“Yeah. Damn it.” More of the anger bled into his voice than he’d intended. Thomas put a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t get after her about it. It’s bound to be tough--”
“You think I’m pissed at her?” Rory shrugged off his hand, glared at his brother. “Damn it, I knew this afternoon. This was too much, too soon. She needed a backup.”
“Rory, she has to stumble,” Thomas said. “You can’t catch her every time she falls.”
“I can’t catch her at all, most the time. So it makes it even worse when I don’t catch her when I know I can.”
“Maybe you should give her the night,” his brother persisted. “Talk to her about it tomorrow, when you feel less worked up about it, too.”
Rory glanced at Marcus’s face, which had gone expressionless. Letting Rory figure it out. Make the decision.
“Yeah. Maybe.” As he took the ramp to the ground level, he was pointed toward the road and home, but he didn’t head that way. He thought of the backpack, full of supplies she’d picked out with such excitement and pleasure. Les had gone with her, when his sister was home for her last break.
Marcus and Thomas had given Daralyn the community college tuition as a Christmas gift, but Daralyn had missed the winter, spring and summer registration periods. When she’d finally signed up for the fall classes, it had been after doubling up on her bi-monthly sessions with her psychiatrist. Even so, this was going to feel like a major setback to her. But it wasn’t.
He turned away from the road and headed for the guesthouse.
Thomas started to call after him, but Marcus put a hand on his shoulder. “Let him go, pet.” He sent Thomas a significant look. “It’s begun now. You don’t get between Master and sub when they’re in session.”
“You think that’s what this is.”
“It feels that way. Life exists between Lloyd Dobler and Dr. Seuss, after all.”
Thomas blinked, his dark brown eyes reflecting that endearing puzzlement that happened when Marcus threw a wrench in the workings of his brilliant artistic mind. “Say what?”
Marcus quirked a brow. “‘I’m looking for a dare to be great situation,’ versus ‘To the world you may be one person; but to one person you may be the world.’ But it all goes back to Lloyd. I think he knew they were one and the same. The dare to be great situation was being the person his heroine needed. Becoming the one.”
Thomas shook his head. “Eighties movies and Dr. Seuss. You never fail to surprise.”
“Long and short, let it play out. Trust your brother. Trust Daralyn.”
“I do. I just don’t want either one hurt. He’s still got so much anger in him sometimes.” Thomas sighed, looking toward the guest house. “His attitude has improved by leaps and bounds, but Mom worries he’s still vulnerable to emotional bumps in the road that can throw him for a loop physically. I’d say that’s a Mom thing, but I feel it too. He’s so invested in Daralyn already. What if staying here, being with him, isn’t what’s best for her?”
Marcus shifted, his body brushing Thomas’s in support. “If he truly loves her, and yeah, I think he’s already way past halfway there, he’ll know that, maybe even before she does. If that’s what she needs, he’ll let her go.”
“How do you know that?”
Marcus met his gaze. “Because I love you. And if me letting you go had truly been the right thing for you, for your happiness, I would have. Even if it had killed me.”
Thomas’s eyes went to heat. In less than a blink, he had his hand on Marcus’s biceps in a solid grip. “There’s no world where that would have been the right thing for me,” he said.
Marcus’s jaw flexed, but he gave Thomas’s nape a hard squeeze. It was the answer he was always glad to hear, down to his soul, but it didn’t make his own statement any less true. Letting Thomas go would have destroyed him. Not physically. He would have kept going, being who he was, but something inside would have died and never lived again.
If that was the depth of feeling Rory and Daralyn were on their way to sharing, Marcus shared Thomas’s worry.
He hoped to God Rory wouldn’t have to face that choice. Because Thomas was right. Nothing could knock a person down harder than that, and make you never want to get up again.