A Fire That Burns (29 page)

Chapter Fifty-Two

THE
familiarity of the
dull ache in her chest notified her that again her heart was being ripped to
shreds. The pain, so much more palpable than the sting to her burns, that she didn’t
know which she preferred.

Seeing Tyler fight Michael so wildly and violently was haunting her;
even now, when she was alone and away from all the commotion and chaos that
they had created.

Even sitting in the loneliness that the Point Arena Cove offered her did
nothing to tend to the emotional and mental wounds. Usually this was the one
place that would soothe her soul, help make clarity out of chaos, and would
allow her to take that deep calming breathe that would enable her to pick
herself up and carry on.

For once, she couldn’t just go back to face the music of what had
happened.

“Austin,” Tyler’s voice came as he climbed down the rocks towards her.

“Just leave me alone,” Austin snapped back uncharacteristically. She
wasn’t in the mood to deal with the nitpicking and the snide remarks. She
wanted her two closest friends to understand how hard her heart had taken the
decision, but how right it was for her. Michael was destined to be her best
friend and Tyler was always destined to be the one man that could give her any
ideas about a future. Tyler was always her true soul mate.

“I’m not here to make you cut Michael from your life or to get you to
choose my side,” Tyler proved her wrong. “We had a discussion, cleared the air
between us,” he told her and dropped beside her, “Baby, we were worried. It’s
been over two hours. Tom and I knew you needed some air, but it is getting
late.”

“Two hours?” she
asked,
her voice a little
choked. She shook her head, “I’ll head back in a moment.”

“No,” he defied her. “You’ll head back with me now.”

“I’m not ready to go back to the fighting,” Austin admitted with a sigh.
“It’s all that it seems to feel like lately. One big fight to get things to
just go right,” Austin said and relished Tyler taking her in his arms. This was
one of the reasons why her choice felt right - Tyler was one of the only men
that could hold her close and soothe her without words.
While
Michael had to soothe her with words, hardly acting out.
He had to work
on her to make her see sense.

“It will get better,” Tyler soothed her. “When you’re more than healed
you’ll find that life will just fall back into place and you will be happier
than ever. I promise you that, and I am sorry for everything that happened
tonight. I promise you, it will get better and everything will just pick up and
you’ll look back on this one day and wonder what all the fuss was about.”

“Not if you fight again I won’t,” Austin argued back nonchalantly,
knowing that if she ever watched him fight so aggressively over her again she wouldn’t
be able to stomach it.

“If I ever do that again, then please, Austin, whatever happens please,
just
stop
me before I get that bad. I felt so
threatened by him and I shouldn’t have because you had proven to me and
everyone who it was you wanted. Baby, you do whatever you have to make me see
sense.”

“I’ll make sure I hit you really hard over the head with something,”
Austin joked with a somewhat off tone.

Laughing, Tyler guessed it was finally time to get her home. Now that he
had cleared the air he felt better and he had to let Michael have the
opportunity if he so wanted it. “Shall we go back?” He prompted and saw her
shake her head and saw the troubled look in her eyes. “What’s up, Baby?”

“He isn’t making this any easier,” Austin spoke before falling forward
to just sob into Tyler’s chest. “Why did this have to get so complicated?”

“Because loving people isn’t easy,” Tyler told her back. “You can’t help
what you feel and you can’t help how people react to things that they don’t
want to hear. Michael is hurt, you know that, I know that, he knows that, but
he needs to understand that if you’re not all in then you aren’t going to love
him completely.” Tyler smiled at her understandingly, “I’m not saying that
because you chose me and you love me over him, I am just saying that he will
come around.”

Austin nodded to show she understood even if her mind was making it hard
to take note of the fact that Michael would come around to her decision.

“I know you don’t believe it,
Aust
,” Tyler
observed. He knew that his reaction earlier had her feeling like this as well
as actually making this decision. Seeing two men fight over her was tearing her
apart and made her opinion and choice feel invalidated. Austin was having a
tough time taking on life as it was without two men that she valued most having
to result in physical fighting.

“It’s just he was the first man that I connected with since leaving
here,” Austin admitted to Tyler. “The first man since you anyway, and he made
it easier to be in New York. If we had a bad case, he’d take my mind off of it;
when I was ill, he was there. I thought he was my ticket to getting over you,
and then that case,” Austin paused to gather some composure. She couldn’t
finish the sentence. “I needed you, Tyler.
Like I always
did.”

Tyler was speechless for a moment, unable to sooth her with words. He
guessed he hadn’t really wanted to be confronted with the truth of what Michael
meant to Austin, but now he had it, he couldn’t hide from it.

“Now he’s going to hate me forever and I’m the greedy one for not
wanting him to leave me,” Austin confessed with a soft sob. “I can’t tell him
that I’m in love with you and want you, but want him in my life at the same
time. That is selfish and horrible and that’s what I have begun to do.”

Hearing her cry broke his heart and he knew, if it were him in the
predicament, he wouldn’t throw it all away, regardless of what he was left with
afterwards. “He will come around,” Tyler vowed to her and pressed his lips to
her temple in a delicate kiss. “You’ll see. He really would rather keep you,
than lose you.” He finished and allowed her to digest this however she needed
to.

Sitting in the quiet that the cove offered, the pair just lapped up their
presence with each other, the sound of the slow crashing waves calmed and
alleviated from the rage that the fight had issued them both with.

Tyler allowed Austin to have the space she needed. He enabled her the
time to soothe herself for the moment, but he was too aware of the actual time
to ignore it.
he
knew that if she didn’t get rest she
needed, it would result in Austin being in pain the following day and he did
not want to see that.

“Sunny?” Tyler asked into the silence.

“Hmm,” Austin answered enough to show that he had her attention.

“Can I please just take you home?” Tyler asked as he put his hand out.
His biggest prize of the evening wasn’t that he had won the fight, or that he
had beaten Michael literally, but more because Austin put her hand in his,
ready to go back home.

Austin finally let Tyler take her home and when she got there, she
encompassed the feel of her sheets wrapping around her body as she crawled into
bed. She was even happier that it was so late no one was waiting for explanations
or confrontations. It was just her and Tyler for the rest of the evening.

Chapter Fifty-Three

ONLY
two days had passed
and Michael didn’t say a word. He joined them all each day and played nice,
even began to develop a relationship with Tyler as
buddies
, but he
couldn’t even go near Austin. He needed time to fit into the new place he was
given in Austin’s life. He just couldn’t, not for the life of him, make this an
easy transition.

He was still bitter over the one fact he had been made fully aware of –
Austin would always love Tyler.

However, he was still sticking around and today he felt like he might
almost welcome her back, but when the moment rose, he ignored it and ignored
her too. He watched her come in and wiped away all attention everyone poured at
her. Defusing their worry with a simple comment that she was fine and Michael
knew her and he knew she was lying.

Austin sat curled up in the arm chair, her gaze completely stolen as
thought silenced her and drew her far from reality. She’d been quiet ever since
she, Tyler, and her parents had gotten home from her latest check up. She was
distant, withdrawn, scared almost. Everyone was waiting on them as they came
back from the hospital appointment, no one had spoken a word about it and no
one dared to ask quite yet.

By Austin’s silent
behavior
they knew it
couldn’t have been good news. It seemed to show that the final straw had been
delivered to break her optimism. It didn’t take long for Austin to say she
needed a lie down before she fled the room and headed upstairs, leaving
everyone downstairs to question her sudden mood change. She had left the house
happy and now she was back like this. They all just wanted to know what
happened.

“She’s got an infection again so she’s on new antibiotics,” Nicolas told
them all. He was still riled with concerns and worries about his daughter’s
health. “It’s to be expected while she heals because she has no real protection
against any bacteria from getting on the skin graft.”

“What else?” Dean asked as they all looked from their parents to Tyler.
He knew there was more than just an infection to get them all looking as
worried as they were.

“Her arm rejected the skin graft,” Tyler announced to them all and he
couldn’t keep the worry and fear from sticking to his tone. “She’s
gotta
go in for surgery to undo the work and attach another
one in its place.”

“What about her side? Is that okay?” Tom asked as he felt the need to
bolt and find his little sister.

Tyler nodded, “That burn wasn’t as bad as the one she has on her top of
her arm. That’s only first to second degree burns. The doctor’s actually really
pleased with how that’s healing, but for now her arm is a bit of a concern.”

Dean ran a hand over his face as he sighed, “When is this happening?”

“Possibly tomorrow night, or Wednesday morning at the latest.
They’re going to
call us when they’ve scheduled a spot for her,” Tyler told them truthfully and
looked to Michael. “Hey, Mike, can I borrow you for a moment or two?” He saw
Michael look at him with a serious look, “Two minutes, man, aren’t
gonna
kill
ya
.”

“Fine,” he relented and kept his hard exterior intact.

As the two men left, questions began to gather and everyone needed to
know what was going on exactly before they left. They wanted to know the ins
and outs, especially seeing as the team were called back by Strauss. They all
knew that the ice queen in Quantico would call them back before they were
ready.

Liam looked to Jane and Nicolas, “This operation,” he trailed off hoping
they would catch on and elaborate.

“She’s got to have more tissue removed because it died due to the
infection,” Jane told them. “It’s either that or
leave
it and she could lose her arm.”

“They may well do an
escharotomy
as well,”
Everyone turned to look at Archie as he spilt his knowledge. Archie babbled on
for a moment and as everyone looked at him and he shrugged, “It is a fairly
quick procedure and Austin will feel the benefits almost immediately and it’ll
help the grafts if the blood flow is circulating better,” he shrugged again, really
just running on the knowledge he had acquired from reading one too many text
books.

Jane shook her head at how such a young man could know all that. “She’s
just a little scared,” Jane fretted openly. “She’s been quiet since we left the
hospital and she’s just worrying about the operation.”

“We have to leave tomorrow,” Liam told them adding to the dampened mood.
“We received the call while you were out and we can’t go against orders.” He
saw the Pearson’s accepting yet downtrodden expressions, “We will try our
hardest to get back as soon as we can, but it’s unlikely we’ll all get time off
together again. I want you to know that we support Austin regardless.”

“I think having you here when she needed you did her a world of good.
Today’s just knocked her for a loop,” Nicolas told them appreciatively thinking
of his daughter. “She knows she has you all regardless of the distance.”

“We just wish we could stick around longer,” Jessica told them gently.
“Especially now.”

There were no other words that could be said. Everyone wanted to be a
support to Austin and everyone wished they could be, but reality called, and
they had to listen. Their little bit of hope rested in knowing that Austin was
left in the best hands possible.

***

“What’s up?” Michael asked as he walked onto the
decking and turned to lean against the wooden railing. He crossed his arms over
his chest, completely shutting off his body language to any of Tyler’s friendly
advances at making amends.

“We need to talk about Austin,” Tyler prompted the other man seriously.

“I guess,” he muttered back at Tyler causally.

“She’s scared,” Tyler told him truthfully. “She is good at plastering on
a smile and getting on with it, but right now she is dealing with more than
this new op.” Tyler continued to survey Michael’s reactions and was sorely
disappointed when the other man didn’t even so much as bat an eye. “So that’s
it? You’ll forgive me and talk to me, but you’ll leave her alone forever more?
I know her choosing me was difficult on you, but think how she felt when she
was faced with it. She knew she was going to have to hurt you and she knew it
wasn’t going to end well. She just didn’t think she’d have to live like this
after it.”

Michael’s lips moved a little with the speculation of change of heart.

“She always knew she was going to lose one of us,” Tyler admitted to him
genuinely. “Right now, she doesn’t have the energy to beg you back, Michael,
and today finished her a little bit more.”

“I know,” Michael tried to sympathize, but he didn’t really know. His
ignorance had been bliss until right about now and he realized his ignorance
was just a distraction.

“She thinks that because of the burns, the scars they’ll leave, that
we’ll not want to know her because she’ll be ugly. She’s dealing with that
insecurity and the idea that you never want to talk to her again. No matter
what I tell her, however many times I tell her that you’re going to come around
and be okay, she needs you to tell her.”

“I was lashing out,” Michael confessed and then looked shocked as Tyler
laughed. “What?”

Still laughing, Tyler spoke, “Lashing out gets you absolutely nowhere. I
lashed out and she ended up in a burning building nearly dead,” Tyler told
Michael honestly. “You need to just realize that she does love you and she
needs you, just as much as she needs me.”

“But it will never be enough,” Michael fought back fiercely.

“I know that feeling,” Tyler responded to Michael’s statement. “The
thing is though, you do find yourself moving on, but you aren’t losing her.
She’ll be with you through everything and she will encourage you to find the
perfect woman. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to fully give herself to
you and that panicked her and she hated herself for it. Just accept her
decision, Mike.”

“I just need some more time,” Michael told Tyler painfully. He was still
more than a little confused over what to do. He wanted Austin, but he was
scared to hate her for ever choosing Tyler over him. He didn’t want to feel the
jealousy that rode through him, and he certainly didn’t want to acknowledge or
accept the fact that the last case had bent her,
then
he had broken her with his reaction.

Tyler knew that Michael was biding time and that he was left unsettled,
but Tyler had done what he needed to do; he had planted the seed to help Austin
and Michael find a relationship again. It was up to Michael now and Tyler had
to focus on picking Austin up so that her morale was sky high and positive.

     
The
unsettled feeling was still with Michael when he woke up the next day. He knew
they had to leave, they had jobs to do. However much he wanted to stick around,
he knew the distance would help, but he also knew he had to make amends before
he left or regret it forever. All he had done was given her a hug as the team
prepared to leave; their journey taking them to the airport, Austin’s taking
her back to the hospital. Michael finally accepted his new role - Austin’s best
friend.