Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 94512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
She nodded.
“Lesson learned the hard way, huh?”
She nodded again. “Are you mad at me?” she asked in a small voice. “’Cause I’m sorry. I’ve been so good, and now this happened, and I don’t want you guys to think I’m too much of a pain to have around anymore.” Her voice cracked.
Dare reminded himself that the drug was a depressant, and she had to be feeling the aftereffects, but he hated to think she’d ever believe they’d abandon her. Nothing could be further from the truth.
“We happen to like pain-in-the-ass kids.” He held out his arms, and to his surprise, his normally strong, smart-mouthed sister crawled right in and gave him a hug. “You’re stuck with us,” he told her. “You know that, right?”
She sniffed. “Yeah.”
“You mean it? Because if Ethan or Faith knew you were feeling this way—”
She shook her head and pushed back, already pulling herself together. “No, I know. I just feel so awful. Guilty, though I didn’t really do anything, sad, mortified…”
“You’re feeling the aftereffects of the drug. It can make you depressed and sad or like you want to cry. Hopefully, it’ll be out of your system soon. Try to sleep as much as you can, okay?”
She nodded. “That’s what Faith and Kelly said.”
“They’re smart.”
“You’re not working today?” she asked.
“I’m off this weekend.”
Tess grinned. “Spending it with Liza?” she asked, teasing him, her eyes bright and alert again.
He groaned. “You are so nosy.”
“It’s one of my better qualities,” she said, and he was happy to hear her laugh. “Well? Are you?”
He shook his head. “We’re taking a break,” he heard himself say. Was he really confiding in a fifteen-year-old?
“Uh-oh. What dumb thing did you do?” Tess asked, arms folded over her chest.
He lifted his eyebrows. “What makes you think it’s because of me?”
“Duh? Because you’re a guy!”
“Smart mouth,” he muttered. “It shouldn’t last long.”
“I hope not,” Tess said over a yawn.
Obviously, she was getting sleepy, which was good. She needed her rest. “Why? Do you like Liza?”
Tess studied him through perceptive blue eyes just like Nash’s. And their late father’s. “You like Liza, so yeah. I do too.”
Smart kid, he thought, with relief. If she relied on that common sense and steered clear of trouble, she’d be okay. Good thing she had three older brothers and a sister and two sisters-in-law to make sure of it. Dare wanted to add one more female to the mix.
But he still had a long way to go.
“Get some sleep,” he told Tess. “I’ll come back to visit later.”
“Okay.” She snuggled back under the covers, and he let himself out of her room.
He walked downstairs to find Ethan waiting. “Got a minute?” his brother asked.
Dare nodded and followed Ethan into his office.
“You okay?” Ethan asked.
“Yeah.” The word came out automatically, but the truth was more complicated. “Not really.”
“I didn’t think so.” Ethan lowered himself into a chair and motioned for Dare to sit too.
“A year ago, we wouldn’t be sitting, about to have a serious talk,” Dare said.
Ethan shook his head. “A year ago, Nash would have blamed me for what happened to Tess. He’d probably have hit me again too.” He rubbed his jaw, obviously remembering the brothers’ long-overdue confrontation. “But you always held back. You gave me a chance first.”
Dare nodded. He had.
“Maybe that was because you understood what it was like to make mistakes.”
Despite himself, Dare grinned. “When did you get so smart?”
“I had many years of beating myself up,” Ethan admitted, taking Dare by surprise.
He studied the brother he’d barely known and now felt a special kinship with. “How’d you get past it?” he asked.
Because like Dare, Ethan lived with regrets. He’d gotten arrested when he was almost eighteen and their parents were killed in a car accident on their way to bail him out of jail. Then instead of sticking around for his brothers, he’d taken off for ten long years. So if anyone knew regret and mistakes, it was Ethan.
He leaned back in his seat, folded his arms over his chest, and met Dare’s gaze. “Not easily. The Army helped. I did a little therapy with the shrinks there. I’m not sure if that helped or not. I do know the discipline and the regulation taught me what it meant to be a man and take responsibility.”
Dare got that. “Being a cop did the same for me.” He paused in thought. “But I realize now that was more of an external shift.”
“Because you still haven’t forgiven yourself. All the good deeds in the world won’t make up for what happened to Stuart Rossman. But the blame doesn’t lie solely on your shoulders either.”
Dare looked down, studying his hands, thinking about his brother’s words. No, he hadn’t forgiven himself. Instead, he’d indulged in enough self-hatred and flagellation for ten lifetimes, but nothing had changed. He was here. A young kid had died. Dare had done what he could with his life to atone while Brian McKnight wasted air and hurt everyone in spitting distance. Meanwhile, Dare nursed his anger and hatred toward the man, and when it exploded, he’d hurt the one person in his life who truly mattered.