Back in Bliss

Chapter Eighteen

Seth didn’t want to move. Moving hurt. Everything fucking hurt, but Georgia was soft around him. She’d been so strong. She’d taken the burden off him. If he’d had to watch that man put a gun to her head, he wasn’t sure what he would have done. He very likely would have spilled everything and then they would both be dead. She’d been smart and fast on her feet.

“Marry me.” She was everything he wanted in a woman. He’d known it before, but he couldn’t wait any longer to claim her. Screw his timelines. Screw his plans. The only plan that mattered was sitting right here with him. He felt Logan’s hand gingerly touch down on his shoulder, a simple sign that he was there with them. They were together.

“He’s a little loopy in the head, baby,” Logan said. “What he meant to say was marry us.”

“Marry us.” It was all he’d wanted since he was a kid, a family with his best friend in his hometown.

Georgia laughed a little. “Yes. I’ll marry you. I love you both so much.”

Seth groaned just a little when Georgia hugged him tight. It wasn’t the most romantic proposal, and he would fix that by giving her the wedding of her dreams. After he regrew all the organs that had just been pounded to dust inside his body cavity.

The door swung open and Nate Wright moved in, his gun drawn. He looked around and then sighed. “You can come on in, Ty. It’s all corpses. Henry, that look is so not vegan. Fuck all. I’m going to owe Caleb and Gemma some serious cash, aren’t I?”

Fuck. Henry was here. Henry had been forced to take out a bunch of dudes. Henry, who just wanted to live his life in peace, had a whole cartel coming after him.

And brothers. Henry had brothers.

Seth forced himself to bring his head up, finding Henry standing in the middle of a bunch of dead bodies, his pants covered in blood. It dripped off his hands. Seth knew he’d finished the job with a gun, but it looked like he’d done some knife play somewhere in there because a big-ass butcher knife was in his hands, the one he’d used to cut through Seth’s bindings. It wasn’t clean. It was covered in blood. Henry looked down at his hand as though he couldn’t believe there was a knife there.

Seth wasn’t the only one who had gotten the shit kicked out of him. Henry’s whole world had just ground to a halt. The cartel knew he was alive. They would come after him. Even if that Kent asshole hadn’t told anyone what he was planning, they wouldn’t just give up.

“Holy shit.” A man in blue pants and a white shirt walked in carrying a huge medical bag. “That is a lot of corpses. Caleb is going to be pissed. Is there anyone left alive for me to treat?”

Seth held his hand up weakly, gesturing the guy over. “I will take any drugs you will give me. Logan, dude, all is forgiven. This shit hurts and I only had to survive it for like ten minutes. Motherfucker, I just felt my spleen go.”

Georgia’s blue eyes went wide with terror. Seth shook his head. “I’m joking. I’m fine, baby.”

He let the EMT help him lie down. He so wasn’t fine. He was pretty sure he was about to spend some time in the hospital, but he didn’t want to scare Georgia.

“Are you going to get as fucked up as this one did?” Nate asked, proving he could joke even in the worst of circumstances. He pointed to Logan who was helping Georgia up.

Seth grinned a little and shook his head, which also hurt. “Nope. I already knew the world kind of sucked. This is no surprise to me.”

Logan flashed him his middle finger, but smiled as he did it.

“Hi, my name is Ty. I’m going to be your paramedic today, but honestly, I think I’m just going to be the dude who sits here with you until the ambulance comes. Tell me how this feels?” Ty barely touched his stomach and Seth nearly screamed. Yeah, he wasn’t going to win tough guy of the year.

He left that up to his best friend.

“Yeah, you’re probably going to need surgery. I think it’s very likely you have some internal bleeding.” Ty stood up. “Don’t move. There’s a bus on the way, but I’m going to make sure Caleb knows to stick close to the hospital. He got out of surgery a couple of minutes ago. Gunshot wound. It must be the day for them.”

“Did the patient make it? My brother. Is he alive?” Georgia managed to get the question out even through her tears. Logan wrapped his arms around her as though bracing her for some ugly truth.

Ty smiled. “Yeah, he’s alive. Caleb said he’s going to be fine.”

“Your brother is a tough son of a bitch. He was barking orders at me even as they loaded him into the ambulance. He’s the reason we were already looking for you,” Nate said. “Logan, why don’t we bring Georgia outside to wait for the ambulance?”

“I can’t leave Seth,” Georgia argued.

“I’m fine, baby,” Seth replied. There was someone he needed to talk to, and he couldn’t with an audience. “Logan, please?”

Logan nodded, and over her virulent protests, picked her up bodily and hauled her outside. She was cursing him as he carried her out the door.

“Hurricane Georgia,” Seth whispered with a smile. She was fine when she was pissed.

Nate knelt down. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

Seth nodded. “I’ll live. Henry?”

Henry moved quietly, standing over him before kneeling down. “I’m sorry, Seth. I can’t tell you how much.”

Seth managed to reach out a hand. He could see Henry’s reluctance to take it. “Henry, I’m not mad. I think we’ve got a little time. The asshole in charge said he’d been keeping it all on the down low because his bosses hate leads that don’t pan out. They’re not going to charge in here tomorrow.”

“Henry, I respect a man’s privacy.” Nate’s voice was grim. “You know I do, but if something’s heading into my town, I need to know.”

Henry’s face was a blank, as though he didn’t have an ounce of emotion in him. His words were dead, too, just combinations of letters that came out of his mouth. He could be talking about the weather for all the fire he put into them. “Hell, Sheriff. Hell is coming to Bliss, and I invited it in.”

Nate closed his eyes as though he’d been dreading that very response.

Henry stood up. “I can’t tell my wife. I can’t. She’s pregnant.” Now the emotion seeped through, his face flushing and a hand running across his hair. “Nell is pregnant, and I don’t want her to know the father of her baby has been lying to her for years. I need time.”

“Who are you?” Nate asked.

Henry turned, and there was no blankness to his face now. There was pure will there. “I am Henry Flanders. I am Nell’s husband. I am fucking Henry Flanders because that is who I choose to be.”

“What about your brothers, Henry?” Seth asked. He could hear the distant wail of the ambulance Ty had called. Soon he would be happy with an IV filled with mind-numbing drugs, but he had a few things to say first.

“Brothers?” Nate asked.

He didn’t have time to explain. “Henry, if we can find your brothers, convince them to stop, things might cool down. I can start again and build a whole new scenario. I can place Bishop somewhere else, leave a trail even an idiot could follow. I can do it.”

He’d screwed up once. He was going to make it right this time. He would save Henry and Nell would never have to know.

“You would help me after all this?” Henry asked.

How could he think for a second that Seth wouldn’t? “What’s a ruptured spleen between family, Henry? I won’t let you down.”

He could have sworn he saw a sheen of tears hit Henry’s eyes. “I thank you, son. But I know I have to tell her. Just please, not today. After the wedding. She’s so looking forward to Wolf’s wedding. I’ll tell her then. Maybe she’ll be comfortable with the baby by then.”

Nate shook his head as though he couldn’t quite comprehend everything he was hearing. “I thought you two weren’t planning on having any.”

“She changed her mind because she loves everyone else’s kids so much,” Henry explained. “She decided we could have one. Nate, we’ve been trying for a while. She’s had two miscarriages. God, I can’t tell her. I can’t be the reason we lose another baby. I fucking can’t.”

Nate put a hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Then you won’t. We’ll fix this, Henry. I don’t give a shit who you were before, you’re Henry now and you belong to Bliss. So go get cleaned up. I’ll tell Nell you got caught in the crossfire. I’ll make it look good. This was just a robbery. Seth is a very wealthy man. Everyone will buy it. Go take a shower. She can’t see you like this. And the ambulance is here. Be quick. She’ll be over here in a minute.”

Henry nodded and walked back toward the master bath.

Nate smiled down at him. “So now that you’ve been back for a while, is everything the way you remember it?”

“Yep. Gorgeous mountains. Beautiful women. High body count. Some things never change.”

Logan looked out over the assembled crowd and wondered just how he was going to get through the next few minutes. He hadn’t intended for everyone to be here, but Holly and Caleb and Alexei were here. And Jen and Stef were here. When would he get them all in the same place again? And he couldn’t wait any longer. He just couldn’t. He had to get it out. Something fundamental had changed inside him, and the need to tell the truth had become a fire in his blood.

His moms were here. He wished they didn’t have to know this about him. But it was good. Confession was good for the soul. He hoped.

His ma was covering Seth with a quilt she’d made. Hospital blankets weren’t nice enough for Teeny Green. And Momma was watching him with suspicious eyes, as though she knew he had something to say.

“Whoa. Is this what it looks like when you buy a damn hospital, Seth?” Jamie walked in the room followed by Hope and Noah, who carried a tote bag in his right hand, proving he was totally trustworthy. He’d found what Logan had been looking for. Jamie looked up and caught sight of Momma, his face going a little white. “Sorry about the ‘damn,’ Momma Marie.”

“You speak nice around ladies, James Glen,” his momma shot back. Everyone else was giggling at the sight of a grown man with his own ranch flushing like a schoolboy who’d been caught doing something naughty, but Logan understood.

“He didn’t buy the hospital. He merely made a nice-sized donation, since apparently so many of you end up in here,” Georgia said.

She was sitting on the hospital bed, her hand wrapped in Seth’s. Since he’d come out of his surgery, neither one of them had left the hospital. Two days later and Georgia had managed to grease the wheels enough to get a double room converted into a nice big suite for all future Bliss patients, courtesy of the new Seth Stark wing of the hospital. Actually, she’d convinced them to make two since gunfights had become a regular occurrence in town. Her brother was quietly recovering in the suite next door. He was grumpy and caustic to the nurses. All of them except Naomi. When Naomi walked in, Logan had noticed that Win was suddenly on his best behavior.

“He seems like he’s trying to buy the whole town,” Stef grumbled.

“Hush, babe.” Jen Talbot had a smile on her face. She pretty much always did, as though the world amused her to no end. She settled her hand on her belly. She looked ready to pop, but someone had told Logan that she still had a little time left.

Would she find what he had to say next amusing?

“I think Stef here just likes to be the richest man in town.” Caleb snorted a little Stef’s way. “Not that he is. My bank account is way bigger.”

Stef rolled his gray eyes. “Yeah, well, you’re also the stingiest man in town.”

Caleb shrugged. “Hey, it’s how I keep being the richest man in town. I don’t go around buying a bunch of crap.”

“Except for the massive cabin, all the new medical equipment, and the brand-spanking-new ambulance,” Holly murmured.

“Do not to be forgetting the new bed. Yes, that was good purchase. That bed is not a California kingdom. It is much bigger. I swear this new bed is from Russia,” Alexei said with a smile and his patented bad English. “It is bed for Russian acrobats.”

Momma looked at the big Russian. “Are you going to start talking nasty around the young’uns, Markov?”

The ex-Russian mobster shook his head. “Oh, no. It is plain to see Miss Georgia here is very innocent.”

Georgia didn’t even blush. “Thank you. I am a delicate flower.”

Holly laughed. “Sorry about that. Neither one of them has a sense of decorum.” She stood up. “Seth, I’m glad to hear they’re letting you go tomorrow. I’m going to take my gorgeous monsters home. I look forward to the makeover party.”

“Oh, yes, we’re still having that. And Nell said she would bring a soothsayer along to bless the cabin after all the death and destruction,” Georgia said. “Hey, I bet someone who makes a living off of soothsaying probably needs a makeover, too.”

Georgia would make over the world if it would let her. She would make it beautiful and cover it in little rhinestones so it always shined. God, he hoped she still looked at him the same way. He closed his eyes and just fucking said the words he had been holding inside for a year.

“I was going to tell them.”

He opened his eyes. The whole room turned to him. His ma was holding hands with Momma, both of them watching and waiting. Standing by as they always had.

“What are you talking about?” Seth asked.

Holly seemed to understand. “Logan, you don’t have to do this.”

Alexei shook his head. “He does, Holly. He needs this. He needs to be a man. That was taken from him. He take back by talking and doing the right things and letting himself love.”

Logan felt a well of emotion. It had been blocked for so long. He’d shoved it down and ignored its existence, but he couldn’t now. “You’re wrong about one thing, Alexei. I wasn’t a man before. I was a kid, and maybe that would have changed on its own. Or maybe not. I lived this charmed life, and I didn’t have to see the sacrifices that were made for me. I didn’t have to see them as sacrifices at all. I just saw it as my due. My moms sacrificed. They could have gone somewhere where they would have been easily accepted, had friends like them, but they stayed here because of me. Because they thought this was the best thing for me. God, I can’t imagine what it was like all those years ago. It’s great now.”

“Logan,” Ma began, but Momma shook her head.

“You let him talk, Teeny. He’s finally doing what we asked him to do. He’s dealing with it,” Momma said. “And it wasn’t so bad, son.”

“She’s being Marie, Logan. They had tough times here. Stella talks about it. Sure, it’s good now. It’s great because of people of like Marie and Teeny,” Stef said. “Because they helped change the generation that came before. They were strong, and now the world is a little better.”

“I didn’t see the pain they endured. I was a child and the world revolved around me until one day it didn’t. The world revolved around my pain and my sacrifice and it was all bullshit because I broke. God, I broke.” He didn’t want to say the words. He hesitated and then felt a hand in his. Georgia. She threaded their fingers together, and he noticed that she reached for Seth, too. Their strength was his, an offering of love. This was what he’d had growing up. A family that held on, that gave each other strength to do the things that needed to be done.

He held his head up and looked Alexei in the eye. “I apologize. I would have done the same thing. And I would get on that table again myself if it meant saving my people.”

Alexei nodded. “This I know. You say you were child, but even then you had heart of a great man.”

“I didn’t. Did you not hear what I said? I broke. I wanted you and Holly and Stef and Jen here because I have to tell you that I was going to tell them everything I knew. It wasn’t much, but Luka had beaten me so badly. I just wanted it to stop. I was going to give you all up. I am so sorry.”

There it was. The heart of all his pain. His shame.

Seth sat up, moving slowly. “How many times, brother?”

Jamie came to stand beside him. “Yeah. I was just thinking the same thing.”

“What?” What were they talking about?

Noah shook his head. His three childhood friends stood together. “Damn, man. Don’t you remember? When we were kids, we would see how long we could stand things. Like how long we could run in place. Or how far we could swim. You had a ritual when we would do it.”

Jamie took over. “You would talk to yourself. You would say just one more minute and I’ll get to stop. And then the minute would be up and you would say it again. You were such a stubborn shit. He actually passed out once when we were trying to see who could go the longest without taking a breath. The sucker turned blue.”

Seth nodded. “So we’ll ask again. How many times did you say it?”

It came back to him in a great rush. God, how could he have forgotten? He hadn’t really. It had just been an incidental thing, something meaningless in the great nightmare that had been the day. Even as they’d pulled him into the office, he’d already been at it.

Ten minutes. I can take ten minutes and that’s all Alexei has.

Ten minutes had become an hour, until he counted the time in blows and lashes and bites of pain.

Two more and I can be done. Just two more.

“I don’t know. I lost count.”

Jen Talbot stepped in front of him, her gentle hands reaching for his face. “Logan Green, you never would have said a thing. You had every opportunity to stop it. You took that pain for me and Holly and, Logan, you didn’t know it then, but you took that pain for my baby and any babies we have later. This baby is going to live and breathe and grow because of what you did.”

“You never would have said it,” Stef agreed. “I saw some of it. That was not a boy on that desk. That was a man I was damn proud to know. That was a man I’m going to name my son after because I hope he has half your courage.”

Holly was surrounded by her men, their arms around her, somber looks on their faces as she cried freely. “I…we are so grateful to you, Logan. We love you.”

“I love you.” Georgia wrapped her arms around him. “I love you so much. I’m so proud to be your girl.”

Seth reached for his hand. “Hey, of course you are, baby. Logan Green is a big fucking deal. He’s my hero. Always has been.”

“You’re my boy. You’re our boy and we’re proud,” his momma vowed.

Logan let go. He’d held it for so long, but there was no need now. He cried. He let it out in a great yell that had the nurses rushing in, but he barely saw them because he was surrounded, protected. Arms came around him, hugging him, and familiar voices soothed him and somewhere in that great show of love he did the one thing he hadn’t managed to do.

He forgave himself.