Gabe reached forward and snatched the remote from the coffee table, turning on the TV and upping the volume, hoping his brother might take the hint. But Joe didn’t budge.
“Didn’t say it didn’t affect me,” he admitted after a moment. “I’m pissed as hell at that fucker Monroe. I’m pissed Tom had to pull his weapon and use it for the first time in his entire career. I’m pissed Elle was half an inch away from getting her fucking head blown off. And I’m pissed I took three to the chest and one to the leg and could’ve ended up like my best friend did a year ago.” He turned and pegged Joe with a hard look. “So, yeah, Joey, getting shot by some son of a bitch with an ax to grind about us locking up his cop-murdering bastard of a brother has affected me. But I’ll deal. And it’d be a hell of a lot easier if I didn’t have you talking over SportsCenter.”
Joe shook his head with a bitter laugh and slammed the recliner’s foot rest back down. “You know what? Fuck you, Gabe. I’m just trying to help you get through this. But, hey—you don’t want my help? Fine.” He shoved to his feet. “I’m outta here.”
Gabe pulled a hand down his face, immediately feeling like a total piece of shit. Maybe Elle had been right. Maybe he was an irredeemable jackass. “Joe!” he called after his brother as Joe strode toward the door. “Joey! Dude, I’m sorry! I just—”
The front door slammed, cutting him off.
He let his head drop back against the sofa cushions and closed his eyes. Awesome. His brother the war hero had tried to be there for him, had tried to let him know he understood what Gabe might be going through, and Gabe had pretty much just told him to go fuck himself.
Yeah, Elle was definitely onto something with the whole jackass thing…
Speaking of Elle, he wondered how she was doing. He’d never seen her so rattled as when he’d come to visit him in the hospital. The look in her eyes when she’d voiced the truth—that she’d almost died—had sent a chill through his entire body, and not just because of the calm accuracy of her observation. The hollow look in her eyes, the recognition of her own fleeting mortality, concerned him.
If there was anyone Joe should’ve been following around like a freaking puppy and attempting to psychoanalyze, it was Elle.
Gabe put his life on the line every day. He assumed a certain amount of risk. He knew one day he might not come home. That day could be thirty years from now. It could be tomorrow. But it was different for Elle. Even though she dealt with criminals on a daily basis, saw the effects of their crimes on their lives and the lives of others, and was no doubt jaded by her experiences, it wasn’t the same. There was no way it could be the same. Not really. At least, that’s how it was supposed to be. She was supposed to be one of the blissfully ignorant citizens he was sworn to protect from those kinds of attacks.
But he’d failed. That son of a bitch had come way too close to killing Elle on Gabe’s watch—and it was that truth more than his own close call that he was having a hard time dealing with. Because his focus had been on getting into Elle’s pants instead of what was going on around him. So when he looked into her eyes and saw that empty, hollow fear, he had to accept that he was just as much to blame for putting it there as Mark Monroe was.
He pulled his hands down his face, then groaned a string of curses before reaching for his phone and dialing his brother.
“What?” Joe answered.
Gabe took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry, Bro. I know you’re trying to help.”
“There’s no shame in being shaken up, Gabe,” Joe assured him. “But I’m here for ya, man. You know that, right? I’ve been there. I just…” He sighed. “I don’t want to see you go through what I did.”
“I know. And I appreciate that.”
“You might be my big brother,” Joe continued, “but I worry about you. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you haven’t been the same since Chris’s murder.”
Gabe grunted and randomly flipped through the channels on TV, suddenly deciding SportsCenter wasn’t all that interesting after all. “None of us have, Joe. You can’t tell me you don’t worry about not making it back home to Sadie when you start every shift.”