years. There was no hope of controlling them as they spilled over my lids and slipped down my cheeks.
Hot and wet and endless.
But still, I held out.
And then Lex was leaning over me, his lips skimming my temple and then moving farther down to kiss away the tears that fell. They didn't stop, of course, but that didn't seem to deter Lex. Instead, he pressed his lips to the corner of my mouth. "Let go, Gideon. I'll bring you back."
I did everything I could to stop it. I shook my head violently. I gripped Lex's hand hard enough that it had to hurt. I squeezed my eyes shut as if that would somehow stop everything. I cursed God to hell and back in my head. But nothing worked. Nothing kept the hole inside of me from breaking wide open. I turned in Lex's arms and wrapped myself around him.
And then I did exactly what he’d told me to.
I let go.
Chapter Seventeen
Lex
I could still hear his screams in my head even a week later.
I understood suffering. The kids my brothers and I helped every day had suffered. They'd endured the most horrifying of experiences, but many of them did exactly what Gideon had done.
They held it in. They walled off their pain in a place deep inside of themselves in the hopes that it would never again see the light of day.
Many of them never came back from trying to live like that. They found other ways to dull their pain. And sadly, those who couldn’t bury or dull it often resorted to the ultimate escape.
I had no doubt that whatever had caused Gideon's agony was something he'd buried long ago. There was no other explanation for the anguish he'd allowed me to witness. My gut was telling me that his pain had to be tied to the child he'd lost. I still wasn't sure how his daughter had died or what the circumstances were surrounding his other child, but it didn't really matter. All that mattered was that Gideon was suffering, and I didn't know if I'd helped or hurt because Gideon hadn’t spoken to me about any of it.
It had been a week since I'd woken up alone in Gideon's bed, the front of my shirt still damp with his tears. When I’d gone in search of him, I’d found him in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes we'd left after our impromptu food fight. As soon as I'd greeted him, I'd known that things had once again shifted between us. I’d understood the embarrassment he’d probably been feeling, but I'd hoped that it was something we could work past.
We hadn't.
What we had managed was to go back to the relationship we’d had when I’d first arrived. One where he was the caretaker and I was the tenant.
After taking me home that evening, he'd made sure I was safe inside the cabin before he’d left. He’d returned the next day but only to restock the woodpile. It had been the same each day after that. The only conversation we’d had was when he'd asked me if I needed anything else. The formality had stung like a son of a bitch, but I’d understood it.
I'd spent my time in the cabin working on finding my way around. I'd started including the upstairs in my routine and after a week of learning all the various counts, I could now easily find my way from one room to another. The temptation to call my brothers had been strong, but I knew I wasn't ready. Surprisingly, it was now more about the vulnerability I felt about Gideon rather than the loss of my sight that kept me from reaching out to King or any of my other brothers. I'd vowed to myself that I wouldn't develop feelings for Gideon, but apparently my heart wasn't big on vows at the moment.
I'd sent Gideon a few texts here and there, but after the first few days, I hadn't even bothered to turn my phone back on to check them because I'd known he wouldn't respond.
I wasn't completely alone, though. Brewer had a habit of coming by every day in the afternoon. Gideon would inevitably come to pick him up, but he merely called the dog from the driveway and when I opened the door, the animal would take off for what I assumed was Gideon's waiting truck. I wasn't sure what I’d done to earn the dog’s affection, but I most certainly wished that some