Page 24 of What We May Be

He didn’t respond, and Charlie glanced his way again. He swallowed hard, fighting a lump in his throat or fighting to keep words down; she couldn’t tell. And couldn’t resist asking. “Why’d you come here tonight?”

“Saul’s dying.”

She pitched forward, shifting onto her hip toward him. “Fuck, Sean, I’m sorry.” It was the last thing she expected him to say, and her heart instantly hurt for him. She’d only met Saul and Marie Paxton a handful of times, but she knew they loved Sean like a son, and he loved them like the second set of parents he’d been blessed with after losing the first. He’d lost so much family already and now to lose more… She reached out a hand, aiming for his arm, but he blocked her with the whisky bottle.

“Here,” he said. “Drink this.”

“It’s empty, Sean.”

Retracting the bottle, he held it an inch from his nose and squinted. “Hmm, I guess it is.” He set the empty bottle between his legs and spun it. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to drink it all.”

She suspected that’s exactly what he’d meant to do. She reached over his leg, snagged the bottle, and set it out of his reach. “Tell me.”

“Cancer. Terminal this time.”

“This time?”

He lifted a hand, three fingers raised.

“Since when?”

He slumped back, eyes closed. “Feels like forever.

What did that mean? Before he’d come to Hanover? No, he would have told them. They would’ve known. Wait, was that—

Sean interrupted her speculation with a bitter groan. “Marie’s holding up better than me.”

She laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Sean.”

Sean covered it with his own, clutching her fingers. When he spoke again, agony and regret were etched in every word. “I’d blocked it out, everything about Hanover, about the family I’d lost here. And I avoided my other family too, lost how many years with them because if I couldn’t have both of you, it was easier to just be gone.” The next instant, Sean rocketed to his feet, and Charlie vaulted to her knees, bracing him with a hand to his hip, holding him steady until his wobbling ceased and his pacing began. “Fuck! What am I doing here? In Hanover, talking to a family that’s no longer mine, putting you and Trevor through hell. Why am I not with Marie and Saul? Fuck!” He plowed his fingers through his hair and yanked on the ends. “I just want to do right by all of you, and all I seem to do is make the wrong decisions and let all of you down.”

Her heart stopped, stuttered, then hammered double time. She was right. When Sean had left Hanover that night after graduation, she’d suspected he hadn’t done so voluntarily. It didn’t square with the man she loved. But if Saul had been sick, the Sean she knew would rush to his side, especially after all the Paxtons had done for him. But why hadn’t he told them? Why hadn’t he made contact or come back? Why, when Cal went after him, did Sean say there was nothing to come back to? That didn’t square with a man who put duty and obligation first, who, unable to sacrifice his duty to one for the other, had thought he had to run from both families he so clearly loved.

Charlie rose the rest of the way and cut in front of Sean, halting his swerving circuit. “Sean, why didn’t you tell us? Trevor and I would have been there for you.” She laid her hands on his chest like she’d done that morning a month ago. Except this time there was something under his shirt. No, two somethings. She pushed aside his collar and lifted out not one but two necklaces—his and Trevor’s CWS gifts from her. She gasped. Nothing about this fucking squared. “Why didn’t you come home to us?”

“It doesn’t matter.” His chest rose and fell under her hands, his breaths heavy and ragged. “All that matters is I left you and Trevor and Saul and Marie. Both my families.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Nothin’s been right since.”

But it did matter, Charlie was beginning to sense. Maybe more than any of them realized. Another mystery on her plate to unravel, one that had nagged at her for a decade. But Sean, the other investigator she needed, was in no shape to get into either case tonight. He was too caught up in regret and despair, past and present.

He let out a long, shuddering sigh before he lifted his arms and covered her hands with his, holding them to his chest, holding her close. Same as she’d done with Trevor back at Annie’s, the three of them inextricably linked. “I’m so sorry, Charlie. For leaving, for coming back, for being a coward.”

Like she had with Trevor earlier, Charlie leaned forward and rested her head on his shoulder, offering comfort more than taking it this time. Thinking about the choices she’d made to protect her own family and considering the choices Sean had had to make too, choices until tonight she’d never known about. “We all made the only decisions we could. I’m sorry too.” If she had any hope of Sean forgiving hers, she needed to work on also understanding—and forgiving—his.

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