The Cornerstone (29 page)

Tiel didn’t say anything. She sat there, expressionless, while those words coursed through me. I’d never said any of that out loud before. I never wanted anyone to think I resented the responsibilities leveled on me. I didn’t need any acknowledgement, but the orbit was changing.
They
were changing, and somehow, I was exactly where I’d always been. I wanted something different for myself—something more—but I didn’t see how I could get gravity on my side.

I laughed and turned my attention to the bracelets on my wrist. My thumb swept over the anchor charm, the one I picked up during a holiday shopping marathon with Lauren. Anchors were popular right now, just like circles and horseshoes in years past. I knew no one would read anything into it, and it served as my tiny connection to Will. Just like our relationship, it hid in plain sight.

“It began with online dating a few years back. That’s pretty much the worst invention in the world.” I rolled my eyes and shuddered. The commercials were deceitful. One of these days, I was going to start a blog or write a book about the guys you
actually
met through those sites. “But then Matt started dating Lauren, and now she’s my closest friend. I didn’t know how to be friends with girls before her, and Lauren taught me,” I said. “She says nice things about you.”

Tiel gave me a skeptical frown. “I bet she does.”

“I started seeing someone last summer.” I laughed to myself. “‘Seeing’ probably isn’t the right word. It’s more like scheduled sex. Really, really incredible sex.” I looked around, still somewhat concerned about live tweeting. “I can’t believe I just said that out loud.”

“Keep going,” she demanded.

“So, this all has been occurring,” I said, “and I’ve been trying to maintain everything else, but I haven’t been able to. I keep thinking that I should have been there for Sam when your relationship ended.”

“Do you swoop in when all your brothers’ relationships end?”

I lifted a shoulder and sipped my coffee. “My brothers don’t have many relationships. Patrick kept his a secret for months. Matt holds me at a distance. Riley’s still a toddler in my eyes. And Sam…well, Sam changed this year, and I didn’t notice. I wasn’t paying attention, I wasn’t there, and I let him down.”

“But the sex? It was decent?”

I tried—and failed—to suppress a grin. “I haven’t been able to get on a bike for spin class since.” I laughed, but quickly remembered that good sex came with the cost of abandoning my family. “If I’m not taking care of my brothers, I don’t know who I am anymore.”

Tiel finished her coffee and eyed the exit, and though it was a terrible idea, I went back to my original question. “May I ask what happened? With you and Sam?”

She stared at me, and the contempt was replaced with something softer. “I hope he finds what he’s looking for, wherever he is. And…I’m sorry you’re going through this.” She gathered her things and dropped some cash on the table. I was too defeated to argue about picking up the tab. “I know you’re trying to do the right thing. I hope it gets easier.”

I thought this was going to be our moment, the warm realization that we both cared about Sam and only wanted the best, and we were going to work together to get him home. This was not that moment. Sighing, I said, “When he figures it all out and comes back, give him a chance. Please don’t turn him away. He’s so much more sensitive than he likes us to believe.”

Tiel stopped in the doorway and studied me. “Shannon, I know exactly how sensitive he is. You don’t need to tell me that.”

I turned back to the mountains of sugar cookie crumbs in front of me.

So completely broken.

WILL

Eight months ago

T
his fucking week.
It wasn’t enough that one of my guys forgot the basics during a HALO jump and busted his goddamn leg in the middle of the South Dakota wilderness or that I was facing at least six months running a task force aimed at eliminating terrorist strongholds in densely populated cities. No, I had to talk my way into Shannon’s building—pulled the brother card again, figured there were too many of them for a doorman to actually keep track—and pick the lock.

All I wanted was my girl and a day or two to chill before shipping out, but something was up. She was quiet and distant after our weekend in D.C., and then pulled some shit about ending things.

I figured she was having a difficult day and putting me on blast because I was handy, but then she blocked my calls. It was an easy hack to get around that—just one of many tools of the trade—but I couldn’t even get a reaction out of her. At the very minimum, I expected some comments about my commando tactics and some vehement “
fuck yous
” but I got neither.

I thought things were good after that weekend. Really good. I needed to know what went wrong, and more than anything else, I wanted to know that Shannon was all right.

Inside, her apartment looked nothing like I remembered. Where it was once ruthlessly ordered, there were now mountains of photo albums, boxes overflowing with blankets, and dated clothing. And it was everywhere. Every surface in the living room was overflowing.

The kitchen revealed a single wine glass in the sink and six empty bottles in the recycling bin. Her bed was made but rumpled, as if she slept on top of the blankets.

It was strange. I could accept any of these things individually, but when considered together, I couldn’t make sense of it.

I didn’t know when to expect Shannon, so I parked myself on the sofa and tugged my baseball cap low for a nap. I wasn’t sure how long I slept, but snapped to attention when I heard the door bang shut.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Shannon yelled.

“Hey, peanut.”

Her bag slipped from her shoulder and landed on the floor with a thud. She stared at me, her hands propped on her hips, and her expression venomous yet tired. “No,” she said. “I’m not doing this with you. Not anymore.”

I pointed to the small blue table beside the sofa. “What’s the deal with all the rocks? You’ve got these things all over the place. They’re from Erin, aren’t they?”

Her gaze flicked to the geodes clustered on the table, frowning. “Don’t talk about my sister.”

“Is that how it goes? We only talk about her on your terms, and the rest of the time, we pretend she doesn’t exist?” I asked.

“You get off on making your own rules. I understand that, but I am not doing this tonight.”

“Yeah, I have no fucking clue what’s going on here, Shannon. You get that, right? No. Fucking. Clue. I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me.”

She stepped out of her heels and walked into the living room, and I knew I wasn’t looking at the same woman who slept in my arms last month. “This is over,” she said, as if that explained everything. “Stop calling me. Stop texting. Stop breaking and entering.”

She busied herself with loading the assorted clutter into boxes, muttering to herself while she stepped around me. My mother would call Shannon a worker bee. She was always doing something, never content unless she was working, thinking, moving, and my mother was the same way. She couldn’t watch television without also editing photos for her blog, or reaching for her latest craft project.

But right now, Shannon wasn’t working. She was avoiding, and she wasn’t even doing a fair job of it.

“Yeah, and that’s where you’ve lost me.”

“I’m finished sneaking around with you,” she said. “I hate keeping secrets from my family, and I’m not going to do it anymore.”

“Secrets? You are the one who wanted secrets, darlin’,” I said. She couldn’t be serious right now. “What about Mexico? I wanted to end the fucking secrets, Shannon, if that wasn’t a big enough clue for you.”

“Why, Will? What are we even doing? You tell me where and when to show up, like I’m your goddamn call girl, and that’s it. I’m sorry, but I’m not in love with announcing that I’m your stateside whore.”

“You’re my
what
?” I clasped my hands behind my head as if I could wring some sense from this conversation. “Have I made you feel that way?”

“This isn’t a relationship, Will. It’s sex. Secret, scheduled sex, and I’m telling you I’m finished,” she said.

“I think your definition of relationship needs adjustment,” I said.

“And I think you don’t understand anything about me,” she said.

“I’m a simple guy, peanut. You’re gonna need to explain this load of shit you’re spewing because I’m fairly certain I know you damn well.”

She continued packing, and I rolled through every conversation we’d shared in the past months. I still didn’t know where it went off the rails.

When Shannon reached for a pile of blankets, I caught her wrist and pulled her down to the sofa. I locked her hands behind her back. She still fought like an angry bull in the chutes, but I had her pinned. We were getting to the bottom of this shit whether she liked it or not.

“You have two choices, my dear. You can either tell me what’s pissed you off today, or I can take you into the bedroom and torture you with my tongue.”

“I’m done with scheduled sex,” she said, her words quivering. “I want you to leave.”

Springing to my feet, I hauled her over my shoulder and marched down the hall. “Bedroom it is,” I said, slapping her ass.

“I’m serious, Will,” she said, and something in her voice stuck with me. She sounded detached and cold. I dropped her to the bed and kept my hands on her hips. “We’re finished.”

“You have to do better than that,” I said. “If you’re finished, I’d like an explanation. Was it the orgasms? You just hated all the orgasms I gave you?”

Shannon covered her face with her hands and released a long, heavy sigh. Her body sagged into the mattress and her chin wobbled, and I just wanted to hold her and make this stop. “Sam almost died when we were in D.C.,” she said. “He and his girlfriend had a huge fight, then he got crazy drunk and ended up in the hospital.”

I lifted her arms to see her eyes. “Is he okay now?”

“That isn’t the point, and I don’t know how he is because he’s left the city and won’t share his location with anyone,” she said. “Riley probably knows, but he’s not saying a word about it.”

“So what does that have to do with us?”

She covered her face again.

“Because you don’t understand me at all,” she murmured. “All I ever hear from you is how I need to worry about my brothers less. They’re grown men, right? They should be able to live their lives without me, right? You don’t get that my family is all I have. Taking care of them is what I do. I let you get between us once, and I’m not doing it again.”

“No, I understand your relationship with your brothers perfectly,” I said. “And yes, I’m sorry about what happened with Sam, but you cannot spend your entire life just waiting to catch them when they fall. You have to be able to turn your phone off sometimes or go away for a weekend, and you’re not going to convince me otherwise.”

“You said you wanted to take care of me, that you knew what I needed,” she said. “To you, that’s having me all to yourself.”

“Yes, Shannon, that’s exactly what it is,” I said. It was possible that this was the closest range argument I’d ever had with a woman. It was intimate, and void of the yelling, stomping, and slamming I knew Shannon favored, but in a way, I would have preferred her usual. I didn’t want this resigned version of her. “I want so much more of you. I want you all the time. Always. I hate it that I can’t wake up with you every morning and I can’t kiss you good night. I hate that, even when I do have you, I have to fucking share you with them.”

“Because they are my
family
,” she whispered. “I have nothing without them.”

“That’s not my view on the situation,” I said. “You hold their entire fucking worlds together, Shannon. You do everything, all the time, and it will never be enough. Not for you, definitely not for them. If you just let me—”

“No!” she said, pushing me away. “Don’t tell me how much better my life would be if I let you call the shots. Don’t act like you want what’s best for me. You want what’s best for you, and even after all this time and everything I’ve told you…you still don’t get me. You still don’t see that I am what I am because of my family, and I don’t want that to change. Maybe you need to realize that you can either earn your spot in our tribe or get the fuck out of my life. We stick together, no matter what, and—”

“Yeah? Kind of like how you stick with Erin? If that’s the logic you’re operating under, Shannon, please explain to me how not speaking to your sister is sticking together. I actually want to hear you make this argument.”

The anger in her expression drained, and in its place was cool emptiness. It was a haunting, dead-eyed look that I never wanted to see again. “I meant it when I said this was over.”

“Fight me,” I demanded, wrapping my hands around her biceps. “Put on your war paint, little girl, and fucking fight me. You want to get rid of me? I want to see you work for it.”

I shook her, desperate to see any flare of emotion, but nothing broke through her stoic grimace.

“I know you’re upset about Sam, and I know you hold yourself responsible for”—I held my hands apart, trying to encapsulate the world Shannon managed—“for fucking everything, but where the hell do you draw the line?”

“Will,” she said. “No more.”

We stared at each other, minutes passing as the distance grew between us. “You should know I’m going down range for a few months. There’s a comm blackout in effect with this task force. No mobile phones, no email.” Shannon dropped her eyes to her hands and rubbed the pad of her thumb over her fingernails. “I should be stateside around September, and when I am: I’m coming for you.”

SHANNON

I
didn’t allow
myself the luxury of falling apart.

The weeks and months after Sam’s implosion were hard on everyone, and we all hoarded reasons to blame ourselves, but a fair amount of quietly spoken censure tracked toward me. Regardless of whether Sam was an adult with advanced degrees and a successful career, I was still responsible for tending to his health and overall well-being. It was built into the mechanics of this family, and I’d never stopped to announce we were overhauling the system. Instead, I’d abandoned that post when he needed it most.