Page 2 of The Cabin-A Reverse Harem Romance
“I’m sorry to ask this of you.”
“You didn’t have to ask,” I said. “Aaron asked us to look after Elle, and that’s what we intend to do.”
“We’ll continue with the program as normal,” Simon said.
“Yeah, you guys know what you’re doing by now,” I said. “Everything should be set up and ready to go.”
Sean and I shared a look. I knew that once I talked to Nolan and Trevor, they’d insist on coming with us. A dangerous drive into the mountains? Hell yeah, it sounded right up their alley. Besides, if we got stuck up there, the more Rangers, the better. We could always find a way to survive as a group. We’ve survived worse.
“Let me go get the others,” Sean said, leaving me alone with Tammy and Simon.
“Thank you for everything,” Simon said, as he put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “The four of you have been indispensable since Aaron’s passing. To be honest, I’m not sure what we’d do without you.”
“You’re family to us now,” I said.
My smile faded. Had Aaron not died, I’m not sure we’d still be as close with the Woodwards. His death had brought us together, and it had helped us start down the path to setting up the organization we ran today. It was a nonprofit, in Aaron’s honor, educating the world about the effects of war and how our troops and vets need more support. We’d helped many people over the years, kept people from the same fate as our best friend.
Still, even though it sounded selfish as hell, I’d have given everything I had to have my best friend back.
I knew Simon and Tammy would do anything to have him back too. It’s the one tie that bound us all together and bound us by iron. They could have blamed us for their son’s death, but instead chose to see it as a horrible tragedy. Something we never could have predicted happening without the knowledge we had only in hindsight.
In the wake of Aaron’s death, all we could do was channel our grief by continuing to the message. I needed to feel like I was doing more than that though, so I vowed to do everything in my power to keep his family safe and happy – especially his little sister.
She had been Aaron’s world, and she was all the Woodwards had left now. The idea of them losing their daughter so soon after losing their son, hit me hard. While I didn’t actually think anything had happened to Elle, I would never be able to live with myself if we didn’t at least try to check on her. If something had gone bad up there, and I didn’t go check it out, I don’t even know what I’d do.
“Ready?” Trevor’s voice piped up from behind me.
“You’re all going?” Tammy asked incredulously. “I don’t want ya’ll going through that kind of trouble.”
“It’s no trouble, I swear,” Trevor said.
While most everyone had a Southern accent here in South Carolina, Trevor’s was different. He was from Texas, and his accent was that thick drawl, and his voice deep. He often sounded like a stereotypical cattle farmer, which was exactly what his father did for a living. But, Trevor was a Ranger through and through.
Nolan was standing just behind him, and to the right – quiet as usual. He was the introvert of our little unit. He was also the brains. He was an engineering geek, focused more on mechanics, than on combat during his time in the Army. He was leaner than the rest of us, and not quite the man of action and violence the rest of us were, but he was still a Ranger. His body was pure, lean muscle. Even with his black thick-rimmed glasses and clean cut, dark hair, he still looked like a Ranger. He was also the only one of us without ink, which said a lot about Nolan. He was never one to give in to peer pressure.
Then, of course, there was Sean, who was the exact opposite of Nolan. The two of them couldn’t have been any different if they’d tried. While Nolan grew up in an upper middle-class family, Sean had grown up on the streets of Chicago, and it showed. A little rough around the edges, with brown hair that hung down to his shoulders now, Sean never let anything get in his way. Not even poverty.
Today, he was successful, and you wouldn’t have guessed that he was once the bad boy of the group. You probably couldn’t picture him, out on the corner, selling drugs on the streets back in high school. He’d had to make some pretty unpopular, and sometimes illegal, choices just to keep a roof over his family’s head. He was one of the hardest working, most strong-willed men I knew.
