Games Lovers Play by Merry Farmer

Author:Merry Farmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oliver-Heber Books

11

Red shot across the hall, his face buried in his hands, and into the morning parlor, which was now dim because of the angle of the sun. The feeling that his insides, his pain, was too big to be contained by his body and that he might burst out of his skin entirely was worse than ever. It had grown far beyond the normal realms of guilt and disappointment that he’d felt for himself since the accident on the Majesty. Everything that had just happened to Luc was proof that his utter inadequacy as a man wasn’t a single incident, it was becoming a pattern.

He’d fought for weeks to hide his misery behind games and activities, jokes and laughter, but it all came crashing down on him now. He threw himself onto one of the sofas in the morning parlor, burying his face against the back of the seat in the crook of his arm and wept. The gesture was horrifically unbecoming and unmanly, but he could no longer keep the darkness inside. He was a disgrace in every conceivable way, and he deserved to feel humiliated for it. The pain that lashed him was nothing compared to the pain he’d inflicted on Luc, and even that, as horrible as it was, could not hold a candle to Shaw’s death and the deaths of every other man in the war.

He should be cast out of society altogether. Men like him did not deserve to be in the company of good people. Red felt that as truth deep within his soul, beyond the reach of reason and sense. There was an infinitesimally small part of his mind that whispered forgiveness and hinted that he was not feeling like himself and that perhaps he should have heeded Luc’s pleas to discuss what had happened with Shaw instead of letting the darkness build within him. But the darkness itself reared up and swallowed that tiny, sane voice, roaring that he didn’t deserve any sort of consideration at all. That beast within him suggested that perhaps he didn’t even deserve his life anymore. Why should he live when so many better men had died senselessly?

“Redmond, are you well?”

Red snapped straight and gulped as Anthony appeared in the doorway behind him. He twisted to face his brother as though he were an animal that Anthony had cornered and wished to exterminate.

“You are not well,” Anthony said without waiting for a response, moving deeper into the room. “You are not well at all, and I should have seen it much sooner.” He made a scolding sound and shook his head.

“I am perfectly fine.” Red leapt up from the sofa and paced away from his brother, loath to have Anthony see the tears and sweat that stained his face. He wiped them with the back of his sleeve as best he could, but feared it only made him look worse.

“You are not fine by any stretch of the imagination.” Anthony followed him, a gentle compassion in his voice that Red hadn’t heard since he was a boy and Anthony was charged with taking care of him.

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