57. Blaine

Chapter 57

Blaine

I 've been thinking a lot about Resa facing down Sloane Eddiswood in the courtroom.

I don't know how long I stand in the middle of the gym, lost in the past, staring at the punching bag and not seeing a damn thing.

That isn't right. I see Resa sitting in that witness box, back straight, a stare so visceral it punched through Sloane, and he looked away.

He looked away from her .

"You discover another universe?"

I give myself whiplash, spinning to face Vaughn's grinning face.

He looks from me to the punch bag and back again. "It's like you're staring into another dimension. Is it interesting?"

"I was thinking about Resa," I admit, rubbing at the twinge in my neck.

He loses his smile. "Probably not a good idea unless you want to drive yourself crazy with the thought that we should have locked her in her room and refused to let her go."

I look at him.

He drops his gaze. "Right. Just me then."

"I'm not sure she'd have appreciated you doing that." She never opened up about what happened to her. Not until the courtroom. Locking her in a room would be something she never forgave us for.

Two years of hell, and she walks up to the witness box, sits down, and makes me so fucking proud of her and so fucking furious that she suffered at all.

I haven't been the same person since then.

"I wouldn't have done it." Vaughn's shoulders slump. "But we just let her go. She might have been waiting for us to ask her to stay."

"Do you really think that?"

"You mean choose to stay with us instead of going back to the life she must have wanted since some alpha grabbed her from a heat clinic?" He gives the punch bag a solid uppercut, dropping his left shoulder. I've seen him drop it before, but I recognize this is a new habit. A bad one. "No. I don't."

Neither do I. Prep work for the trial was a beast to manage. So many moving pieces, so many hours of work. But it all clicked together. Except the part involving Resa's parents.

With a full name, a picture, and a long since closed missing person's report, it hadn't taken long to find them and let them know Resa would be speaking at the trial. The cops had them waiting in a side room so they could reunite privately after the trial.

The guilty verdict changed all that.

It was a verdict that everyone had seen coming but no one had believed would happen because alphas like Sloane Eddiswood don't go to jail.

Now they do.

Resa had walked away with her parents. None of us know if she wants anything to do with us, so we've given her space, but there hasn't been a day that I haven't thought about her. I think we were all a little scared of outright asking her to stay and have her reject us.

Vaughn walks over to his drum kit, drops into the seat and reaches for the sticks.

He's been noticeably quiet. He checks in with Ever Safe but hasn't spoken about going back into work even though the cops failed to solve the shooting in the alley across the road. As long as no one connects the missing bodies to Vaughn, none of us cares.

Speaking of bodies…

He was ready to go after Resa's ex-fiancé simply for existing. But a guy shoots a dart at Resa and Vaughn says nothing? I can only think of one reason why. "You went after him, didn't you?"

He doesn't slow his drumming. "What did you say?"

I walk over to him. "That Hancock Security guy who shot Resa, you killed him. Didn't you?"

He drums for a few more seconds, then stops. "They hurt her."

I tuck my hands in my pockets. "Does Garrison know?"

He shrugs. "He hasn't asked."

Which means he knows.

"When?"

He smirks. "Right before I found you hugging a bottle of vodka."

My stomach clenches, and I swallow hard. Days later, and I'm still sweating vodka through my pores. "If I ever do something that stupid again, remind me of that, please."

Vaughn doesn't speak for several seconds. "She doesn't blame you. You know that, right?"

There's a reason I've been years dodging conversations with Vaughn. He goes right to the heart of the things I'd rather avoid. "I don't know what you're talking about."

I do.

Resa went into heat, and I couldn't be what she needed. I was too busy freaking out at the thought of her seeing my scars. If there was any a time to prioritize someone else's needs over my own, it was then. And I still couldn't do it.

"Yes, you do," he calls after me as I walk away. "Resa went into heat, and you drank yourself into a mess because?—"

"I couldn't be what she needed," I snap.

Crack .

"OW!" I spin around, rubbing the back of my head as I glare at the drum stick beside my foot, then at the man who threw it. "What the hell?"

"I'm knocking some sense into you." He throws the other stick aside—thankfully not at my head like the last—and jabs his finger at me. "She doesn't blame you for it. Let it go. You weren't to blame for that, and you weren't to blame for Violet."

My face freezes. "What does Violet have to do with anything?"

"You slurring apologies at me between throwing up vodka in a bucket for an hour."

I did what?

"That was days ago. Why didn't you say anything about it before?"

He growls in frustration. "Because I was waiting for you to talk to me about it. Now I've accepted you never will, so I have to bring it up. Her death wasn't your fault."

I turn to walk away. Again. "She was in that car because of me. I should have spent more time researching the CEO. I should have known that was no ordinary stakeout, and it wasn't safe for her to be there."

"She was doing this job because of me."

Vaughn's soft voice stops me.

"She always wanted to do what I was doing," he continues. "Violet was stubborn."

When I think of Vee, and how stubborn she could be, I can't help but smile. She was like a little sister I never knew I needed. "Like a mountain goat."

"The kind that can scale a vertical wall. When she was determined to do something, not even gravity could stop her." Vaughn's smile mirrors mine. Small, sad, but the first real smile we've shared in years. "We'd have found her in the trunk if we kept saying no. I caught her eyeing it once like she was building up to it."

"Yeah, me too."

We all agreed it was better that we have her out on a safe, boring case that would kill all that excited energy before she got herself in trouble.

"There was nothing you could have done, Blaine," Vaughn says. "It's not your fault you survived."

"It's not your fault she wanted to do fieldwork. I think she liked to help people. Like us."

He nods. "It took a while for me to stop blaming myself. I'm not sure why, but having my mom blame me reminded me that no one could make Violet do what she didn't want to do. And you need to stop blaming yourself for the alpha. He'd been getting away with it for years."

He's right. About most, if not all, of it.

I rub the last of the soreness from the back of my head. "I can't believe you threw a stick at me."

"Yeah, well, had to get you to listen to me somehow." Vaughn moves to get up. "I better get back to work before Cynthia takes over the world instead of just my office. I'll leave you to it."

"Your shoulder dips," I blurt out.

He pauses, brow furrowing. "My what?"

"When you were sparring with Resa before you purposely ditched a lesson to throw us together, I noticed you dip your shoulder. It's a bad habit."

"I didn't purposely…" His voice trails off when I raise a brow. "And you're telling me this because…"

"Opens you up to a counter-attack. If you have five minutes on the mat, I could break you out of it."

Vaughn stares at me, disbelieving.

I rub my palms on the front of my pants. This isn't something I thought I would say—or do—again, but this feels right.

One day.

I've spent years saying the same thing to Vaughn's offer to spar.

I wanted to spar, and I hoped the next time I said it would be closer to the truth than a lie, but I never meant it. It was only ever a way to buy myself time.

Ever since the trial, I keep seeing Resa sitting tall and fierce in that witness box, making an alpha flinch, forcing me to confront something I'd spent years shying away from.

Nothing will change unless you change it.

I've been waiting for the day I'd wake up and that day would be when I said, sure, let's go spar. But that day isn't coming unless I make it happen.

I hold out my right hand, palm side up. " If you're up to the challenge."

His eyes dart to my palm, but he doesn't move.

It's clear he doesn't believe me, so I walk toward him and stop inches away.

A grin splits his face, and he slaps his hand into mine.

I squeeze and pull him to his feet, but I don't let him go.

He isn't just a friend. He's pack. Family . We've been living under the same roof for years, but I've missed him.

"Are you planning on holding my hand to get out of me kicking your ass?" he quips, squeezing my hand as if just as reluctant to let go as I am. "Cause I have to tell you, it won't work. Your ass is hitting the mat."

"Ah, eager to learn a painful lesson, huh?" I release him. As we move to the center of the mat, I hope I'm not making a painful mistake by not warming up first. It's been years since we last sparred.

We circle each other, eyes locked as we wait for the perfect opening.

"And for reference, I don't dip my shoulder," he says.

"If you didn't…" He must think I'm distracted to suddenly charge me. "Then I wouldn't be able to do this ."

I toss him.

He hits the mat with a thud, but he's grinning as he springs to his feet. "Uh, yeah, it's on. It is fucking on ."

I've tossed Vaughn to the ground twice more when I spot Garrison standing in the doorway, a familiar book clasped in one hand, and a smile creasing the corners of his eyes.

"Want to join us?" Vaughn asks, getting to his feet.

"And get tossed around like a noodle?" Garrison crosses over to the drum kit and sits. "I think not."

"A noodle, he says." Vaughn scoffs.

I brush sweat forming on my brow and prepare for the next round of teaching Vaughn a lesson he's not learning.

Garrison pulls his cell phone out of his pocket. "It's hot in here. Should I?—"

Turn on the AC with his phone so I'm not too uncomfortable in a long sleeve turtleneck?

"No." I pull my sleeves up over my wrists. Both of them. It's not enough to cool me, but it's more—a lot more—than I could have done before.

Vaughn doesn't show even a hint of a response. "You ready?"

He doesn't care about my scars, which makes it easier to not care either. "Ready for what?"

Garrison is sitting at the drum kit, the pregnancy book balanced on his knees as he watches us circle each other.

Vaughn cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders. "Wouldn't want you to be crying later that you weren't when I kick your ass."

"I'm ready." I smile, settling into the moment.

Garrison calls out, "No broken bones. We have somewhere we need to be tomorrow."

"Sure thing." Vaughn waves him off.

Then he charges me, head down, like a bull diving for a red flag. And grinning, I wait to toss him to the mat because he still hasn't learned not to drop his shoulder.

He will.