Page 26 of Austin (The K9 Files #29)

“No, you might not have wanted to, not deep down,” he conceded, “but, in that moment, that’s exactly what you wanted to do. I just don’t know why, and, because I couldn’t figure out what I had done—and I was tired of all that pettiness—I just moved on.”

“You moved on?” she asked, frowning.

“No. I didn’t move on in that way,” he conceded, with half a laugh. He tucked her back into his arms.

Rox went willingly, resting her head against his chest, wondering with a sense of awe if there was actually any hope for them.

Austin added, “I’m not saying that I want to go back to what we had.

” She immediately stiffened, tried to pull back, but he held her close and continued.

“Because what we had didn’t last, and, if we try again, I want to ensure it’s something that comes from honesty and openness, something that would withstand the test of time.

It’s been very lonely without you, but it was also my fault, and I accept responsibility for that. ”

She looked up, feeling the tears in her eyes.

“That was also classic you . If ever anybody needed to apologize, you stepped up and did it first,” she muttered.

“Sometimes I hated you for that.” When he looked at her in astonishment, she grinned.

“Because it always made me feel as if I was less than .”

“Good God, Rox,” Austin muttered. “I just always tried to step up and to be the person who I wanted to be. And sometimes it was easier for me to do than others,” he noted, “but it was never ever to make you look or feel bad.”

“I know that now,” she shared, “and, as I’ve realized over these last few years, it really had nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. I just wasn’t ready to grow up, to be mature, and to accept responsibility for my own actions.… For all of that, I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” he said, “but I’m also sorry for my own actions.”

And, with that, she rested against his chest, wondering at the joy and the sense of homecoming of having his arms wrapped around her.

“So, is that a yes?” he asked.

“A yes to what?” she asked, looking back at him, her eyes narrowing. “I think we need to be very clear about what it is we’re looking for this time.”

“A yes to seeing if anything is here that we want to work on,” he replied. “A yes to going back and trying this again. A yes to your not sending me away when you’re pissed off.”

She winced. “And how about a yes to your not leaving, in case I lose my temper and push you away?” She took a deep breath to add, “And understand that, if I do try to push you away, it’s because I’m hurting, hurting so bad that it’s an instinctive reaction to be alone.

And that it’s not about you. It’s all about me, trying to protect myself somehow. ”

“So, maybe you just need to tell me what hurt you so badly that you needed to kick me away.”

“You guys had just come back in from being outside, you and Dad. I don’t even know what you were working on, but you were laughing and joking, and Dad,…

he slapped an arm around your shoulders, called you son , as if he was so proud of you.

It was just one of those moments when I realized that, no matter what I did, no matter what I wanted to do, no matter how hard I worked or how much I achieved, I would never be what Dad really wanted me to be. His son .”

Austin winced, reality dawning. “So, I somehow became the object of that anger?”

“No, it wasn’t that you were the object of my anger, but you were the one I could kick at safely and know that you wouldn’t retaliate.

I could vent as much and as hard as I wanted to and could let go of all that pain and all that torment of a lifetime trying to achieve, trying to be something that Dad would be proud of.

But instead of being that person I thought I could trust, who would always be there for me, the one place it was safe to be honest, you took my words, you took my pain, and, instead of helping me work through it, you walked away, and that was something I found incredibly difficult to forgive. ”

He stared at her for a long moment. “Wow.… I never once even thought that you would be so jealous of my relationship with your father that it would impact your relationship with him—or with me. I thought getting along with your parents was a plus in our marriage. Maybe you were seeing things that weren’t there, not seeing what was right in front of you.

Rox, you are the apple of Jake’s eye and always have been. ”

“I may be the apple of his eye, but I’m still a female,” she clarified, trying hard to keep out the bitterness, “and in that way I can never be what he wanted.”

“And neither should you try,” Austin pointed out.

“You are better than what he wanted in that sense. He may not know it, and he might not have any idea that you feel that way, but the bottom line is that he absolutely adores you just the way you are,” Austin said.

“It never once occurred to me that you were lashing out at me as a safe place to put your pain. I had no idea and took every bit of it to heart.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

He shrugged. “You’re right though. When you do love somebody, you do need a safe space,” he stated, “and hopefully at some point in time there won’t be that level of anger. I feel so foolish now that I didn’t stick around long enough to see it dissipate.”

She winced. “I’m not saying this is all about you and what you did wrong,” she pointed out. “I’ve done an awful lot of work on myself, and I know there is still an awful lot to be done, but thankfully I do feel as if I’m a whole lot better off now than I was before.”

He nodded, his arms tightening gently around her, hugging her close. “You are, and in many ways I am too, but still, it’s a bit of a shock to hear your side of it.”

“Which, if you had come home that day…”

He smiled and nodded. “I might have heard that,” he noted, “or I might not have because you might not have been at a point where you could tell me that yet.”

She nodded. “I’m not sure I was back then,” she admitted. “One of the hardest things to realize is just how much I’ve grown and how much I could have done back then to put a stop to it, as it all seems so foolish now.”

“And yet, five years later, here we are,” he said, with a chuckle.

“Five years,” she muttered, as she stared out at the world. “How the hell did five years go by so fast?”

“It went by in the blink of an eye, and the next five will too,” he noted, “unless we want to do something about it. If we’ll go for it, we need to make these next five years count for something between us.”

“You’re right. We can’t go back to what we had,” she agreed, and he stiffened ever-so-slightly. She looked up at him and added, “We need to ensure our time together is one full of trust, not just lust.”

“Oh, there was plenty of that,” he chuckled, giving her a bright smile, “and, in my experience, it’s a great thing, but we also knew we loved each other too. Maybe somewhere along the line we got lost somehow, but…”

“I don’t even know whether we lost that love,” she clarified, “or it just got buried under our own insecurities.”

“That was also when Chris was causing trouble, wasn’t it?”

She nodded. “Yeah, though I don’t know how much trouble it actually was because, I wasn’t included in those conversations, especially after you left. If you’d been here, I would have been included,” she said, without rancor.

“You think so?”

She nodded. “Yes, I think so.… I know so. Dad was very much starting to treat me like my mother, you know, keeping all the dangerous things away from the womenfolk .”

“Right,” he agreed, with a smile. “That’s pretty instinctive too, from a male point of view.”

“Maybe,” she muttered, “but it’s also pretty irritating.”

He burst out laughing and nodded. “I can see that, so I will try to include you in more than just the decisions that your father would think you should be aware of,” he promised, with a smile.

“I’m also very big these days on making sure that women know how to protect themselves.

Unfortunately I’ve seen way too much ugliness in the world.

Even without that, I want to protect you and to keep you safe and to know you can help yourself as well. ”

She cuddled even closer. “That would be nice,” she murmured, “but I still feel as if we have a long way to go before we get anything settled.”

“I don’t even know that there is such a thing,” he said, as he massaged her back.

“We just have to ensure that we’re a whole lot closer and more open to communication than we ever have been before because, although we thought we had something great between us, it fell apart when it was really tested. ”

“Right,” she agreed, “and now I’m not allowed to send you away.”

“No, you’re not,” he confirmed. “I don’t think I ever told you, but that was the thing that my father did to us—and then my mother also.”

She turned to frown at him. “But your family is together.”

“Now, yes, but back then, no. They were at each other’s throats more often than not.

My father kicked us out of the house, saying he was done being a father and didn’t want anything to do with the entire mess.

There’d been… I don’t know, some cacophony at home.

Anyway he made it very clear, and I don’t remember how old I was, but I do remember my mom packing us up and all of us leaving.

It went back and forth for quite a while, but I was pretty devastated, and now when ultimatums are given?

… I just remember Mom packing up and moving us, and me automatically doing the same, as an adult.

Anyway, she remarried a while back and lives overseas now. ”

She nodded in understanding.

He looked down at her. “Because if there’s one thing you do when you’re hurting…”

Hearing him say it, she knew what he was feeling and completed his sentence. “You run away and hide.”

“Exactly, and that’s not just a female trait,” he stated. “ You don’t want me? Fine, I don’t want you either, and I’m gone .”

“So, I will try my hardest not to send you away.”

“And I will try not to react in the same way,” he added, a smile on his face, “and we will communicate better from now on.”

She smiled. “Yes.”

He hesitated and whispered, “I was gone a long time.”

“Yes, you were.”

“Was there anybody else? Will I have to face neighbors in town who know of some… old boyfriends?”

She shook her head. “No. None. You were gone five years, and, in that time, I didn’t date.

I didn’t do anything. I was pretty upset and angry for a long time, and then I just became very sad,” she shared.

“My parents tried hard to send me back out to the world, not dating, just joining some people in a book club or whatever, but I just wasn’t interested. ”

He held her close and nodded.

“What about you?” she asked. “You always had opportunities at every corner of the world.”

“There are always opportunities,” he conceded, with a nod, “but that doesn’t mean those were choices I made.”

Hearing a sound behind them, he stepped back and suggested, “I think we should keep this to ourselves for a little bit.” She looked up at him in surprise, and he shrugged.

“We still aren’t 100 percent sure on where we’re at or how we’ll handle jumping in.

At the moment, it’s private and just between us.

You know what would happen once your parents find out. ”

She winced and nodded. “I would appreciate that too,” she agreed. “Before, it seemed as if everything about our relationship was completely open, and everybody knew everything. It made things really difficult when you left because I didn’t have anything to say. I didn’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” he declared. “That’s the thing. You don’t have to say anything because it is still your life. Your business is just that… yours .”

“But when you live and work on a family ranch like this,” Rox pointed out, “it’s like living in a fish bowl.”

“So, let’s change that. Let’s work on us first,” he suggested.

She pointed at the kitchen. “Come on. You never did get coffee, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

As he stepped inside, he felt something so terribly wrong, and his instincts were screaming at him.

Cowboy was standing at his side, and his left hand automatically went to the dog’s shoulder, as his right hand when to Rox’s.

Then he heard that telltale sound. He grabbed Rox and pulled her to the floor, just as multiple shots were fired, and the space above their heads splintered,

Then everything went completely silent.