Northern Exposure: Compass Brothers, Book 1, page 6
“JD.” He couldn’t say more but didn’t have to. Three sets of hands braced him now, promising to lend him strength.
“Rest. We’ve got you,” JD reassured him. “You’ll need all your energy when your mama sees you. Prepare yourself. She’s likely to squeeze you in half…or beat your ass with a wooden spoon. It’s kind of a toss-up at this point.”
Silas laughed, or tried to. The pain in his side dimmed his vision.
No! He scrambled toward the shimmering light but couldn’t gain a firm toehold on consciousness. He spiraled into nothingness, everything in him straining to rejoin his family.
Lucy sat in the corner of the room, watching Victoria alternate sobs with shouts at her stubborn son, who occupied the king-sized bed in the center of his boyhood room. Colby stood by Lucy’s side, his supportive grip on her shoulder helping to keep her relaxed.
Well, as much as she could be.
She’d anticipated that the jolt of desire Silas had always inspired in her would rear between them when they connected once more. And it had. But the intensity of the reaction had surprised her. It flared a hundred times brighter than the naïve infatuation she’d experienced as a young girl.
The injuries dotting his body, draining his alertness, had stopped her from mounting him where he lay. The wounds evident in his tortured gaze had broken her heart. She shivered as she remembered the undisguised agony she’d spotted in his dazed stare.
“Want me to find your sweater?” Colby whispered near her ear.
“No thanks.” She capitalized on his nearness, stealing a kiss, needing the fortification to gel her insides, which threatened to dissolve into a pile of mush.
“He’s going to be okay.” Her husband sipped from her lips again.
“Are we?” She shivered again. “Did you feel it? The connection…”
“Did I?” Colby breathed hard though she doubted their kisses inspired his elevated respiration. “I still do.”
Lucy couldn’t help herself. She glanced at the crotch of her husband’s ripped work jeans, sighing when she spotted the bulge there.
“Behave.” He rearranged himself. The gesture didn’t obscure the evidence. “I’m trying not to be obvious here, but it won’t quit.”
“Want me to take care of you?” Lucy squirmed in the chair. It’d been three hours since Silas had crashed into their lives again and already she thought she might die if someone didn’t touch her soon. “I’ll meet you in the bathroom downstairs in five minutes. I bet Vicky’s good for another half hour of lecturing.”
“At least.” Colby winced.
They’d all faced the mama bear’s wrath once or twice, but even the time Sawyer had gotten caught stealing from the general store for the hell of it his junior year of high school had generated less stern disappointment than this.
“When you have problems, you don’t run from family. You trust the people who love you. I did not raise you to shirk your responsibilities. Your place was here. Always here. Not like your brothers, who dreamed of something else. What made you think the answer was lying to us? To yourself? To Colby and Lucy?”
“I feel kind of bad abandoning him. Especially for a BJ. Even one of yours, baby.” Her husband hunched his shoulders and jammed his hands in his pockets when Vicky aimed her laser vision at him. He froze—like a deer in the headlights—until she turned back to her eldest son, disaster averted.
“…disrespectful…”
Lucy peeked up at Colby and grinned. Someday she hoped to have half as much command over her men and their children.
Men?
Oh damn, when had she gotten so greedy? Could it really be possible to keep them both? She had to try at least.
“…wasteful…”
Something about the energy surrounding the three of them when they’d touched in the ranch’s plane, which they’d rigged to haul their damaged friend home from Cheyenne, had electrified her. Given her hope.
“…unhealthy…”
Lucy grimaced at the rising pitch of Vicky’s diatribe. She thought she could hear dogs howling in the yard. When she shifted to leave the room, regardless of the danger from Silas’s mom, the tirade stopped short.
“And I love you more than I can say. I missed you, Silas.” Vicky smothered her son in hug tight enough to break another rib or two. “Please, don’t ever do that to us, or yourself, again. This accident is a blessing in disguise. It’s brought you home, where you belong.”
“Is this still my place?” Silas broke his silence.
“Absolutely.” Vicky answered before either Colby or Lucy could interject.
“How do you know?” Their injured friend fiddled with the edge of the blanket covering him.
“Because I’m your mother.” She kissed his forehead then glanced toward the corner where Lucy and Colby waited. “You can still set things to rights. Be true to yourself. Make me proud, Silas.”
“I’m working on it.” He sighed. “I don’t blame you for not believing me, but it’s what I always tried to do.”
“Foolish boy.” Her warm tone betrayed the true feelings behind her criticism. “Don’t struggle so hard. The solution is easy if you let it be. Listen to your heart.”
Vicky rested her palm on her son’s bare chest before nodding then leaving the room, shutting the door behind her.
No one moved.
No one spoke.
Lucy couldn’t swear she breathed.
Colby acted first. He pried her white-knuckled fingers from the arms of her chair then helped her stand. Together they walked, side by side, toward the bed. Toward Silas.
The puffy slashes of fresh scars marring his skin threatened to distract her. He seemed so pale. Whether his injuries or his time hidden from the sun had leeched his color she couldn’t tell. It made him appear cold. So did his tight nipples, which stood proud above the line of the sheet. The bright cotton cover obscured the lower half of his body from her wandering gaze.
He hadn’t shaved in forever. The scruffiness worked for him. Still, she couldn’t wait for him to reveal his strong jaw and the other hints of masculinity he’d grown into well.
“Christ, you’re so beautiful. More than I guessed, Lu.”
When his compliment knocked her off balance, he covered the gap.
“Are you going to yell at me too?” The mischievous grin she recognized from their childhood made an appearance even if it seemed a little rusty.
“Not exactly what I had in mind.” Colby answered for them both. He scrubbed his hands through his sun-bleached hair then cursed. “Hell if I know where to go from here, though.”
Lucy opened her mouth to make a suggestion. Silas interrupted. “Can I ask you something first?”
She nodded.
“Are you happy, Lu?” He tilted his head when her eyes narrowed. “I mean, really happy. And Colby too. Please promise me those lonely nights were worth it.”
“Jesus, dickhead.” Colby filled in when no sound would pass the knot in her throat. “Did you listen to one word Vicky said?”
“Yeah, she told me to follow my heart.” Silas’s rugged face, stressed by years of hard living—and, if she wasn’t mistaken, dented by the subtle unevenness caused by patches of frostbite—expressed his genuine interest. “All it’s ever wanted was to protect you. Both of you. To preserve your happiness.”
Lucy exchanged a look with her husband, enough to convey more than an entire conversation between most people. Colby nodded.
“Clearly, you didn’t read a single one of my letters.” Lucy plopped onto the mattress when her knees buckled. “Wow, that’s probably a solid three months of my life wasted.”
Maybe they’d deluded themselves all this time. Had Silas departed without a glance over his shoulder? Had his nobility supplied a convenient excuse? She scooted toward the edge, prepared to leave and reevaluate the situation, when his hand braceleted her wrist.
His hold sent electricity through her core.
“I couldn’t.” He coughed after the rush of air he’d expelled, his lungs still not fully recovered. When the fit extended, Silas’s face flushing an unhealthy shade of purple, she reached for the pitcher of water beside the bed.
Colby wrapped his arm around Silas’s shoulders then tipped their lost friend forward until she could touch the cup she held to his lips. He didn’t drink for a moment, as though his pride rebelled at needing help to accomplish something so simple. Eventually, he accepted her offering.
The cool liquid soothed Silas. Lucy expected her husband to lower the man to the mountain of pillows arranged behind him. Instead, he stared at the expanse of their friend’s back.
“You should see this, Lu.”
“Does he have more cuts and burns there?” She nibbled her lip. Nurses couldn’t be squeamish. She usually wasn’t, but the extensive damage Silas had sustained wrung her stomach. “Should I grab some fresh bandages?”
“Yeah, he’s pretty tore up. That’s not what I’m talking about, though.”
Silas met her gaze. He stared, offering no input. Close enough to kiss him, she watched him lick the last of the water droplets from his cracked lips. She opened a tube of balm she’d laid by the bed, part of her standard patient kit, and swirled some onto her finger. She’d applied the silky gel to many people in her career. None of them had made it seem like a dirty act. Tracing Silas’s parted mouth inspired her to flush then avert her eyes.
They weren’t ready yet.
Lucy forced herself to retreat, at least far enough to carefully straddle him as she crossed to his other side. Examining him from beneath Colby’s supportive hold would prove impossible. She gasped when something hard and long brushed her thigh. “You’re supposed to be sick.”
“I’d have to be dead not to get a rise in my Levi’s with you in my lap.”
“Amen.” Colby chuckled from where he kept Silas upright. “Except you’re not wearing any pants, big guy. There’s some serious crackage happening back here.”
“I think I’m skipping down the yellow brick road in Oz about now. It looks like I’m on Compass Ranch, but I really cracked my skull in that explosion and I’m lying on the rig while the world burns around me.”
“God, Si.” Lucy couldn’t stop herself from hugging him. She wrapped herself lightly around his torso and visualized absorbing his pain. Her touch seemed to break him from the memories assaulting him, at least long enough for him to make a joke.
“Any minute now flying monkeys are going to zoom past that fucking window. Keep the crazy lady on the bike away from me, okay? She gives me the willies.”
“Is it impossible to believe you’re home?” Lucy stroked his fuzzy cheek.
“It’s either that or you’re all insane. Most husbands wouldn’t find it amusing when some random guy wants to fuck his wife.”
“I’m not most husbands. And you’re not any guy.”
“That probably makes this worse.” Silas arched his hips, grinding himself against Lucy’s mound. She thought she might come on the spot. He desired her!
Relief poised her on the verge of tears and had naughty ideas screaming for attention.
Lucy scrambled to the other side of her patient before she landed them all in trouble. If he needed medical attention, that had to come first. They could figure out the rest later. It was enough that attraction zinged through him too.
When she spied what her husband stared at, she gasped. “Oh, my God.”
“Is it ruined?” Silas’s frame heaved with the disappointment he couldn’t suppress, shifting the image decorating his strong flesh. “Is Snake still around? Maybe he can fix it up for me.”
“Hell, no. I mean, Snake’s still kicking but…” Colby murmured reverently, “it’s fucking great. Perfect. I wish I’d thought of it.”
Lucy couldn’t stop herself. She traced the compass spanning his shoulders with her index finger. “It’s crazy, Si. There are slices, yellowed bruises, half-healed blisters and scrapes all around it. But nothing touched the tattoo. Not one single thing harmed it.”
“Maybe Mom is right.”
“Isn’t she always?” Colby ducked down for a better look. “What is that, there, between the cattle brand and the barn? I see something in the shadows.”
“No one’s ever noticed before.” Silas groaned. “Not even my brothers.”
“It’s your name, Colby.” Lucy bent forward to kiss the patch of skin, honoring the bond that had driven Si to carry her husband with him always. She’d known the instant she witnessed their embrace in the barn, they were meant for each other.
“Holy crap. You’re right. It is.” Colby’s shock might have been funny if the significance of the moment didn’t ripple through their entire lives. “And yours.”
“What?” She followed the direction of her husband’s pointing finger. Then she saw it. The tail of the y in her name entwined with the o in Colby.
Her hand flew to her mouth. Her knuckles couldn’t stifle her sob.
“Now you did it, Si. You made our girl cry.” He settled the injured man against the pillows, allowing both guys to peer into her unfocused eyes.
Lucy touched her cheeks with trembling fingers. Sure enough, tears dampened the skin there. She couldn’t resist them any longer.
When she held her arms out to Colby, he lifted her over Silas’s torso, into his arms. Instead of burrowing into his chest as she usually did on the rare occasions she succumbed to the need for a good cry, she kissed his jaw then turned. Careful not to hurt Silas, she tucked beneath his left arm and rested her cheek on his chest.
He stiffened beneath her for a few seconds before her tears melted his rigid hold.
“Shh, Lu.” He petted her hair with awkward pats. “Please, it destroys me when you’re upset.”
She couldn’t stem the flood now that it had started. In the periphery of her blurry vision, she caught him shooting Colby a plea for help. Her husband knew how to comfort her. He lowered himself to the mattress behind her, snuggling up tight to whisper soothing nonsense in her ear while he bracketed her with warmth.
Silas curled his arm around them both, his grip faint yet discernable.
“I’m sorry, Lucy.” His voice weakened, as though her misery sapped his strength. His agony increased the flow of her tears. She cried for all the nights they’d spent apart. For all the times he’d had no one to lean on. For so many wasted years.
“Do you have any concept of what you’re apologizing for?” Colby sounded kind of pissed. She couldn’t catch her breath long enough to referee.
“Not really.” Silas went slack beneath her. “Anything that causes her pain. Everything I’ve ever done. All the stuff I’ve fucked up. For all three of us…”
He whispered the last.
“If you hadn’t trashed her letters maybe you would have figured it out sooner. She told you every fucking day. How much she missed you. How much we needed you. The gaping hole you left behind never closed up. Never healed over.” Colby found the strength to say what she couldn’t. Not again. “She told you over and over that we care for you, and that we’d always be here, waiting for you to come home. You bastard.”
Silas shivered beneath her.
“Kept them. Every one. In my duffle, have them all. Waited for them. Collected them. Slept with one under my pillow. Couldn’t read them. Couldn’t stand to hear about the one place I ached to be and could never go,” Silas murmured, on the verge of losing consciousness again. It’d been a long day, full of stress and sedatives strong enough to knock out a horse. “I never stopped loving you either. Promise.”
Silas’s confession and the running stream of Lucy’s tears consumed the last of his stamina. He faded into a restless sleep beneath her cheek. For a long time, she clung to the man she’d lost while the one who’d caught her did it again. The three of them stayed like that.
Together.
All night long.
Silas picked at the knot in the tattered ribbon securing the bundle of letters he’d received in the first six months he spent in Alaska. After Lucy had departed for the day to tend her other patients, amidst a slew of unnecessary apologies, Colby had set the bricks of correspondence on the tray at Silas’s side then unplugged the TV in his room.
“You can stare at the wall all day, or you can read those.”
How fucking demented did it make Silas that Colby’s iron will turned him on? The innate authority his friend possessed made the prospect of topping the man that much more alluring. He’d give every penny of the wages he’d hoarded for the past decade to bend Colby over the edge of the bed and screw him senseless.
He could make the foreman enjoy it.
Beg for more.
Caught in the daydream of burying himself repeatedly in Colby’s tight heat, penetrating the ass he suspected had never welcomed a stiff cock, he tuned out the rest of the frustrated man’s rant until Colby grabbed his hair as though he might attempt to tug it out. Silas blinked, dissolving the lurid movie playing in his imagination. Torn between admitting his depravity and letting his friend assume he’d ignored him on purpose, Silas hesitated too long.
Colby started to say something but closed his mouth, opened it again then spun on the heel of his boot. He reappeared in the doorway long enough to toss a cordless phone onto the bed. “Lucy’s one, I’m two and JD is three on speed dial. Your mom will be back from her lunch with Lydia Redmond in an hour or so. Sometimes they like to shop afterward, though I doubt she will today.”
Colby clomped down the stairs and onto the front porch. The screen door slammed behind him. Good thing Vicky hadn’t heard it. She’d have ripped him a new one, foreman or not.
Silas tried to doze, but the sweet oblivion of sleep eluded him. Hell, he’d spent most of the past month unconscious. His body healed exponentially now, fueling his impatience to be up and about again. Especially with the lure of Compass Ranch right outside these prison walls.
He idled another quarter hour testing the strength in his leg.
He’d managed to convince himself he might be able to stand without the crutches propped near the door, ten feet from his resting place, until he twisted something funny and delivered a bolt of agony up his spine. The resulting jerk of his torso tweaked his ribs. Sweating, cursing and grumbling, he resettled himself on the pillows. He couldn’t achieve the level of comfort Lucy had provided when she’d tended him.
