“What else did Max do?”
I didn’t want to tell them how much I’d relied on him because I knew it opened up so many questions for us, but I couldn’t keep it in. “He held me together. He wiped the blood off my cuts. He gave me his jacket to cover my skin. He told me stories about our moms to help me fall asleep. He yelled and screamed and told me to fight, to not give up. He agreed to help me take out the signal jammer so that you could find me. He saved my life.”
Cas’s face twisted in pain. “I think you saved each other’s lives.”
“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled, wiping the snot from my nose. “I didn’t know how to tell you all. I couldn’t let you kill him after we’d been through that together. I don’t want him to die, but I know how much he’s hurt us. It wasn’t just the pain I wanted to bury and forget about. It was that Max had been my lifeline in there, and I knew he felt the same when we left.”
The rest of the guys exchanged careful glances. I had no idea how I felt, let alone how they felt. And after telling them the truth, why did the part aboutMaxmake me feel like I’d done something wrong?
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for,” Cas eventually said. “Thank you for telling us.”
I buried my face in my hands. “I—I just didn’t want to remember any of it because I knew I’d shatter, just like I’m doing now. I was so scared. I just wanted to survive and get back to the men I love, and forget any of it happened.”
“We’re here,” Cas assured me. “We’re all here, and we’re not going anywhere.”
Obi brushed his knuckle across my cheek. “We know now, and we’ll support you while you heal.”
“I was supposed tobehealed by now,” I replied, dropping my hands to my lap. “I was supposed to be fine.”
“There is no timeline for healing from trauma,” Wynn said. “You learn to carry it, and over time, it becomes less heavy. You have us to help you carry this.”
“It’s so fucking complicated, though,” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper. “I’m still terrified. I don’t know how to tell you all that what happened on that ship between me and Max changed things. I don’t know how to go back to before when I wanted to kill him.”
“It’s not complicated at all,” Cas said. He gripped my shoulders. “You told us just now. You just tell us what you’re thinking and feeling, and then we deal with it.”
“How? Max is a part of me,” I sobbed. “And I’mstilltrying to carve him out. What if I can’t ever do that?”
“Then you don’t,” Cas said with a shrug. “I don’t know what that looks like or means, but it still changes nothing about the six of us here and now.”
Ryu squeezed my thigh. “It doesn’t,hanii.We’re in it. For life.”
“You already know I’m not going anywhere,” Ciel said. He tentatively grabbed Wynn’s hand, too. “We’re partners. We’re forever.”
Wynn looked at him with a small smile, then back to me. “No one else but us.”
“For better or worse,” Obi vowed. “We carry our happiness and pain together.”
That was when I truly broke.
I had been running from this for so long. I had feared that place, that darkness, and what it would to do me to face it and accept that what happened had changed me, but all the piecesthat were left were stillme. And they still loved me, and would love me forever. The pain was heavy and exhausting and terrifying, but it wasn’t mine to carry alone.
They held me until all my tears dried. When the last tear was gone, I took a deep breath and lifted my head.
They were right. If they carried it with me, maybe it was just a little lighter.
57
WYNN
Hearing what Leona had been through was like taking a dagger to my chest.
It was a thousand times worse than the pain of that gunshot.
The shadow behind my sternum bloomed and writhed within me, screaming to get out. Screaming at me todo more, tobe better.
If I hadn’t let her be taken, she never would have gone through that. She wouldn’t have to carry the pain in the first place.
But the way the guys had come around her and supported her…the way Ciel had held my hand…maybe they had a point. She needed to share that pain with us, and all of us would carry it for her.
