Page 75 of Nightfire

Two minutes forty seconds that changed his world forever. Mike didn’t have to say it.

“The clerk reached under the counter to push the police call button and the scumbag with the gun—who was probably seeing double at the time—just opened fire. Blew his head apart. Again, my dad motioned me to stay put. It wasn’t necessary. I couldn’t have moved an inch. I was in a state of shock. Dad was trying to edge toward the door when the guy just turned and started shooting. It was a semi-automatic and I remember watching the brass casings twirl in the light. He just…opened fire. Gunned them down like animals. They were left in a heap, Dad on top, arms still outstretched, still trying to protect them. The other scumbag slipped on the blood and fell, laughing like a loon.”

Chloe could see it so clearly in her mind’s eye—the felled family, the blood, the crazed gunman, the horrified little boy.

“I was really good at baseball, really good. Until this—this happened, I wanted to be a professional ballplayer when I grew up. I had a good, strong pitching hand. I grabbed cans of fruit salad and tomato sauce and threw them as hard as I could at the gunman first, then the guy howling with laughter on the floor. Nailed the shooter on the first throw, knocked him unconscious, nailed the other guy, too. I didn’t stop at one, I hurled can after can at them, even when they were on the ground, head shots every one. Their heads were bloody, I broke their jawbones, cheekbones. I was screaming, hysterical. I only stopped when this big guy in a blue uniform gently took my arms and stopped me.”

“The police,” Chloe said.

He gave a short sharp nod. “Cops, yeah. I really don’t remember the next part at all. They looked for relatives, but both my parents were only children, all four grandparents were dead. I was assigned a social worker who ‘managed’ my family’s estate and ended up destroying it. I was put into a series of foster homes. I quickly got a rep as a troublemaker. Fought like hell at every one. Went down the list of acceptable homes until I landed on the last of the list, the only home that would accept me, as a ‘problem’ child, because the state paid more. The household was run by a sadistic monster named Hughes. But Sam and Harry were there and we had each other’s back. Joined the Marines as soon as it was legally possible.”

“I’m so sorry, Mike,” Chloe said quietly. The words meant nothing but they came from the bottom of her heart. Because he’d just told the story of a little boy whose world was shattered on a single afternoon.

“It didn’t have to happen,” he said hoarsely.

“What?”

“Didn’t have to happen. None of it. We could have been on our way to the beach when those scumbags came into the mart if I hadn’t been a spoiled brat. My whole family was gunned down like dogs because I wanted a fucking—” He stopped talking and the clicks came again as his throat muscles worked. “Snickers bar. My mother and my father and my two brothers, dead because of me.”

Chloe sucked in a breath, appalled.

“Oh no, Mike.” She leaned forward to see his face, to try to look into his eyes. He wouldn’t lift his head. She could see the tendons in his neck stand out, the grooves in his cheeks deep and worn. “It wasn’t your fault! Nothing in any of it was your fault. You can’t possibly think that you could have stopped two drug addicts, one of whom was armed.”

“We would have been out of there, on the road, if it wasn’t for me.”

“That’s magical thinking. And you yourself said that everything happened very fast. Probably all five of you would have still been there and you would be dead too.”

He shuddered under her hand and Chloe had a startling flash of insight. He wished he’d died, too, together with his family. The fact that he’d survived wasn’t a consolation, not for him. It was a curse. He still grieved for his lost family, still felt guilty. He had an iron mantle of guilt around his shoulders, weighing him down every minute of every day.

Chloe understood him profoundly. All through her childhood and until very recently, she blamed herself because her parents couldn’t—wouldn’t love her. They had never tried to express even a false kind of affection. And she’d blamed herself, every day. Wondered, every day, what she’d done to alienate them. Tried to be quiet and obedient on the rare occasions when her mother visited. She saw her father about once a year, and each year she did her very best to win him over, to have him show some emotion toward her. It never worked. Nothing she did worked. Ever.

How she’d scout her mother’s face for some sign of…something. Something she could do to stir some warm feelings, something she could say, something she could be. It was this huge puzzle she never managed to figure out, and she kept circling back to the only thing that made sense. There was a fatal flaw that made her unlovable. There was something deeply wrong with her. It was all her fault.

Chloe understood down to her bones the acid drip of guilt dribbling like a corrosive in the bloodstream. Understood a child bearing a load too great for small, young shoulders.

Her heart ached for Mike. For having known a family’s love and having lost it, and on top of that bearing this terrible burden of guilt almost all his life.

Those massive shoulders were shaking, his head was turned away, but she could still see the red eyes, damp cheeks.

A wave of tenderness rose up in her, so vast she was surprised the earth didn’t shake with it.

“Mike,” she whispered, pushing at his shoulders to turn him around. He was so massively strong. She couldn’t force him to turn to her, but he did. Her heart cracked open a little at the sight of his face, strength warring with suffering, and she leaned forward, pressing her cheek to his. The tears were cool but the skin underneath was burning hot. “Lay your burden down, darling. You’ve carried it for so long. Let it go. It’s not yours to carry.”

She was embracing him, arms unable to meet around that enormous chest. Against the inside of her arms and against the skin of her chest, she felt a deep trembling, a ripple of emotions.

“Let it go,” she whispered again and he shuddered, hard, as something powerful moved through him.

Chloe could almost see the iron burden of guilt leave Mike. He seemed almost to levitate for a moment, something dark passing through him and out, and then he turned with her in his arms and bore her down to the mattress.

Startled, Chloe made room for him, instinctively. Her body and her heart opened wide, arms and legs wrapping around him. He was shaking with emotion, so unusual for such a strong and highly controlled man. Chloe could feel the stress of the feelings being released, could feel it in her fingertips, under the palms of her hands, along the front of her body.

He kissed her, avidly, sucking, licking, as if her mouth held something vital to him. As if he couldn’t live without her mouth.

He lifted his head for just a second, nose to nose, bright blue eyes blazing into hers. His hands tunneled through her hair and cupped her head. His hands were so huge they almost completely covered her head. He was holding her tightly, holding her still, as if she could somehow want to avoid his kiss.

When, of course, she craved it.

“I know you must be sore,” he whispered. “And I know I just finished talking about using sex as a crutch. This isn’t that.” He shook his head sharply, a lock of dark hair falling like a comma on his forehead. “Though frankly I don’t know what the fuck it is. It’s just that I need this right now, more than I’ve ever needed anything in my life. I need this. I need you.”