I chuckled. “Logan,” I said.
Eli smiled and reached out to run his hand over his dog’s head. “He told me that story too,” he said reverently and I knew he was thinking about how so many things in his own life had changed because of that one day…that day when Logan Bradshaw had followed the wish of a dying woman and gone to check on the man who would one day become his everything.
I’d never met Sylvie Barretti, Dom’s young wife who’d died of cancer after an ongoing battle with it since she’d been a child. Dom and Sylvie had been married when they’d met Logan and while I didn’t know the exact details of how they’d met, something profound had happened between the three because shortly after Sylvie’s death, Logan had received a letter from her asking him to check on Dom. I’d heard the story myself many times, but I suspected I’d heard the watered-down, child-friendly version that Dom and Logan often told to their youngest child who was named after the woman who had brought them together. And while I assumed the road had not been an easy one for Dom or Logan, the simple fact was that we’d become the large, extended family of men and women that we were only because the two men had found a way to be together despite the many obstacles standing between them.
“Brennan-”
“Eli, don’t,” I said as I glanced at my friend. I’d known him for nearly eight years, but had only recently realized I hadn’t really known him. Because if I had, I would have seen the secrets he was hiding. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry again,” I said gently as I reached out to brush my hand over his. “None of what happened was your fault.”
Eli studied me for a moment and then dropped his eyes to his pet. I wished there was a way I could convince him that the events of that day had been beyond his control. But I knew the shooting was just another rock in the pile of crap he was trying to deal with after admitting what had happened to him in the years since Dom and Logan had saved him from a life on the streets.
My brother Zane had told me the disturbing news several days after my surgery and once the painkillers had worn off enough so that I could really comprehend what he was telling me. The whole, terrible scene had happened in the waiting room of the very hospital where I’d been having my surgery. I had no doubt it had been brutal because Eli had been forced to admit to Dom, the man he’d idolized from the day they’d met, that Jack Cortano, Eli’s stepfather and one of Dom’s closest friends, had been sexually abusing him for more than five years. Even worse, the man had tricked Eli into thinking that he’d instigated the whole thing by coming on to Jack one night in a drunken haze when, in reality, the man had drugged Eli and then brutally raped him.
The assaults had continued in the years that followed, as Jack repeatedly manipulated Eli and then ultimately blackmailed him into getting what he wanted. And the fucker had committed it all to film. Even his own two sons hadn’t been safe from the pedophile, but it was Jack’s oldest son, Nick, who’d put a stop to the whole thing when he’d found and copied some of his father’s videos to a flash drive and then turned the tables on the man with his own blackmail scheme. Only things had gone terribly wrong and Nick had ended up dead, possibly at the hands of his own father, and Nick’s younger brother Caleb had gone to Eli for help. The flash drive had ultimately been what had led to my shooting since it was Jack’s men who’d been searching Eli’s apartment that day when I’d arrived.
“Eli, I’m so sorry,” I began as I shook my head. Baby nudged my hand and I automatically gave him another hot dog even as tears stung my eyes. “I should have seen-”
“Hey,” Eli whispered and I glanced up to see him watching me. His eyes were bright with emotion as he said, “I made sure you didn’t…I made sure none of you saw it.”
I nodded. “How are you?” I asked, my voice cracking a little as I tried to get a hold of myself.
Eli snagged one of the hot dogs and slowly fed it to Baby. I wasn’t surprised when the Rottweiler crawled forward until he was nearly in Eli’s lap and I was more than relieved to see that the dog had fully recovered from the knife wounds he’d received while protecting me the day of the shooting.
“There are good days and bad,” Eli admitted.