you were. Knowing you’d checked out on work and her, I knew something was wrong.”
Makenna.
Hearing her name out loud was like a punch to the gut. Caden pressed his fist against the jagged throb in his chest.
Makenna.
The sob came out of nowhere.
Caden slapped his hand over his mouth, horrified to fall apart in front of Joe, to show him just how weak he really was.
But it was like her name unlocked something inside him, and it felt like whatever it was had been the very last thing holding him together. “Fuck,” Caden choked out, falling heavily to the couch. He dropped his face into his hands, a vain effort to hide the unhideable. His tears. His sobs. His grief.
His failure.
Joe was right there with him. Hand on his shoulder, the man sat beside him. “It’ll get better. Just hang on. We’ll get you through this.”
When Caden could manage to talk again, he shook his head. “She’s gone,” he rasped, sliding his wet hands to cradle his throbbing forehead. “I…I fucked everything up.”
“Don’t worry about that. Worry about you. Fix you. Then you can work on whatever else you want. But it starts with you.” Joe squeezed his shoulder. “And I’ll be here to help.”
Caden tilted his head to the side just enough to see Joe’s face. “Why?”
His captain nailed him with a stare. “You really gotta ask?”
“Yeah,” he rasped.
“Because you’re a great part of my team, Caden. Excellent at what you do. More than that, after all these years, I consider you a friend. And if all that wasn’t enough, you’re a good fucking human being, and I’m not losing you to whatever bullshit lies your head is telling you. I know you don’t have any family, so I’m officially stepping in and stepping up. I will fight for you until you can fight for yourself. You hear me?”
The words reached inside Caden’s chest…and eased him. Not a lot. Not permanently. But enough to take a deep breath. Enough to let his shoulders loosen. Enough to begin to think beyond the next five minutes.
Caden respected the hell out of Joe Flaherty. Had for his entire adult life. And if Joe believed all that about Caden, maybe there was truth in what he said. And if Joe was willing to fight for Caden, maybe Caden could figure out how to fight for himself, too.
It starts with you.
That idea connected to something deep inside Caden. He didn’t know what it was. He didn’t know what it meant. But he grasped onto it, and he grasped onto Joe’s support. Because he had to grasp on to something.
Before he lost himself forever.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Makenna pulled her car into her father’s driveway, her stomach a nervous, nauseous wreck. For once, that wasn’t her morning sickness talking. It was the looming conversation she needed to have with her dad and brothers. The one that informed them she was pregnant and nearly twelve weeks along. And that the father was out of the picture.
Two weeks had passed since Caden had left his key. Two weeks since she’d left that voicemail. Two weeks of silence, although she had sent him a Christmas card. One last attempt to reach out.
No. Don’t think about Caden.
Heaving a deep breath, she nodded to herself. She couldn’t think of him without getting upset. And angry. And confused. And worried. None of which made her love him any less, though, which just made her so, so sad.
Enough. It’s Christmas.
Right. It would’ve been their first.
The thought made her eyes sting.
She forced her gaze to the ceiling of her car, pinching off the threatening tears.
When she’d reined herself in, she retrieved the shopping bags of gifts from her back seat and made her way inside.
“There’s my peanut,” Dad said when she walked into the kitchen, the nickname making her throat tight. The smell of pancakes and bacon surrounded her—Dad had made the same thing for Christmas breakfast every year since forever.
“Hi,” she managed. “Merry Christmas.”
Patrick sat at the breakfast bar, the newspaper spread out in front of him and a coffee mug in his hand. “Merry Christmas,” he said, an affectionate smile on his face. “Wondering when you were gonna get here.”
“I know,” she said, guilt eating at her. She’d never missed a Christmas Eve at home before, but the holiday had really hit her hard the day before and she’d just needed the time to herself. So she’d called and blamed her inability to make the trip on a bad headache. “I’m sorry I didn’t make