Marriage Reunited

Chapter 15

Connor only waited until he was out of the hospital before he rang his brother. He couldn't do this anymore. He had to make a choice between sticking by the brother who had abandoned him for most of his life and standing by the woman who had done nothing but love him, even when he'd given her cause not to.

"We need to meet," he said without preamble as soon as his brother picked up.

"Thirty minutes, usual spot."

The phone went dead in his hand and Connor glared at it as he fought the urge to throw it in to a wall.

It didn't take him long to reach their usual meeting place in one of the rooms of his hotel. It was a private room that not many people were permitted to use and had served well as a meeting place over the years. There was a secret way up to that floor and they'd discovered when they were younger which were the best spots to avoid the cameras. It was the one place where Cameron could be certain of never being captured on film as he knew exactly what angles to turn and where to avoid.

Connor was there early, and he paced as he waited for his brother. He couldn't believe that he'd risked his entire marriage just to help his brother. Cameron might have done plenty for him when they were kids, but they hadn't been close in years and his brother was just destroying everything that they'd built in his absence. It had been hard for all of them to cope with his decision to join the army, but they'd survived those years with the expectation that he would come home to them. Instead, he'd started up his own specialist business where he was again putting himself in harm's way. He'd never given a damn the effect that it was having on his family and Connor was sick of always giving his brother the benefit of the doubt.

It had nearly destroyed the family as they worried that Cameron wouldn't return home. Alexa was a shell of the woman she'd once been. She'd put her life on hold to wait for him to return to her and he never had. Jaz had gone off the rails for a short time and it was only the prospect of motherhood that had forced her to focus on other things. He was certain that without his niece Jaz would have headed down a dark path. His parents had gone through a rocky patch as they'd worried about his brother, but they'd managed to heal and move on. And he'd almost let the loss of his brother destroy everything that he'd gained. How could he have been so stupid as to risk the woman he loved for a selfish, uncaring bastard like Cameron?

"How could you fucking leave her?"

Connor barely heard the door, and he had no warning at all before his brother launched himself at him. Cameron got in a lucky punch but the anger that flowed through his veins ensured that Connor hit back twice as hard.

"You're an asshole," he hissed at his brother.

"I'm the asshole? I'm not the one who left Alexa unprotected when I was supposed to be guarding her," Cameron ground out as he launched himself at his brother and knocked him in to one of the walls hard enough to cause a concussion.

"No, you're the one who left her unprotected for eight years and then turn up out of the fucking blue just to screw up everyone else's life too," Connor accused as he punched Cameron in the gut and followed it up with a fist to the nose. He half hoped that he'd broken it.

"You think I don't know that everything I touch turns to shit?" Cameron hissed as he swiped at his bloody nose and then swept Connor's feet from under him, so he hit the floor with a painful thud.

"Then why the hell didn't you stay away and leave us to it?" Connor growled. Cameron froze at that as if he couldn't believe his brother had said that.

"You think I didn't fucking try?" Cameron ground out and the brothers just stared at each other as Connor got slowly to his feet.

"Why did you come back?" Connor asked finally. He knew it wasn't for them because he'd never given a crap about any of them. If he had then he wouldn't have left them worrying themselves sick over him for eight years.

"Because I couldn't stay away from her," Cameron ground out.

"Alexa?" Connor asked in surprise. He hadn't thought that his brother cared that much about her, he hadn't seemed to.

"She's like a mythical siren that lures me in. I can't be around her and fucking up her life, but I can't stay away," Cameron admitted. Connor understood that temptation only too well. He felt it every time he looked at Lilly. She was far too good for him and yet he couldn't stay away.

"Then why don't you put her out of her damn misery and make a decision one way or the other," Connor suggested. He knew how much it hurt Alexa to have only half of him. She didn't have him in her life fully, yet she was never completely free of him. He knew how much that messed with her mind.

"Because I can't let her go. I need to know that she's safe," Cameron admitted. Connor could understand that too, but he didn't have to accept it.

"Then do your own damned dirty work from now on," Connor said. Cameron looked shocked by that, probably because Connor had never refused him anything before.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he demanded.

"It means that if you want someone to watch Alexa then do it your damned self because I'm not going to," he told him.

It felt like a weight had been lifted off Connor and he realised that he'd been carrying the burden of responsibility for far too long. He'd seen how much his brother's disappearance had affected his family and he'd tried to make up for that by doing everything he could to help them out. He'd looked out for Alexa because he'd known how much she was hurting and how much of an outsider she felt in his family. He'd done his best to help Jasmine because she was his baby sister and a teenage mum. He'd done everything for everyone else and never once taken the time to look after himself and his own little family first. Well, from now on that was his only responsibility.

"You're going to let her get killed because you can't be bothered to watch her?" Cameron demanded incredulously and Connor glared at him.

"It isn't me who can't be bothered to look after my wife," Connor retaliated. That seemed to get through to Cameron and he took a defensive stance at the accusation.

"The hell I can't. I've been looking out for her since the day I married her," he denied, and Connor scoffed at that.

'If you've been keeping an eye out for her then where the hell have you been all these years?" Connor demanded.

"I've been watching from a distance. I can't drag her in to my world, you know that" Cameron said. Connor simply glared at him.

"You think I want to bring Lilly into your world? She deserves better than whatever crap you've dragged home with you. In fact, we all do," Connor said and then he turned and left without another word while Cameron watched him go.

Connor wasn't going to stand around and watch his wife go through everything that had happened before. He was going to make a stand and he was going to tell her the truth and hope that she could understand.