Sanctuary Found (Pelican Bay 2)

It’d been especially tough after he’d realized he was gay. I’d noticed a change in his behavior early on when he was around fourteen–he’d stopped talking to me and he’d almost seemed afraid to even be in the same room with me. There’d always been this odd look of a mix between fear and need in his expression whenever he looked at me. I’d finally managed to pry the truth out of him one day when he’d been fifteen and I’d been nineteen. He’d been so certain I’d turn away from him when he’d told me he was gay when, in truth, it hadn’t bothered me in the least. But I’d been heartbroken that there’d been enough of a fissure in our relationship for him to even think I’d abandon him because of something like that. It’d taken months to prove that I loved him no matter what and that, unlike our parents, he hadn’t needed to buy my love by being some perfect version of himself.

Of course, he had eventually accepted that I’d always have his back and I loved him unconditionally.

But like everyone else in his life, I hadn’t kept my promise to him. My love hadn’t been unconditional. I’d chosen a vow we’d made to one another over everything else. Even if Dallas had done what my father had said and betrayed me by driving drunk, it hadn’t warranted my response. Yes, I would have had the right to be angry, but I should have made it clear I hated the crime, not the man.

Because just like I’d promised him that day as he’d wept in my arms and told me that he liked boys instead of girls, I’d never stopped loving my brother. But I may as well have. The things I’d said and done were crueler even than what our father had done to him.

I let my eyes linger over Dallas as he typed easily into the phone. I missed his voice. But I liked seeing how expressive his eyes were as he typed. I saw lots of the little things I’d never really appreciated when he’d been able to speak.

After a few minutes, Dallas handed me the phone and I tried to mentally prepare myself for the words of anger and hate I so deserved.

But I realized pretty quickly that wasn’t the intent of his message.

We’re not the same people we were back then, Maddox. And I believe that if you could change things, you would. I would, too. I would have told you the truth then and there, and I would have made sure you believed me instead of letting you walk away. Because you were the most important person in my life. But I chose to let you believe a lie because inside I was still that little kid who wanted to please his parents. It was a lot easier to live that lie than accept the truth. My hope is that you don’t do what I did and start to believe that you deserved what happened to you. My hope is that you don’t relive that day and wonder if there was something you could have or should have done differently. My hope is that you will accept that I forgive you for the things you said and did back then. My hope is that we can one day be brothers again. My hope is that you forgive yourself because I really want back the person who’s always had my back.

Emotion clogged my throat as I kept waiting for the hatred to shine through, but it wasn’t there. I found myself nodding along with the line he said about how much easier it was to live with a lie than accept the truth. But when I got to the part where he said he wanted me to accept that he’d forgiven me and wanted to be brothers again, I felt the tears stinging the backs of my eyes and I automatically wiped at them.

When I was finished, I read the damn thing a second time, just to make sure I hadn’t been reading things that weren’t there. It was just too good to be true. It was like those rare moments in my nightmares where I’d be waking up to the sound of explosions with pain searing my body. I’d hear the pounding over and over, but when I crawled around the overturned Humvee, Jett wasn’t lying pinned beneath the vehicle and calling my name as he pounded the butt of his machine gun on the vehicle to get my attention. He was simply standing on his own two legs, impatiently tapping the roof of the vehicle as he told me to get a move on because we were headed home. Our entire unit was standing behind him agreeing with him.

In my weakest moments, I craved those rare altered memories more than I wanted to admit. But they were few and far between and were starting to become more and more unbearable than the actual memory, because they left me with this god-awful hope that scared the hell out of me.