I’m officially the most pathetic person on the earth, and I hate myself.
She released her breath in a quiet hiss of disgust.
“Like you’re ready to raise Cain,” she snapped, relieved when anger reared its head again, shoving hurt, and despicable hope, aside. It wasn’t hard to look pissed at him. She felt pissed enough at herself to make it genuine.
He chuckled. “I’ve changed. My troublemakin’ days are behind me, darlin’. I protect and serve now.”
“I’d sooner trust a fox with a chicken.”
“Yup. Still mad as a wet hen,” he said smoothly, grinning at her.
It was a clever retort, and if she wasn’t so hurt and turned-on and angry and confused, she might have giggled and given him credit for it. Instead she took a deep breath and turned away from him. No doubt he was on the way to the distillery to chase some tail, and she had a date with her bed.
But after two such disastrous reunions with two people who’d meant so much to her once upon a time, she could barely keep her tears at bay.
“Welcome home, Cain,” she whispered. Then, before she could embarrass herself, she raised the window and pulled her car forward without looking back.
“You are an idiot,” she mumbled, parking beside Gran’s vintage Ford pickup and slamming her door shut before stomping into the cottage that still smelled comfortingly of Gran.
She was even more of an idiot if she thought she could ignore Cain while he was home. They’d spoken for all of two minutes, but it had proved several devastating truths that Ginger wasn’t anxious to acknowledge:
One, she had never gotten over Cain.
And two, given the chance, he could break her heart into a million jagged splinters all over again.
Walking wearily upstairs to bed, she wiped the wetness from her cheeks and whispered into the darkness, “Be strong, Virginia Laire McHuid. Don’t you dare give him that chance.”
Chapter 9
Woodman
He hadn’t seen the accident coming. That was the thing that haunted Woodman the most. One minute he was standing on the flight deck guiding a jet into position. The next, his ankle was being crushed from behind by a forklift. In his nightmares, he could feel the metal ripping his skin and splintering his bone, and he was trapped, and utterly fucking helpless to do anything to save himself.
Twenty seconds.
That’s how long it took for Woodman’s life to change forever.
He’d gone into shock fairly quickly, and he barely remembered the helicopter ride from Barcelona to Morón de la Frontera. By the time he was airlifted to Germany, he was so out of it on painkillers, he didn’t wake up until his leg had already undergone surgery.
He had hated relying on the help of others. He hated that he couldn’t take a piss in the hospital without calling a nurse to help him out of bed. He couldn’t drive. He was in a wheelchair for weeks, and now he was dependent on crutches. It was the helplessness that bothered him the most. Around everyone, that is, but Cain.
Something about Cain made it feel okay—maybe it was that Cain was family, and family is allowed to see you at your worst, at your most vulnerable. Or maybe his brashness—the way he continued to treat Woodman like his injury was temporary and anything was still possible, made him feel like the world hadn’t, actually, ended. But it was even more than that. After the abject horror of what had happened to his leg and foot, the trauma of the surgeries, and the slow but certain realization that his life would never, ever be the same again, he’d felt terrifyingly alone in the world. Until Cain walked into his room at the Landstuhl Medical Center.
The doctors and nurses had been clinically concerned about his treatment, of course. But Cain? The second he walked into Woodman’s room was the second Woodman finally felt comfort. Because despite their emotional estrangement throughout their adolescence, when the shit hit the fan, Cain showed up. And seeing Cain’s face felt like more than coming home. It felt like, well, it felt like undiluted comfort.