Tattered Love (Needle's Kiss)

a shaky breath and kept going; my throat clogged with emotion. I wasn’t sure I could hear anymore, but for him, I had to.
    “She was only a baby, Scar. My baby. I’ll never forget the day we buried her. The tiny, little pink coffin holding her fragile broken body. You could see—you could see my Belle wasn’t in there; her laughter, her inner light, it was gone. She was gone. The look on her face will haunt me for the rest of my life. Her little body so still and cold. Belle was such a happy girl. From the moment she opened up her eyes, until the very last time she closed them, she was wide awake loving the world.
    “I’ll never get to hold her again. See that beautiful smile, those bright blue eyes shining with laughter, her little giggles; she sounded just like a pixie when she laughed, a real life Tinkerbelle. She would light up a room just with a smile.” At the memory, he gave me a pained smile.
    “So many things she’ll never have, never got to do. Her first day of school, a wobbly tooth, graduating, walking toward the man she would have spent her life with, having her own babies. I’m the reason she’ll never get that. I’m the reason she was robbed of that. If I hadn’t reenlisted, taken her from her mother, or manned up and married Janelle, taken care of them. Stayed. Just gotten home a little bit earlier…she would still be here. I’d still have my baby Belle.”
    “You can’t do that, Mace. You can’t blame yourself.” It was final; my heart was broken, for Mace, for Belle. That was without a doubt the hardest thing I had ever listened to, and to make it worse Mace blamed himself to the fullest extent. It was shining clear across his face. It was in the tears he was shedding.
    “I can and I will until I’m taken out of this world. It should have been me, Scar. I would give my own breath, my own life to have her back, but regardless, I can’t bring her back. I didn’t even get to kiss her goodbye. The day I lost Belle, I lost a part of myself, a part I’ll never get back. I’ll never be whole again. It was the end of everything I knew.”
    I couldn’t hold back any longer. I pushed myself across the small distance and grabbed a hold of Mace. My heart tore wide open, and I needed to hold him to soothe some of his sorrow, to soak up some of his pain and take the burden from him, if only for a little while. He was a good man in an unimaginable, devastating situation. Losing a child was something no parent should ever live long enough to see.

 

     
    I held onto Scarlett like she was the air I needed to breathe. For years my family had been telling me Belle’s death was out of my control, but a few whispered words from Scar had taken a little bit of the pressure off my chest. Regardless of the things Scarlett could make me feel, I knew I wasn’t good enough for her. I wanted her. God, I wanted her, but I wasn’t good for her. She was sweet and caring, had a good heart that shone brightly. She wasn’t a needy bitchy woman; she was straight to the point, sexy as all hell and funny. She shouldn’t be tainted by the likes of me and my past, the blood on my hands. She didn’t know the half of it. Even as I held her in my arms after talking about Belle, I knew eventually she would have to know about the rest.
    Belle was the tip of the iceberg; the only part of my broken heart that had good memories attached. Scarlett would soon learn about the reason I stepped away from my career; the mistake that I made that left good men dead and families devastated. The fact I was still in Belle’s mother’s life. Any one of these things might be what drove her away from me, and protecting Scarlett was the only thing on my mind, even if it meant protecting her from me.
    Somewhere during the last week, she had dropped some of those walls down and I wasn’t about to ruin the progress in one fell swoop. I didn’t want to destroy this by laying all my shit bare. I needed her for as long as I could have her.
    Scarlett cleaned up the shop and shut down the lights, locking the doors behind us as we left for her place. I wanted this woman in my life. I just wasn’t sure if it was fair to her. I was torn about how to deal with my feelings for Scar.
    A few minutes later, I pulled my truck into Scarlett’s drive, cut the engine and followed her inside. The house wasn’t extravagant, just a simple, inviting place you could relax. The large open plan living areas were filled with sleek furniture that