Each Other's Only (Hometown Heroes Book 2), page 1
Each Other’s Only
By
Colleen S. Myers
Copyright © 2019 Colleen S Myers
All rights reserved
Dedication
My mother loved those old bodice-buster romances with Fabio on the cover. She used to sit on the toilet in our downstairs bathroom and read after all her kids (there were five of us!) went to bed. It got so bad my dad installed a phone in the toilet so that at least she could answer the phone. That is one of the happiest memories of my mother. We even have a photo to prove it.
My mother loved to read and that is something she shared with me. It made it easier for me when studying and learning. I love the fact that in romance, you know that the heroine will always get a happy ending, and in real life, that is not always the case. That is why I chose and love this genre, even if I make my character work for that happy ending.
I myself got to spend fourteen years with the love of my life and we have a beautiful son. That is why I write. That is who this is dedicated to and all my family that help me achieve this goal.
I know I am not the most effervescent of people but I hope that with my words, I help others have a better day, a better reality. I don’t need to be the best; I just need to help make the world a little bit better place.
Thank you to my mom, Eric, Aidan, Erin, Darcy, Deb, Barb, The Killion group, and my beta-readers and fans for helping me achieve my goal.
Chapter One
Hard to believe a set of beautiful blue eyes would change the course of Brae Benson’s life. He’d expected that brown eyes would be his undoing. Sara’s eyes.
Nope.
Not the case. The eyes were a bright baby blue. And these puppies resided in the face of a little girl with chestnut curls and pudgy cheeks who peeked out from behind his best friend Flick’s neck.
She was a carbon copy of her mother, Sara, except for those eyes. Benson blue eyes his mother called them. A recessive trait that ninety percent of the members of his family carried. They varied in shades a bit, but not in intensity.
Holy shit.
The living room spun and words faded as he focused on his daughter.
He’d expected that Sara would be there. He prepared for it. Steeled himself for the punch in the gut that seeing her would entail.
Hell, he didn’t know how he’d managed to avoid her since getting back from Iraq, what with all the drama of the attacks on Vicki and John by her ex, that prat, David. He damn near killed them twice! But they’d survived, partly due to Brae and all the people gathered around them here in John’s wrecked apartment.
Now that things had settled down, he knew it was inevitable he and Sara would cross paths. They were best friends with the same people after all, and this was a celebration-slash-debriefing party after all. Of course, Sara would be here.
But the little girl? That he had not expected.
He cut his gaze to Sara, his Sara with her gorgeous red hair, and then back to the little one. He moved in front of her, staring into those eyes.
There were no two ways about it. This little girl was his daughter.
Sara had had his baby.
It took everything inside him not to flip out right then and there. Until he saw the fear flicker in the little girl’s eyes. Not the time and place, asshole. He could practically hear Sara say it in his mind.
He took a deep breath and forced himself to pick up his jaw and smile, relaxing his cheeks. Brae’s chest hurt at the thought of all that he’d missed in the past few years. None of that was his daughter’s fault though.
The little girl sucked her thumb and tilted her head, contemplating him from Flick’s arms.
In fact—Brae glanced around himself—the whole freaking room hung on their words.
John, his best friend and fellow Marine, had his arm around his girlfriend, the visibly nervous yet still gorgeous in a blonde bombshell kind of way, Vicki. Her hands would’ve been wringing if they weren’t covering her mouth.
John and Flick’s moms – also known as ‘the moms’— huddled by the dining room table, heads tipped toward each other, whispering.
Flick’s dad, Mr. J, munched on some nachos.
Vicki’s grandmother, Joonie, swigged back a sip of something from a flask, probably whiskey. Seeing his look, she tipped the bottle to him and winked.
Christine, Vicki’s mom, sat straight and tidy on the edge of the couch, watching with interested eyes. Bentley—their resident policeman – upright and ready at her side.
All of these people were his family and they were all important to him in one way or another. Right now, though, Brae’s shoulders itched under their combined gazes, but he couldn’t let that stop him. This was his daughter after all.
How trippy was that?
“Hi,” Brae said in a gravelly voice. All he could manage at the current time.
She smiled around her thumb and waved her fingers at him.
Now that she heard his voice, she seemed less scared. Her little shoulders relaxed and she stopped hiding her face.
Well.
Brae’s eyes rose from the sight of his little girl to lock with Sara’s. “Lucy, you have some ’splaining to do!” His words came out harsher than he intended.
The little girl struggled in Flick’s arms as Sara moved next to him. Flick dropped her gently to the ground, and she rushed to her mother’s side.
Sara.
Brae’s fingers started to tingle and he had to force his hands to unclench.
Why the fuck hadn’t she told him? The shock seemed to be fading and anger rushed into its place. She should have told him.
Brae had never had any true family. His mom checked out a long time ago, and his dad, well his dad was a waste of space. But he’d always wanted a family, a true sense of home, more than even his friends could provide and Sara knew that. She knew.
She should have fucking told him.
Flick’s hand came down on his shoulder, tight. He jerked but Flick held him down and centered him.
The little girl made a soft noise and ducked her face into her mother’s leg as if sensing his agitation.
Again, Brae blew out a breath.
Calm down, buddy.
He knelt in front of his daughter and smiled. “Hi.”
The little girl glanced at him through her wispy bangs. “Hi,” she responded happily.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Mina.”
The name was another kick in the teeth. Sara had given the little girl the name they’d decided on all those years ago in high school when they’d planned a future together.
His jaw tightened.
Mina sensed it because she darted behind Sara’s leg again.
Shit.
Flick’s hand dug even tighter into his shoulder. He’d developed quite the grip since Brae last saw him, but he got the message.
Calm down.
He cleared his throat. “Mina. Why, that is a beautiful name.”
“Brae,” Sara said with an edge to her voice.
Brae cut his eyes to hers. He bit his words out like bullets. “Not right now, Sara. We will talk later. Right now, I’m talking to Mina.”
Mina tugged at her mother’s jeans. “Is that okay, Momma?”
Sara’s hand smoothed down Mina’s hair. “Did you want to talk to the man, baby?”
What the fuck? The man. He was her father. He opened his mouth to say so. “I’m -”
Sara glared at him, anticipating his words, her own words firing back. “You don’t have to, not right now.”
“He has pretty eyes,” Mina whispered.
Sara stared down at her daughter, heart twisting. Pretty eyes. Yes, the Benson eyes were spectacular. Her little girl didn’t realize that her own eyes were the exact duplicate of the ones staring at her. Not yet. But from Brae’s stormy glare, she figured Mina would know soon.
Seeing him here in John’s apartment—still heavy with the scent of paint from the recent repairs—threw her for a loop.
She’d known she would see him again.
She’d known she would have to explain Mina to him. And she’d known exactly when he flew home. She sensed him like the Force.
This meeting was inevitable, but she still didn’t know what she’d say, and she would not grovel like her mother had done with her father. Screw that. Her mom had begged her father to stay, and he’d left them high and dry just like Brae left her. He’d left her. She owed him nothing.
Still, it felt surreal to see him. Like it wasn’t happening. But it really was. It had been three years. One thousand one hundred and ninety-two days, twenty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty-two hours, and one million seven hundred and twenty-five thousand, one hundred and twenty minutes and a shit ton of seconds to be exact since she last saw him.
Not that she counted.
Nope, not her.
Yet it felt like a lifetime and in a way it was. Mina’s lifetime.
Her fingertips tingled. She had to curl her fist to keep from reaching out and touching his face to make sure he was real. That wasn’t one of her dreams where he came groveling back to her, beggaring her to forgive him. No.
God, there was just something about him that drew her. Dangerous, yet compelling with his dark hair and tattoos. She remembered him without the ink, and it was the same then as it was now. The breath-catching shiver inside. He was sleek and powerful, like a lethal, lazy cat. The comparison was even more appropriate when you watched him move. She’d spent hours studying his muscles. The smooth flow of tissue beneath skin, that was all it was, but she found it mesmerizing because it was his muscles, his skin, his body.
She’d catch herself stopping whatever she was doing just to follow his movements. Thank god, he hadn’t ever noticed. Then she’d never hear the end of it.
“Brae, we need to talk.”
His gaze didn’t waver from their daughter. His fingers twitched and his hand moved toward the girl, slowing as if he was approaching a wild beast.
Mina watched him with wide eyes.
“Now,” Sara said impatiently.
Brae’s gaze shifted to her. The three of them might as well have been alone in the room, though their family surrounded them, talking amongst themselves. “All right.”
Brae motioned to John and Vicki. “I am glad you two are okay. Flick.” He nodded at his other best friend. “Do you mind watching Mina while we are outside?”
Flick drawled, “Nope,” and held out his arms.
Mina giggled and vaulted into his grasp.
Sara shook out her fingers and after a quick look at her family, she preceded Brae out the door.
The inevitable fight began immediately after the door closed behind her.
Chapter Two
“How could you not tell me that you were pregnant?” he hissed as soon as Sara turned to face him.
Her words rushed out. “I didn’t know, not until I was nearly six months along. It never occurred to me. I was on birth control and my periods were never that regular to begin with. But when you were home last, I’d gotten sick and took some antibiotics. The doctor said it interfered with my pill and well, ta-da! Mina.” Brae said nothing and she continued her explanation. “When I found out you were already in Kuwait for a yearlong deployment, and all those months had passed…”
She shrugged and her words trickled to a stop.
Brae’s jaw flexed under her gaze. “And so you decided I didn’t deserve to know? Is that it? Worried I would be like my own dad?”
He paced away from her and then back and then away like a caged tiger.
Sara jerked.
Huh.
She’d never even considered that. Her brows furrowed. “Don’t be a jackass. It had nothing to do with your past. I knew if I told you, you would have given up everything and come running back. You would have made me marry you and that would have been that.”
He opened his mouth to talk and she held up a hand. “You were working on that new program of yours and almost had your degree in computer science by then. I didn’t want to hurt those chances.”
He threw his hands up in the air. “So you didn’t let me know about my daughter? Deprived me of every minute of her birth, her growth, her first smile, her first word, her first step. I can’t get any of those things back, Sara. What did I do to deserve that?”
Her heart twisted and she held up both hands this time, fingers curling. He didn’t understand. It was not him. “Nothing Brae, oh my god, it wasn’t you. It was the circumstances. I did try calling your unit when I found out, but I couldn’t get through to you.” She took a breath. “I told Sargent Miller to have you call me, but you never did. I thought you had moved on. I needed to let you go.” She shrugged and stared down at the ground, counting the cracks to calm herself with numbers.
“That’s bullshit. I’m not sure who you contacted but I never got a message.” Brae hesitated. His hand slammed into the brick wall by the door of the quiet cul-de-sac home, once, twice. On the third hit, he drew blood.
“Stop that, you dummy.” Sara grabbed his hand and blotted the blood with the bottom of her shirt. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
His words softened. “It hurts a lot less than what I am going through right now.”
“Brae.” She ran her fingers along a new scar on the back of his hand, refusing to let her gaze rise. “You have to believe me. This wasn’t about you or us. It was about Mina. I had to choose what would be best for her. I always knew you would be a part of her life. Just like you have always been a part of mine. I never hid her. I knew you were coming home. You had to come home. This, uh, isn’t how I planned on telling you, but it is what it is.”
After a last swipe at the blood on his hands, she moved away from the building and stared out into the night-shrouded courtyard.
Brae kicked the wall this time, then sat and put his back to the rough surface, staring at his hand. “What did you do for money?”
“It was hard the first year. By the time I found out, I had already gotten that new job I told you about before you left, remember?”
His head bobbed up and down. “Real estate agent.”
“Turns out I am really good at it. I was the secretary for the company for years. I finally got my certificate and after a few sales, everything was better. My insurance wasn’t bad and my health good. I didn't have any problems with labor. Mina stays home with my mother during the day and at night, I’m home.”
“At first, we had to get some assistance.” He flinched at that. “But now we are doing good. The business took off after the housing market recovered.”
Sara took a deep breath and turned to face Brae. He watched her intently as she paced in front of him this time. “I am so sorry I didn't tell you. Every few weeks I would go through this period where I would pick up the phone to call, but I kept chickening out. At first it was because you were deployed. Then when you got back but never came home on leave, well. So much time had passed and I wanted to tell you in person.”
She shrugged. “Mina was around nine months old, and I was working what felt like twenty hours days a day to make ends meet. Once that calmed down Mina was two, you were on another deployment, and this time, John got hurt. And you got hurt too right?”
He nodded, his body facing hers. “Head injury. Minor though. They let me stay on light duty, and I got transferred to the same base as John and finished my degree.”
“Oh, great! That is awesome. See, I didn’t want to mess that up.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and moved back toward the courtyard.
Brae watched her walk; she could feel his gaze on her, and she forced herself to stop and stare at him. He held his hands loosely in front of him, forearms braced on his knees. The edge of a new tat peeked out from the V of his shirt. Her eyes were drawn to his chest. He’d always had that effect on her. A hypnotizing presence that calmed and excited her at the same time, setting her on edge.
“Tell me about Mina,” he said.
Sara looked up, a goofy smile spread across her lips. “Oh, Mina is beautiful. She is almost three; her birthday is coming up, actually. Hmm… she loves the color blue; her favorite animal is a horse-”
“Like her mother.”
She paused. “Yes, like me, though I never rode one.” Sara smiled at him. “You remembered.”
“I remember everything. Is that a surprise?”
Yes. Maybe not. She didn’t know. “She is a real trooper, rarely whines, good about eating, so sweet. She hates to see anything hurt. She reminds me of you so much.”
“Me?” He shifted and patted the ground next to him.
Sara walked over and sat. “Yeah, that good heart of yours. You may look all tough on the outside, but on the inside, you are the little boy that saved animals, gave your lunch to any of the kids who got bullied, and stuck up for your friends. You composted all your food, joined the Boy Scouts, and enjoyed all the labor.”
He shrugged this time. “What are we going to do?”
“Raise her together.”
“What about us?”
Sara’s stomach dropped. “There is no us.”
He sighed noisily and put his head in his hands. “That’s bullshit. There will always be an us.”
“You broke up with me.”
“You refused my proposal.”
“You never called.”
“You didn’t either. I needed to know you wanted me in your life.”
She jerked back. “What? When was that ever in question?”
“Every single time you said no to one of my proposals.”
Sara stomach lurched worse than when she was on a roller coaster. “I always loved you.”
“Do you love me still?”
Her heart stopped and her eyes widened. “Brae.” This was not what she planned.
He growled and stood. “I guess that’s my answer.” Before she could respond, he wiped a hand down his face. “I can’t deal with this now. I’m tired. So damn tired of fighting. I shot two men today.”
