Face them so you can move on to something better. Something in the here and now. Something like Em.
He’d behaved like an ass with her. A total ass, and he didn’t know how to fix it. He’d wanted to stop in her office a hundred times today—smell her perfume, see her smile—apologize for being such a dick, but she’d left work early, and he had things to handle first. He wanted to go to her with a clear head. Reece was muddying those waters right now.
Em played a huge part in his calling Reece. If he could figure out what she wanted, then he’d know what to do next. But if he didn’t clear it all up, see her one last time and let it go for good, he couldn’t move forward with Em.
To Em.
He wanted to move forward. The hell with her protests and her nothing-personal mantra. She wanted him, too. He felt it in his gut—now he just had to convince her to get on board.
A chair scraped, startling him.
“Why you here in the dark, big brother?”
Jax spun the phone around, not looking at Tag. “Just thinking.”
“About?”
He sighed. “Look, I don’t want to fight with you tonight, Tag. I’m tired and it’s been a shitty couple of days.”
“So you’re thinking about Reece?”
He remained silent, trying to gauge his brother’s mood by watching his face in the light from above the stove. “Yep.”
“I’ve been really hard on you about her.”
“No harder than I’ve been on myself.”
“She doesn’t deserve Maizy.”
“And it’ll be over my dead body before she gets her. But I can’t just keep ignoring her existence, Tag. If I’m going to move forward, I have to find out what she wants. I’d like your support in that.”
“She pisses me off.”
“Yeah. I got that.”
“But I’ve been a real asshole about it.”
“You won’t hear me protest.”
“I’m trying to work that all out. I just get so pissed off. I keep hearing it’s because of my guilt about Harper.”
Guilt and regrets. They had plenty of that going around these days.
Tag based every reaction he had for every situation on his pain over Harper’s death. But it had to stop. “Listen, don’t think I don’t get a thing or two about how you’re feeling, Tag. Remember Jake?”
Tag shook his head. “Totally different.”
“Maybe the reasons for our regrets are different, but it’s the same damn guilt. Harper knew you loved her. But I can’t say that to you anymore, Tag. I’ve only said it a hundred times. Harper knew what you were going through before she died. She understood. She really did, better than all of us, and her death was tragic and it hurt us all like hell, but I can’t keep going over the same shit with you. I also can’t let you take it out on all of us, either. I just can’t stay stuck here in the past with you anymore.”
“So seeing Reece is your way of finding the closure everyone says is so healthy?”
“It’s gotta beat yelling and fighting with everyone all the time. Guilt can eat you alive. I’m done being guilt’s midnight snack. I wish you were, too.”
“What brought this on?”
“A chance at some real happiness and the need for a clean slate.”
“Em?”
He smiled. In the midst of all the misery they’d endured as a family, in the height of Tag’s agonizing trek back from the darkest point in his life, Em still made him smile. Feel. Want. Look forward. “I think so.”
Tag smiled back. It wasn’t the smug upward turn of his lips that had become his standard—it was real, and it was warm. Like the old Tag. “Good on you, man. You need me to come with you when you meet Reece? Somebody to be there for you when you open up all those old wounds?”
He smiled again. The best thing about choosing to move forward was the freedom from all those old wounds. They didn’t feel like wounds as much anymore. They felt like a scar from a lesson learned. “Nah. I’m good. Just keep a close eye on Maizy, okay?”
“Always.” He pushed his chair back and slapped Jax on the back before heading out of the kitchen.
“Oh, and hey, Tag?”
He paused in the doorway, his clothes covered in Sheetrock dust, his knit cap planted on his head, his face open and relaxed. “Yep?”
“Thanks for having my back.”
Tag’s Adam’s apple worked when he swallowed hard. “Always, brother. Always.”
*
“Maizy said she don’t got a mommy.”
“Doesn’t have,” Em corrected Gareth, planting a kiss on the top of his head and flipping to the next page in their book. Maizy brought to mind Jax, and Jax brought to mind the empty ache she hoped to ignore. “When did she say that, honey?”
“When we was talkin’ about mommies at lunch. She said she has no mommy. She had an aunt Harper, but she died. All she has is her dad and her uncles and her grandparents.”