Page 25 of What We Brave
I freeze. The cold seems to drop ten degrees. "Promised who?"
Blake finally looks up. His eyes are wet, red-rimmed, and full of a pain so old it's fucking fossilized. "Jared."
His name sucks the air out of my lungs.
"Before the last deployment," Blake says, the words sounding like they're being dragged out of him. "He cornered me behind thebarracks. He had a bad feeling. Said if he didn't come back, I had to watch your six."
I stare at him. He's speaking English. I know he is. But I can't seem to process the words. "He asked you that?"
"He made me swear." Blake wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "He said, 'If I buy it, you take care of Reid. You make sure he doesn't follow me into the dark.' I gave him my word, Reid."
My knees feel weak. Not tired—weak. Structural failure.
"So every time you asked me to stay," Blake whispers, "I heard him.Take care of Reid."
I sit back down on the step, hard. The concrete jars my spine, but I barely feel it.
Seven fucking years.
Seven years of him putting me first. Absorbing my grief. Tolerating my chaos. Fixing the things I broke. Staying in this house when he wanted to run. All because of a promise to a dead man.
I look at him—really look at him—and I see the weight of it. He’s been carrying my brother’s ghost on one shoulder and my survival on the other. No wonder he broke. No wonder he has nothing left.
"You stayed for him," I whisper.
"I stayed for you, too." Blake’s voice is rough. "But yeah. I couldn't break the promise. Even when staying was... hard."
"Hard? You were destroying yourself." I grip the back of my neck, the muscles there locked tight as stone. "But you didn't have to blow up my life to keep your promise, Blake. You could have just talked to me."
"I didn't know how." He looks down at his scarred hands. "The mission was 'protect Reid.' Everything else was secondary. Including me. Including Laine."
We sit in the freezing dark. I feel small. I feel selfish, like I’ve been asleep at the wheel for half a decade. But the anger hasn't vanished. It's just mixed with the grief now, a toxic, heavy sludge in my chest. Knowingwhyhe did it doesn't put Laine back in my arms.
"I should have seen you," I say, the words tasting like ash. "I should have looked past what I wanted and seenyou."
Blake lets out a long, shaky breath. He leans back against the riser of the step, tipping his head back to look at the starless sky.
"Laine saw me," he says quietly.
My chest tightens. "Yeah. She did."
"She looked at me and she didn't see Jared's friend. She didn't see your keeper. She didn't see the guy who fixes the stairs." He turns his head, meeting my eyes, and the vulnerability there is terrifying. "She just saw me. And it scared the shit out of me."
6
BLAKE
The house is cold when we step inside. Not just the temperature—though Reid clearly hasn't been running the heat much—but something else. Something empty.
I notice it immediately. The pile of mail on the kitchen counter is unopened. There's a layer of dust on the coffee table and a blanket on the couch that looks like it's been slept under more than once.
Even when it was just the two of us in this place, we took care of shit like this. Reid even had a fucking dusting song.
Reid hasn't been living here. He's been scraping by here. There's a difference.
I shouldn't have left. I should have camped out in the workshop and been here for him. He needed me, even if he couldn't admit it.
"Place looks good," I say, because I don't know what else to say.
