Page 15 of Even if It Hurts

Considering what I’d done in the military, I wasn’t a stranger to losing people I cared about. But the call that he’d overdosed hit me harder than any other death before because that was my brother. The kid I’d practically raised and fought to keep alive.

And I’d failed him.

The news that his wife and one of their friends had died the same night had been a lesser shock once I’d learned what they’d been messing with and that a baby had been found at the scene—dirty and hungry, but otherwise fine.

A baby whose only kin that wasn’t deceased or in prison was me and my younger sister, who was halfway across the country, doing everything to forget about the life she’d left behind here—not that I blamed her.

And before I’d been able to figure out how to take a breath around the barbed wire squeezing my lungs, I was told the process and steps I needed to take to get temporary and permanent custody of Kaia if I didn’t want her going into the system.

Except I didn’t want custody of a baby. After watching my mom destroy her life, leaving me to raise my younger siblings along the way, the last thing I’d ever wanted was a family, so I’d focused on my careers. But the thought of letting Kaia go into the system? Well...I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.

Even in my grief, the irony of all this happening just minutes after thesettling downconversation with Rush hadn’t been lost on me.

So, my team had spent the two days before Kaia arrived babyproofing my apartment while I’d had countless appointments with social workers, pediatricians, and detectives between cleaning out my brother’s apartment.

Not that there’d been much in there.

And it had only made my guilt burn hotter. If I would’ve gone there more than once a month, I would’ve known he’d relapsed. The missing furniture and empty fridge would’ve told me everything I’d needed to know.

“What do you really need, Ada?” I asked as I followed her and Rush into my disaster of a living room where the rest of my team was doing everything to make Kaia stop screaming.

The sound was like nails on a chalkboard.

I hated it.

I rolled my neck, stopping halfway and struggling to catch the paper Ada carelessly flipped at me.

“‘Aaaah,’” she said dryly before tossing another paper. “‘Waaah.’ And this one was from someone saying something I can’t quite remember—oh, yes: ‘Aaaah.’”

“Really?” I ground out when she tossed the remaining papers into the air, letting them fall everywhere.

I picked them up, flipping through to see they were all blank but one.

You’re welcome.

“What am I supposed to be thanking you for?” I asked as I held up the paper.

“For putting up with you.”

I lifted the papers higher to prove a point when I countered, “Sometimes, I think it’s the other way around.”

She tsked and gave me one of those looks she thought was intimidating—pursed lips paired with a raised, graying brow—as if to remind me she had one foot out the door because she was more than ready to retire.

As if any of us would let her leave.

“You’re welcomefor saving you and that sweet baby from your hurt.” She swatted at the papers, snatching them from me as she explained, “You need someone to help you take care of that little girl, so I hired a nanny.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You heard me,” she said with a stubborn lift of her chin.

“You can’t just—” I forced out a harsh breath that bordered on an exasperated laugh when my voice came out sharper thanI intended, drawing the shocked gaze of every member of my team.

They got on me enough about my cross personality to let me know I wasn’t the nicest guy out there, but raising my voice wasn’t something I did often. It was just this week and the loss that felt preventable and the screaming that hadn’t stopped in over twenty-four hours.

I shifted so my back was to the living room and muttered, “You can’t just do that, Ada.”

A mocking laugh left her as she once again swatted at me. “Oh, but I can—I did.”

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