Tank (Moonshine Task Force Book 2)(49)
I say it all in rush so I can get all the words out. I don’t want her to stop me until she hears my full idea. It’s not a full business plan, per se, but hopefully it’s enough to help her figure out where she can go with the rest of it. Suddenly there are tears streaming down her face and she’s throwing herself at me. “Thank you, Trevor. Thank you for wanting to help me give her a voice. I thought about things like this in the past, but I wasn’t sure how to ever make them work. You’re right, Whitney is the best person for me to ask.”
“And I’ll help you as much as I can,” I rub my hand up and down her back. “I want to be here for you, through everything. I never want to force you to make a decision again, especially when I don’t know the full story. Please don’t keep things like this from me. We’re a unit,” I pull her face back from my shoulder, making her look at me. “Even if it’s hard, we have to communicate. I don’t ever want what happened to us here, to happen again. We wasted time, baby,” my voice is strained as I try to properly convey my feelings. “What if we’d never gotten the time back like we have right now. If it had been you in that truck, and I found out later all this shit was what kept us apart? I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”
Tears streak down her face. “Then you know how I’ve felt since I saw you in that truck,” she sniffs. “It’s not been easy, and there’ve been times where I wanted to tell you, but the subject of my sister is so taboo in my family,” she shrugs. “It’s just hard.”
“She’s not taboo between us, Blaze. I can’t imagine if something ever happened to Whit, never talking about her again, never acknowledging my love for her. God, it would kill me.”
Her voice is pitiful as she squeaks out. “It does, I feel like her memory dies every day that I don’t talk about her. But at the same time it’s like this whole town has been brainwashed and nobody remembers her.”
I sit up, bringing her with me, leaning against the headboard of the bed. “I don’t think that’s it. I think people who knew her take their cue from your family. How many men in this town have died overseas? Do you know?”
She looks up at me from where she lays against my chest, and I can see her counting in her head. “Five? If I remember correctly, five.”
“Twenty,” I correct her. “Twenty men who left wives, girlfriends, moms, dads, kids, grandparents, friends and other family. You remember five, because those families talk about their loved ones. They wear the deaths of those men on their cars with their yellow ribbons, some of the grandmothers still wear the pins of those professional soldier portraits they wore while they were deployed. They never took them off so no one forgets the sacrifices they made. Us not talking about the dead lets their memories fade further and further away, Blaze. We have to honor them, make sure they live on in our hearts and minds. If we, the people who knew them best don’t, then they will be forgotten. I don’t want that for your sister,” I entangle our fingers together, bringing them down to rest over my heart so she can feel it beat. It beats for her, and always will. “When we get married and have kids, I want them to know her as well as they know Whitney. It’s the right thing to do, and if it means this much to you, it’s what I want to make happen for you.”
She’s sobbing uncontrollably now, and I know the only thing I can do is hold her – let her get out the years of repressed sorrow. I’d be devastated if someone didn’t let me mourn my sister, and I think it’s past time Blaze was allowed to mourn hers.
Blaze
When I wake up again, Trevor is still laying with his arms wrapped around me, leaning against the headboard. I use my fingertips to trace the ridges of his ab muscles before I move up to the tattoo of the eagle across his chest. When I start circling his nipple with my nail, he grabs hold of my hand, his voice deep with sleep. “Watch what you’re playing with there.”
I love the way his voice sounds right as he wakes up. It’s been one of the best parts of us living together. I give him a soft smile. “You know, I have something I think I want to do today with you.”
He smiles back, the motion breaking his face into the laugh lines you can still see above the beard he’s sporting. “What is it you want to do with me?”
I’m careful with the next words because I’ve never spoken them to another human being before. “I want to take you to meet Annabelle.”
His sharp intake of breath and the way he squeezes me in his arms is everything I need to know. “Let’s go today, let’s not put it off. The sooner we do this, the sooner we can move on with one another.”
I know he’s right. We’ll both still have instances where we’ll fear for each other. It’s inherent with the jobs we have, but I’m with him, I feel like once this is completely all out in the open, we’ll be able to move on. I’m so ready to do that with him. “Let’s get dressed and go.”
*
We stopped and got Annabelle’s favorite flowers. She was a lot like me, didn’t give two shits about the money my parents cared so much about. She loved bouquets of wild flowers you could get at any supermarket. Pink, purple, red, and yellow were her favorite colors.
“She’s over here,” I pull Trevor along through the nice area of the Laurel Springs cemetery. I’m still surprised they paid to have her buried here. Part of me wondered if they would cremate her and then spread her ashes. It killed me to think I wouldn’t have a place to come talk to her. The funeral had been held late in the afternoon, only immediate family had been invited, and then we’d moved on like nothing had happened.