He opened the door.
She sat in her comfy chair looking out the dark window. The comfy chair she read in, she worked in, and sometimes she fell asleep in. She was fully dressed, but her shoes were kicked off into the corner.
Maybe she was a mirage. Maybe he just wanted to see her, so he did. Tonight he’d been hollowed out, torn apart, and he feasted on her with his eyes.
He had so many things to say to her.
I thought you were leaving me.
I’m sorry.
I failed you.
Instead, he said, “I love you so much.” His voice cracked and tears that had been burning inside poured out.
She got up and walked to him. She kissed him. He grabbed her, held on tight, and cried. “I can’t lose you,” he said. “I hate myself for hurting you.”
“Shh,” she murmured and led him to her chair. She sat him down and climbed into his lap.
“Don’t leave me.” He didn’t want to beg … but yes, he would beg. He was wrong. He had to convince her he regretted everything.
“I love you, Sean. We’ll work through this.”
She held him close, like he’d often held her, and he ached. How could he explain anything he felt? Lucy was the most important thing in his life. More important than his life. Without her, he was an empty shell without meaning. He’d been searching for something intangible for so long, and when he found Lucy he knew she was it. She was his beginning and his ending; she gave him hope and purpose and a deep joy he couldn’t explain. And he’d fucked it up.
But she had forgiven him. Or she was forgiving him. Maybe it would take him time, but he would spend every moment of the rest of his life showing her that her forgiveness was warranted.
It was several minutes before Sean could speak. “They’re going into witness protection.” His voice was a squeak.
“The Spades.”
“I want to be in Jesse’s life.” He took a deep breath, trying again to control the intensity of his feelings. “I may never see him again.”
“You will.”
He could hope, but if Madison didn’t agree to it, it would never happen. He wasn’t even on Jesse’s damn birth certificate. As far as the world was concerned, he had no rights to Jesse. No rights as a father. Anything he got now would be because of Madison, and that pained him. Sean had promised Jesse he would do everything he could to ensure that he had visitation rights, that the marshals could make it happen … but Noah and Dean weren’t certain they could make it work.
They would try, though. They wanted to make it work, almost as much as Sean did.
Lucy shifted and he grabbed her and pulled her closer. “Don’t leave.”
“I’m not leaving,” she said. “I think we should make dinner or something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Sean, why are you so terrified that I’m going to leave you?”
“Because you said you were.”
“I was hurt and angry,” she said. “I was ready to walk away to clear my head. But you know I love you. You’ve always known, from that first moment when I came to your house in DC in the blizzard almost two years ago.”
“Nothing sticks to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
He was already an emotional wreck. But saying it out loud … it was still hard. “You know my parents died in a plane crash. What I’ve never told you was that I was also in the plane.”
“In the plane crash?”
“My mom died on impact. My dad was … broken. I had bumps and bruises but that was it. The plane was a goner, but I salvaged what I could. I worked day and night on the radio and fixed it. I purified water, I killed rabbits to eat, and I made a fire. I fixed everything, except my dad. He died three days later. I didn’t know how to fix him. We were in the middle of nowhere, and I couldn’t fix anything. If only I was smarter, if I could have fixed the radio faster, if I knew what to do to help my dad…” He took a deep breath, trying to stop the waves of guilt and regret and pain that rushed over him. “I buried them together.”
“You never told me.”
“No one knows, except Duke and Kane. And … I never told them my father survived for three days. I couldn’t accept that I couldn’t help him.
“I think that’s why Duke has always been hard on me. Not just because I was a fuckup as a teenager and in and out of trouble, but because he blamed me somehow for what happened.”
“He does not,” Lucy said emphatically.
“I don’t know,” he said, suddenly exhausted. He pulled Lucy back down to him. “Just stay with me, Lucy. Please forgive me. I will never let you down again.”