Page 14 of Endurance

Her words were like a punch in the gut. Jameson stepped away from her, guilt filling his eyes.

“That’s not true and you know it,” I argued. “We wanted to send you somewhere safe so we—”

“So you could what?” she snapped at me. “Get back at the Aryans for me?” She laughed a dark little laugh. “I don’t need fucking men to fight my battles for me. The only thing you two ended up doing was making me look weak to the rest of the family.”

“You were weak,” Jameson bit out.

Yup, she was going to shoot the both of us.

“I had my baby gutted from me!” she roared. I winced at the pain that rattled in her voice. “You couldn’t give me a fucking minute to grieve. Instead, you wrote me off. You abandoned me!”

“We didn’t abandon you! We were trying to protect you!” Jameson roared back. “You left us. You shot me and disappeared for three fucking months.”

Maura’s shoulders squared as she glared at Jameson. “You think I wanted to leave? That I wanted to do this alone?” Her brow puckered as tears filled her eyes. She lowered her gun and said, “I needed you and you tried to send me away.” Her voice cracked along with my heart. “And don’t tell me it’s because you wanted to protect me. You both knew that once I was able to pull myself to my feet, I’d want revenge. You tried to take that from me, to punish me.”

What? Why would she think that we wanted to punish her?

I shook my head because she had it all wrong. “No. We—”

“It’s my fault we lost her,” she cut me off.

Internally, I was screaming, ‘No, it wasn’t!’

“Right, Jamie?” she asked him.

Jameson’s jaw was clenched as his eyes bored into Maura’s. He looked like he was battling like I was. What could we say or do to convince her that she was wrong?

“I don’t blame you,” he said.

I tried not to roll my eyes at his lame attempt and added, “We never did.”

She stepped away from us, with tears rolling down her cheeks. “It doesn’t matter.”

Jameson moved toward her. “Yes, it does. I didn’t mean any of it. I was hoping that if I hurt you, you’d go. You weren’t safe and I was desperate.”

I was proud of his honesty, but Maura didn’t look like she wanted to believe it.

“I know it sounds stupid, but you’re a runner,” he said. My shoulders slumped. Why did he have to put his foot in his mouth?

“You tried to run from Louie when you thought he didn’t want to be with you,” he continued. “You’ve run from me I don’t know how many times. When it involves emotional pain, you run.”

I took a step closer, wanting a turn to plead our case. “We almost lost you. It scared us. We were angry and grieving. Did we go about things poorly? Yes. But our intentions were to protect you, especially since we have no idea who is feeding all our secrets to the Aryans.”

She shook her head and backed away from us. I could see she felt cornered and was about to bolt. She spun on her heel and tried to get away, but Jameson caught her by the waist. “See what I mean? You run.”

She rammed her elbow into his ribs, and he released her with a grunt.

“If you’ve said all you needed to say, then leave,” she shot over her shoulder before she dashed into the bathroom. She slammed the door in our faces before we could stop her and the sound of the lock clicking into place followed.

I glared at the damn door and said, “We’re not leaving.” I turned to look at Jameson, who had taken a seat on the foot of the bed. His shoulders were slumped, and his gaze was glued to the carpet. I sighed. “That could have gone better.”

He ran his hands down his face and groaned. “I keep fucking things up.”

I nodded, not that he could see it. “Yup.”

He dropped his hands from his face to glare at me.

I shrugged. “Don’t give up.”