Take Me by Ella Sheridan

Author:Ella Sheridan [Sheridan, Ella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Southern Nights, Book 3
Published: 2015-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

“Jesus,” Sam whispered on a ragged exhale, clutching his chest. Gabe’s overwhelming grief was drowning him, a tidal wave he couldn’t escape. All he could do was lock himself down, desperate not to add to his twin’s pain. And guilt—so much guilt it was a boulder pulling them both to the ground. Sam had to fight just to breathe.

Gabe didn’t need Sam’s guilt on top of his own. It was there all the same. Guilt for needing Gabe the way he did, needing to share the women in their lives. Guilt for everything his brother had lost in order to be what Sam needed, what they both needed.

Guilt for what Peyton had lost. Rick’s e-mail had been detailed—and crushing. An eighteen-year-old girl with a six-week-old baby. A girl who had been in and out of the foster-care system until a loving couple took her in after one too many runaway attempts had ended up in juvie. A girl who’d been arrested when all she’d tried to do was keep herself alive.

A girl who’d trusted the wrong person and lost her son in the process.

Peyton was growing quiet, her body sagging into Gabe’s hold where they had crumpled onto the floor almost half an hour ago. Gabe’s eyes were closed, his face ravaged as he rocked her in his arms. The shit would hit the fan here again soon, but not yet. Let them have this one moment of seeming peace.

Quietly Sam opened the sliding glass door and stepped onto the covered balcony looking out over Peyton’s apartment complex. He slid the door shut, enclosing Gabe and Peyton in privacy. It was all he could give them right now. And there were things he had to come to terms with himself anyway.

His brother had a child. He’d made another human being, one they knew nothing about, a helpless infant they’d been unable to protect. It was hard enough to wrap his head around the fact that there was a single child in their family. For the last three generations, at least, there had only been twins, all boys. Now here was this single heart running around, unattached, untethered, and unsafe. But to know Gabe had created that soul not just with anyone, but with Peyton, the woman Sam knew deep down in his heart belonged to them, was… He didn’t know. Stunning. Confusing. Painful.

This night had been chaos from the beginning. Maybe that’s what was wrong with him. He felt like a cannon had gone off next to his ear and the whole world was silently reeling around him from the concussion.

The distant sound of a door closing somewhere inside the apartment, then the opening of the sliding glass door, brought Sam around. Gabe leaned against the door frame, watching him, looking like he’d aged thirty years in the last thirty minutes. Sam’s guilt surged back to the fore, and he couldn’t stay silent any longer.

“You left because of me.”

Gabe closed his eyes, the anguish in his face almost more than Sam could take.

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