Letters Home (16 page)

“Shhh, it’s okay.” Liam’s voice was right by my ear.

“No, it’s not. Colin’s right.”

“He’s what?”

“He’s right. I’ve been hiding from life, hiding from the pain when I all I want to be is angry. I want to be pissed that I was left all alone, that I have to pick up the pieces of my life…but I’m afraid to face that kind of pain again.” Through blurred vision I saw Colin kneel down in front of me.

“Danielle,” Liam whispered.

“Look at me,” Colin said softly. When I looked up I noticed his eyes were no longer filled with anger, but glistening with tears. “It’s okay to be angry and hurt. Just remember there were a lot of us hurt by Nate’s death too.”

“Oh God, Tanner!” Earlier I’d been too upset to think about how my reaction might affect him. If he felt guilty, it was because of what I’d said. He didn’t deserve to be treated that way, he was only doing what Nate asked him to do and I should have been grateful that he had friends who were willing to do that for him. “This is all my fault,” I whispered.

“We can fix this,” Colin said.

“You don’t have to take the blame for this,” Liam protested.

“No, Liam. He didn’t deserve the things I said to him in anger. Anger about something he had no control over.” I swallowed hard, hating to say the words out loud. “It isn’t his fault that Nate is dead, and I had no right to treat him that way, no matter how much I was hurting.” I turned back to Colin. “How do I fix this? He was Nate’s friend and I treated him like absolute garbage.”

“Danielle—” Liam started.

“Liam, please, I need to make this right. You missed it, but I can tell you it was really bad. He was Nate’s friend and I walked all over that friendship because I need to face my demons. There has to be something I can do. I was horrible to him.”

“You can apologize,” Colin said.

“Yeah, like he would even take a call from the crazy girl who screamed at him for a half an hour.”

“You may be right, but I think this is something you need to do in person,” Colin said.

“Colin, you can’t expect her to go over there?” Liam argued.

He watched me for a moment then looked over at my brother. “I can and I do. Not only does Tanner need to hear what she has to say, face to face, like she said earlier, she needs to face her demons.”

Liam blew out a heavy breath. “She needs to do a lot of things, but I’m not sure this is good idea, especially after today.”

Could I really step onto that base? After Nate’s funeral, I told myself I’d never go back. It was about protecting myself. Now here I was faced with a choice of hiding behind my fears, or doing what was right. I was so wrapped up in my thoughts I failed to notice that I was biting on my nails, a habit I’d broken when I was eleven. Liam saw it almost immediately.

“Danielle, listen to me. You do not have to do this. Yeah, you freaked out, but after all that’s happened you had every right to. If you want, I’ll apologize to the guy for both of us.”

That was my brother, doing anything to keep me out of harm’s way. I shook my head and stood to wrap my arms around him. “Thank you for being so sweet to me, but this is something that I’ve got to do.” I turned back to Colin. “Will you come with me?”

“Of course I will. When do you want to go?”

“Now, before I let my nerves get the better of me.”

“I’ll drive,” Colin offered.

“Do you want me to come?” Liam asked.

“I do, but I think it’s time for me to start standing on my own two feet again.” Leaning up, I kissed him on the cheek.

“Give me five minutes to get cleaned up and ready?”

Colin nodded and I turned to head back to my bedroom. As soon as I was away from them, my breath started coming a bit faster and my hands began to shake. All this and we hadn’t even left the house yet. I wasn’t sure I was ready to face the challenges ahead of me, but there was only one way to find out.

And that was to jump in, feet first.

Finding something special when you least expect it.

After an hour and a half in the gym, I’d pushed my body harder than I had in a long time. Yet as I lay on the couch and closed my eyes, all I could see was a broken Danielle, dancing behind my lids, taunting me. My mind kept replaying the whole thing over and over again as I tried to figure out if there was a way I could have saved everyone so much pain. Maybe I could have convinced someone to send a medic that night, or I could have talked Nate out of this idea when he first mentioned it?

There was a knock at the door, jarring me from the thoughts and memories, but I wasn’t really in the mood to deal with anyone so I threw my hand over my eyes and ignored it.

The person knocked again. Man, they were persistent. If it continued, I was ready to grab a set of headphones to block out the sound. At least, I was until I heard a voice on the other side of the door.

“Open up, man, I know you’re in there. Your car’s in the parking lot,” Colin yelled through the door. Groaning, I pulled myself into a sitting position. I may have lacked the desire to talk to anyone, but I really needed to know what had happened when he went back to see Danielle.

I made my way over to the door, wanting to get the conversation over with as soon as possible but when I opened it, I was shocked to see Danielle standing in front of me, her dark hair slightly damp, as if she’d just stepped out of the shower. Although she wasn’t looking at me, her gaze focused on something over my shoulder, I noticed the slight shake to her hands. Colin had said she wasn’t comfortable seeing men in uniform, so I could only imagine how it felt to come to the base.

“Danielle?” I questioned, my gaze flashing to Colin’s and back again.

“Can I…umm…can I come in?” There was a slight quiver to her voice.

“Of course,” I said, taking a step back to let both of them past.

The apartment was relatively clean but I had thrown my workout stuff on the floor when I got home, not expecting anyone until Greg came home Sunday night. “Sorry about the mess.” I started grabbing things to move them back to my room. “Make yourselves at home, I’ll be right back.”

Halfway to the bedroom I stopped in my tracks. Why was I so worried about a small mess in the living room? Guilt flooded me as I realized that, somewhere in the back of my mind, I felt this need to impress her. In the last few hours I’d resigned myself to the fact that I was attracted to her. Under normal circumstances that would be a good thing, but these weren’t normal circumstances, and she was the widow of a brother—a friend I wish I could have protected and saved. I needed to get my thoughts together and focus. They’d obviously come for a reason and I was standing with an armful of clothes, when cleaning should be the last thing on my mind. Shaking my head, I made my way back to the living room to face whatever reason Danielle was here.

“Sorry about that,” I said, entering the room and seeing Colin had taken the chair, leaving the seat on the couch next to Danielle empty. Even though I wanted to get the conversation started, the manners my mother instilled in me couldn’t be denied. “Can I get either of you something to drink?”

“No, man, I’m good.”

Danielle shook her head. “No, thank you.”

She was fidgeting with her hands and every once in a while she’d put her hand up to her mouth to chew on a fingernail. If my insides hadn’t been doing gymnastics I might find the fact that she was obviously nervous a little endearing. With a silent sigh, I took the seat next to Danielle and waited to hear what she had to say.

The fidgeting continued, yet she didn’t speak a word.

“Danielle?” Colin prompted.

Her head snapped to his and he nodded in encouragement. Slowly, she turned to face me. Her eyes held a bit and apprehension and sadness, but even so, she was still heartbreakingly beautiful. She took a deep breath and began. “Tanner, I owe you an apology. At this point I’m not even sure an apology is enough, but I’m not sure what else could possibly make this right.”

When I opened my mouth to tell her that she didn’t owe me anything, she lifted her hand to stop me. “Please, let me finish.”

It was frustrating beyond all belief because she truly didn’t owe me a thing and although I understood why she was upset, to watch her sit there and struggle with her words made my chest tighten. All I wanted to do was find a way to take her pain away.

Her eyes began to glisten. “I spent a lot of time after Nate’s death hiding. I buried my feelings so deep. I just didn’t think I was strong enough to face them…maybe I wasn’t.” Her voice began to quiver with her confession. “You see, the last letter Nate wrote to me was the one where he asked me to marry him.”

I groaned, feeling like even more of an asshole for doing this to her. Without much thought, I reached over and covered her hand with mine. “I’m so sorry, Danielle. You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

The tears slid slowly down her cheeks and it took everything I had not to reach up and wipe them away. Instead I moved closer and wrapped my arm around her, pulling her to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Colin stand up and point to the kitchen and I gave him a slight nod before returning my focus to Danielle. She shook her head against my chest. “Nate should never have asked you to bring that letter to me. It wasn’t fair of him.”

For a few minutes she cried on my shoulder until I felt a shudder run through her body. That’s when her head lifted to look at me. “I’m so sorry for the way I acted today. You didn’t deserve my anger and yet you still stayed to comfort me. So, thank you.”

“Nate was my friend, I would have done anything for him—including letting you take your anger out on me,” I said with what I hoped was a smile. Every word I said was true, though it hurt like hell to admit. Danielle wasn’t the only one with issues concerning Nate’s death, but I knew from experience that neither one of us were going to be able to accept that as easily as we’d like. Being a medic, I’d seen my fair share of death in the field. I guess Nate’s death just felt different because of the letter, and the fact that I wasn’t there to save him.

“That’s the thing, I shouldn’t still be angry. If I hadn’t bottled up all of these feelings before I could have faced them and dealt with it.” Reaching up she wiped the tears off of her face.

“What changed your mind?”

“Actually, a little after you left, Colin came over and tried to talk to me. Needless to say I was still angry and flipped out on him too.”

“What did he say to you?” My voice sounded tight as I tried to keep my body from trembling. He might have been my friend, but ringing Colin’s neck sounded a little too appealing. How could he say more to hurt her?

“First he told me about the letters, which was hard enough to hear, then he said that you weren’t the one to blame—which was the wrong thing to say because I definitely wanted
someone
to blame”—she winced—“and you seemed like the perfect person. Except, I was wrong, but I didn’t figure that out until Colin and I were screaming at each other, with my brother trying to break it up.”

My body wasn’t in my control anymore and I couldn’t stop the tension in my chest from leaking into my muscles. “Colin was yelling at you?” When he’d said he was going to talk to her it never crossed my mind that he would yell at her for freaking out on me. That wasn’t what I’d wanted at all. I just wanted a chance to make it right. My eyes were glued to the kitchen door, just waiting for him to pop his head out.

“Yeah, but I…are you all right? Your whole body is shaking.”

“Colin should have never yelled at you,” I said, trying to keep the strain out of my voice.

“Tanner,” she said, her voice soft as her hand covered the fist clenched at my side. With great effort I forced my gaze down to hers. “Colin had every right to yell at me. I said some things I shouldn’t have and I think I needed to hear what he had to say. Someone needed to snap me out of it.”

Taking deep breaths in an effort to calm down, I watched her face. While her eyes were still red and puffy from all the crying, there was something serene about her. Maybe she was right. Maybe she’d needed for someone to force her to confront her feelings, but it still didn’t mean I had to like it. We were supposed to be her husband’s friends, and over the course of a few hours we’d both reduced her to tears.

“I wish we could have met under better circumstances,” she said with a shy smile, and instantly my anger faded.