Was this a panic attack?
I had them all the time in the memoriam. It was what would shatter the constructs when the truth of my circumstances hit me. I needed rationality and order. Discovering I was living only through the manipulation of what was essentially a dreamscape, and that the men I loved were willingly trapping themselves inside my mind in order to reach me, had both humbled and terrified me.
Andreas squeezed my hand and began to run his thumb in small strokes across my knuckles. It helped, but I still couldn’t shake the apprehension coiling through me. If one could describe the sensation of being simultaneously drawn toward while also being repulsed by some indefinable magnetic force, I imagined it would be much like what I experienced right now.
It only got worse. I counted our arrival time down, a mental distraction, but it did nothing to truly distract from the worry invading every part of me. Then we were there, and it was hard to take a deep breath.
“Are you all right?”
I shook my head. “No,” I told him, even if I didn’t want to worry him. The physiological panic responses were not something I could hide easily, if at all. “But we’re here.”
Here proved to be a large estate of some kind, one located at the end of a very long and lonely stretch of drive lined by trees. There was a fountain in the center of the circle in front of the house. But no water ran in it. Gray clouds had rolled in, casting the stone building in shadows. All it needed was some lightning and rain to create a truly terrifying tableau.
Leaves stirred and swirled in the breeze, and I had to suppress a shiver. Campbell hurried us inside with the word that they would get our bags for us. Three steps inside the gloomy interior, and my patience with the exercise snapped. The unease in my system had turned to a flood of adrenaline. We didn’t have time for this deviation from the plan that had been working so far.
“Why are we here?” I demanded, refusing to take another step. There were two of his men behind us. The third and the driver were still with the vehicle. Campbell pivoted to face me.
“I know you have questions,” he began.
“And you’ve been steadily not answering them. I have cooperated. I respected your skills and your experience to get us this far, but we are shortly going to lose our window to make the meet. We agreed to this plan, and now you are altering it without sharing why.”
He frowned, but a voice from the hall answered for him.
“They came because I called them.”
Andreas jerked at the sound of Oz’s voice, and I released his hand to stride forward and around Campbell. Oz stood on the second landing of the wide stairs. He looked…almost exactly as he had all those weeks earlier, when he’d told me he couldn’t stay anymore. That he had to go back.
Only…more tired.
Dressed in a dark blue shirt and jeans that looked more like something Hatch or Dirk would wear, Oz descended the steps slowly. Light stubble graced his cheeks and even his head. He usually kept it shaved so smooth. The darkness of his skin was such a beautiful contrast to the brighter colors he would often wear. Of all four of them, he was the most put together.
The most organized.
The most likely to have extreme care with his appearance.
Not out of a sense of vanity, but of personal pride. It had meaning for him.
He was also here, after insisting he couldn’t be there for us anymore because he needed to do something else. Honestly, I couldn’t even think of the exact words he’d used. Only that he’d left and ripped out part of my heart when he went, and I couldn’t even fault him for it. They’d all done so much for me, how could I demand he do more?
For the first time in my life, I had no words for the riot of emotion surging under my skin as he descended the steps.
“Valda,” he said in the softest voice, the one that asked me to listen. To hear him out. “You look…amazing.”
And I found my words.
“You look very much not where you said you were going.” I tilted my head, torn between the desire to slap him and hug him. Maybe not immediately, but anger bunched up in my muscles and threatened to strangle me.
“I’m exactly where I need to be though,” he admitted. For a moment, he reached out a hand toward my face, but something in my expression must have changed his mind because he curled his fingers into his palm. “I had to come. I had to try and get to them.”
Them.
Dirk and Hatch.
“Where are they?”
“Upstairs,” he began, and I stopped listening to the rest. I had to. Because I wanted to lean into his words. I wanted him to touch my face. I wanted to demand he explain why lying to me was the plan. I didn’t slow until I reached the landing, and I glanced back to find Andreas and Oz staring up at me.
Andreas wasn’t surprised.
He’d known.
He’d known, and he’d kept it from me.
We would discuss that later.
“Second door on the right,” Oz told me. His dark eyes held so much sorrow that my resolve nearly crumbled.
“We’re going to talk later,” I informed him crisply, my voice a hell of a lot steadier than I felt. The unevenness in my system seemed to be translating to the world around me. I hadn’t experienced issues when we’d left the boat for land like I had now. The faint sway had to be coming from me. I would need to run some tests, but right now, I had to see Dirk and Hatch.
I had to see and know they were all right. I hadn’t seen either since I’d had Dirk eject Hatch from the memoriam.
“I would like that,” Oz answered me. “I’ll be here. Do you want me to come with you?”
Did I? Yes.
Would I allow him to?
No.
The conversation we needed to have was far different from the reunion ahead of me, and I couldn’t afford to falter just yet.
He was here. I could accept that as enough for the moment.
“No,” I said, but then added, “Unless you think you need to monitor them.” If my presence would somehow be detrimental.
“Go see them,” he said, his voice soft, yet it still eddied up to carry his words to me. “I’ll catch Andreas up.” He clapped the other man on the shoulder.
I would have said something more, but a door opened and I turned to head up the last few steps. Dirk stood leaning against the doorframe, his huge body battered and marked. One of his eyes was still puffy, and his lips were chapped and split.
His beautiful mane of hair was gone, and there were injuries to his scalp. There were injuries over every inch of him. He looked terrible.
He looked wonderful.
“Valda.” The rasp of his voice galvanized me, and all my intentions to be careful fell away as I ran up the last few steps. He caught me, and I wrapped my arms around him. He was alive. He really was here.
“You’re here,” he whispered against my throat, and his arms tightened around me like bands of steel. “You’re here.”
“Bloody hell, luv, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Hatch called from somewhere behind him, and just the sound of his accent had tears clogging my throat. “Hurry up and let her go, you bastard, and give her to me.”
They were both alive.
For the first time in what seemed an eternity, I had them all again.
We were together.