her is overshadowed by this feeling that we wouldn’t be celebrating her”—he waved his hand—“opening a fucking ketchup bottle if I’d done what I was there to do. I shouldn’t have been off trying to lock down a sale. I should have been with her. I was there to look out for her.”
“And why were you off trying to lock down a sale?” Matt asked.
Marcus sighed and shook his head.
“Because Annie wanted you to. She sent you into the other room. Because she never thought for a moment that some punk-ass kid was going to walk in with a gun. Because nobody ever thinks that is going to happen, Marcus. Neither of you were being lax in security. You both did what you had done hundreds of times before. Hell, I’ve run a quick errand when I was supposed to be there to deter this kind of shit from happening. Nothing that you or Annie or anybody else could have done would have stopped this from happening.”
Marcus nodded. “Yeah, Matt. I have this same pep talk with myself all the time.”
“His point,” Paul intervened, “is that your guilt is unfounded. Did you think, even once, when she was in a coma that she’d ever open a ketchup bottle again?”
Marcus looked at him and scoffed at the absurdity of the question. “No.”
“Did you think, even once, that she was going to die like that?”
The heaviness in his chest returned. He nodded. “Every day for almost three months.”
“Me too. Every time I walked out of that hospital, part of me thought it was going to be the last time I’d see her alive. So the fact that she opened a ketchup bottle is worth celebrating. The fact that she can still tell us all to go to hell is worth celebrating. That’s what you need to think about when you’re holding her. She’s still here.”
“I’ve tried. Don’t you think I’ve tried? It’s not that easy.”
It was Matt’s turn to put a supportive hand on Marcus’s shoulder.
“Paul’s right. Nothing we say is going to flip a switch for you, but we do need you to know that there is no one else in the world we’d want looking out for our sister right now, Marcus. We know how much you love her and how protective you are of her. We trust you. If that means anything at all.”
Marcus laughed. “Actually, that means a lot. I know you O’Connells don’t trust easy, especially an outsider.”
“You’re not an outsider,” Paul said. “No matter what happens between you and Annie, you’ve proven yourself to us. You stood by her during the worst time in all of our lives.”
He shook his head. “This isn’t going to end us. I’m not going to let that happen. We’ve been through too damn much. I just have to get my head around some things.”
“I wish we could be more help,” Matt said.
“You have helped. More than you know. Then again”—he lifted his near-empty bottle—“maybe that’s the beer talking.”
They chuckled quietly, and Paul waved over a waitress, ordering refills all around. Marcus used the distraction to take a few deep breaths and put his despair back in check.
Paul tapped his fingers on the table a few times before saying, “Sometimes, when I think too hard about what she’s been through, I wonder how she survived it. How the hell did she survive taking a bullet to the brain? Then I think about how damned stubborn that woman is.”
They all laughed.
“But that’s what got her through,” he said with a nod. “That’s what got her through raising us. That’s what got her through being a single mom and building a business from the ground up. That’s what got her through being shot. And that’s what’s going to get her through recovering.”
Marcus nodded in agreement then lifted his beer. “To Annie’s stubbornness.”
They all chuckled and clinked their beers before taking long drinks.
“I still haven’t decided if you’re a saint or a fool,” Paul said, “but I’m glad she has you.”
Marcus laughed. “Pretty sure I’m a fool. That’s what she’s always telling me anyway.”
Annie smiled brightly when Marcus came in the front door. She didn’t usually do the giddy welcome-home thing, but she was so impressed with him for meeting her brothers and herself for what she’d been able to accomplish while he was gone that she couldn’t wait to see him.
He’d barely hung his coat up before she hugged him and planted a kiss on his cheek.
“How was your day?” she asked.
“Good. And yours?”
She drew a breath and put her arm through his. “Come with me. I have something very important to show you.”
He laughed quietly. “Okay.”
She led him to the kitchen and pushed him toward the table. “Sit.” As he sat, she peeled the foil off the pan she’d used to bake a cake. She bit her lip as she fiddled with the knife until she was finally able to cut a piece and put it on a plate. She carried it to him and set it in front of him. “Ta-da. Granted, it’s out of a box, but I baked a cake.”
Marcus stared at it for a moment before looking up at her. “Very nice.”
“I’m impressed. I didn’t burn it or anything.”
“Good job, sweetheart.” Grabbing her wrist, he tugged until she sat in his lap.
She wrapped her arms around his neck. “If you bite into an eggshell, I fully expect you to smile and swallow it down.”
“I will certainly do that.”
She dragged her hand over his jaw, and her smile faded. “I thought you might need it after your dinner with my brothers. How’d it go?”
