Page 47 of Montana Mystery

“Kate, will you look at me?”

It took me longer than I wanted to meet his eyes. When I finally did, he took a shaky breath. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But...” My words ran out.

“Yeah.” He echoed me and cleared his throat. “I know. That was more than either of us expected or planned for.”

That was an understatement.

“I’ll be right back—I’m going to make some tea.”

With Noah out of sight, I took a deep breath, holding the kitten closer, his small, warm body cuddling into me.

Why couldn’t I get my shit together? No one had hurt me. Max touching me, despite what he’d thought was going to happen, could have been worse. I was fine. So why did the world feel like it was shifting under my feet?

How could I have missed something this big with Brandon? Was I that stupid? Or so blind I couldn’t see that he was hurting? That he was struggling so much he’d go to that length just to feel like he was okay? Why hadn’t he talked to me?

The spiral of my thoughts were pulling me deeper, and I wasn’t sure how to find my way out of it. What did it say about me that my own brother couldn’t even talk to me when he wasn’t okay? We were all that the other had. We were supposed to be able to rely on each other.

And now?

It was clear he didn’t trust me. Or hadn’t. I didn’t know if I could ever trust him again either. If I could, it was going to take a long time to get there.

Noah came back into the room carrying two steaming mugs. He placed them on the coffee table and disappeared again, coming back with cream and sugar. “How do you take it?”

“I can do it.”

He looked at me with the ghost of a smile. “Looks like you have your hands full there.”

That was true. “A little cream, a little sugar.”

He made my tea and then his—cream with no sugar—before sitting on the other end of the couch. “Are you going to tell me what you’re really thinking?”

I could feel everything bottled up coming to the surface, but I didn’t want to scare this kitten, or the other one that was now curled up against my leg. So I let it out as quietly as I could.

“I just don’t understand how Brandon could do that. Be a part of that. Help them...” I shuddered. “Help with those fights. Watch them and bet on them. Was he fighting too? Was he putting the animals in there? How far did he go? I just can’t imagine why he would need it. Or if he was having such a hard time, why didn’t he come to me?”

Noah took a sip of his tea. “I have an answer, but I need to ask you a question first.”

“Okay.”

Salem stretched in my arms and nearly tumbled out of them. I resettled the little black furball on my lap and reached for the tea. Noah had made it perfectly.

“What I did back there.” The vulnerability in his voice was plain. “Did I—do I scare you?”

“No,” I said. “It was hard to watch because I’ve never seen anything like that. But no, you don’t scare me. I know that you wouldn’t hurt me. What happened was necessary. You did it for me, and I’ll never really be able to thank you for that.”

He smiled the ghost smile again, and it dawned on me that he wasn’t okay either. What happened in there wasn’t something he craved, it was something he avoided.

“You saw my scars.” He waited, but I said nothing. Whatever he was going to tell me, he needed to get it out without interruption. “When I was still a SEAL, my unit... we were ambushed in Iraq. We never saw it coming. And those of us that they didn’t kill, they captured.

“Jude was in my unit too. We were the ones who survived. There were others, and they didn’t make it. A rescue came for us, but there was a problem. They got me and couldn’t get Jude. I was there for two months. Jude was there for six. The scars—” He cut himself off. “War will do things to you that you never imagined. And the pain that comes from that? It can make you seek out things that would have revolted you before, simply because seeing that kind of pain is the only thing that makes your pain feel real. Because most of the time, your pain isn’t the kind people can see.”

“Noah—”

He held out a hand, and I let him keep talking. “I’ve been dealing with my past for years. I know what it does to me. I know where it can take me. And even after this long, it’s a struggle every fucking day. Brandon doesn’t have the benefit of that experience. Maybe he went there to feel something and then he couldn’t get out. Maybe he got caught up in something he didn’t realize he couldn’t control until it was too late. Either way, what he’s done has nothing to do with what kind of sister you are.”

I looked away. It made sense, but the reality of it still stung.