A Warm Heart in Winter (Black Dagger Brotherhood 18.50)

“I’ll be honest. He was surprised.”

Oh, God, Blay thought. As he did the math, it was possible that he was one of the last people who had interacted with Luchas.

The idea that Qhuinn’s brother might have been an afterthought for everyone in the house broke Blay’s heart. And on some level, he knew that wasn’t true. The male had been a part of the community, and yet… everybody had their own lives, lives with mates and young, lives within the war with the Lessening Society and now whatever new threat had come to Caldwell. There had always been injuries and nightly stressors, changes of seasons, problems with cars, supplies that needed reordering, guns to clean, daggers to sharpen.

Life. With all its multi-faceted layers.

And Luchas had had his own. Such as it was.

Had he felt left behind? And why hadn’t someone asked him if that had been true?

“I just want to take it back,” Blay said in a voice that cracked. “I don’t want to have been responsible in any way for…”

Qhuinn shook his head. “You aren’t. There are so many reasons without that.”

The words were the right ones—and some part of Qhuinn must have believed them. His voice was steady and not condemning in any way.

But that mismatched stare was elsewhere, not meeting Blay’s eyes.

“I have to go down there.” Qhuinn got to his feet. “I need to see the note.”

“I’ll take care of the kids.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

Justlikethat, Qhuinn was gone, the door to the bathroom opening and closing, a chill entering the warm, humid space.

Or maybe the waft of cold was just how Blay was feeling.

Qhuinn wasn’t an unfair male, and the love between them wasn’t something Blay questioned. But sometimes there were things you couldn’t come back from in relationships. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to work past them, or weren’t willing to try.

But the reality that your mate had contributed to the death of your brother, even if it was inadvertently, was a tough one.

Any way you looked at it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

As Qhuinn stood just inside his brother’s fifteen-by-fifteen-foot patient room, his brain fired up with an electric storm of shoulda/coulda/woulda’s. Maybe if they’d decorated this place? Like, wallpapered things and added a nice rug, hung oil paintings and thrown some expensive sheets on the hospital bed, maybe it would have—

“Shut the fuck up,” he muttered as he looked over at the rolling table.

And there it was. The letter.

Blay was right. With the envelope that white color, it blended completely into the tray. And of course, Luchas had taken care to make sure it was perfectly flush with the corner, arranged with care.

From across the way, the precise lettering, done with a narrow-tipped blue pen, in Luchas’s perfect penmanship, gave Qhuinn the chills.

Somehow, even with all his injuries, he’d managed to write beautifully.

Brother Mine.

Qhuinn went over with the intention of picking the letter up, taking out whatever was inside, and absorbing the words that had been left for him. But he ultimately didn’t touch the thing, and it took him a minute to figure out why. Then it came to him… as soon as he read whatever had been written, it was truly done. His brother was truly gone.

The finality of the death, the shocking, binary nature of finding Luchas’s frozen body out in the forest, had been transferred to the missive: As long as he didn’t read what was in there, his brother was still alive, in a way. They were both still in the in-between, something still left to be discovered, considered, reflected upon.

Well… and then there was his terror about whatever the message was.

Luchas had never been mean, but reality could be devastating.