Not nearly. How awful. Damn. “Go on.”
He settled hips against the kitchen counter and crossed his legs. She didn’t glance at his package deliberately. It was an ocular accident.
“She was a local girl named Healani. We married between my tours of duty. It wasn’t fireworks at night or anything. We’d known each other our entire lives. After a while you stop expecting … crazy kinds of love.” He didn’t look away. He was being more honest than he needed to be.
“I was happy. And then the big news came via Skype on my last tour. She even had this blurry photo of a blob as proof.” His gaze shifted away from her. “I’d always thought I’d be thrilled to hear the words, You’re going to be a dad. Nothing. I felt zero.” He shook his head, as if still unable to believe it.
Yardley bit her lip, winced. “What happened?”
“She was pretty far along by the time I got home. Two weeks after I returned stateside, the boyfriend calls, tells her he wants her and the baby. That’s when she confesses the truth to me. Baby’s not mine. It was Christmas Day.” He looked back at her. “That’s when I finally felt some emotion.”
Crap. He’d been really hurt. She could see the lingering effects of it now in the tautness of his mouth and the tightness around the eyes. “I’m sorry, Kye.”
He shrugged. “The hardest part was dealing with everybody else. She left the island with Baby Daddy without a word to anyone. Not even her family. Everybody’d bought us all this baby stuff for Christmas, in preparation. I gave it all back. I haven’t been back to Hawaii at Christmas since.”
Yardley didn’t know what to say to that. He was sharing his most intimate pain but she wasn’t ready to share David. It wouldn’t change anything, for either of them. She changed the subject. “I heard you tell the sheriff you served with Law in Afghanistan. Is that where you met my brother?”
Kye nodded but his eyes hadn’t lost that old-wound pain. “I was there the day he was wounded. Haven’t seen him since. He’s rejected my calls and messages for the past four years.”
“But he sent you here. Why would he do that?”
Kye looked like he wasn’t going to answer. “Law said I was the only one he trusted.”
“Why?”
“He knows I’ll take care of business.” He made full eye contact. “After they were attacked, I’m the one who had to shoot Law’s K-9, Scud.”
Stunned, Yardley tried to digest that, in all its implications. The death of Law’s military police K-9 had figured greatly into her brother’s PTSD issues. “Law said Scud was wounded, too, and went a little mad trying to protect him from even his squad members.”
He nodded slowly. “Tried to bite the medics who needed to get to Law before he bled out.” There were a lot of emotions vying for dominance in Kye’s expression. “It was Scud’s life or Law’s.”
The gruff pain in his voice raked up her spine. He wasn’t cutting himself any slack for that decision, even after all this time.
She touched his crossed arms with the gentlest of touches. “It was a fucked-up situation, Kye. No good options. You did what you had to do to save my brother’s life. Thank you.”
His gaze shifted to her hand where her thumb instinctively brushed along his forearm in comforting strokes. Then it rose to her face. “You Battises try to have the world your way. Even your friendships occupy little compartments in your minds that you open and close when it suits you. It makes it hard for those of us who care about you.”
Those of us who care about you.
The words echoed inside her mind. Jori, Law’s new lady friend, had said something similar when dealing with Law. An hour ago she would have been happy to hear that hint of caring in Kye’s voice. Now it only made her feel worse. There were other considerations. There was David.
She almost reached for the phone in her pocket before she stopped herself. She would have known if there was a message. It would have pinged and vibrated.
She turned and reached for the coffeepot to refill her still mostly full cup. “Don’t start rearranging reality, Kye. Law is the reason you’re here, or you’d never have come back. It’s been twelve years. Where was the interest in me for those twelve years?”
“Hawaiians have a saying. Aloha mai no, aloha aku.”
She glanced over at him. “What does that mean?”
He gave her something short of a smile. “Look it up.”
“Right.” Yardley nodded. On autopilot because, suddenly, she wasn’t certain any longer about anything.
She couldn’t feel for David what she did and make peace with her actions with Kye this morning. That had been too intense, went too deep, had gotten past all her barriers. Even ones David never touched. What a mess.