SEALs of Honor: Markus by Dale Mayer Read Free Book Online Page B

gave it all up,” she said suddenly. “I made peace with it all.”
    “Is that possible?” He knew she was talking about her death.
    “Absolutely. You have to get to the point of letting go. Of fighting as hard as you can then let it go because you know it’s out of your hands. At one point they didn’t think I’d make it and gave me a few months to live. I spent time with my father, my brothers. But then I wanted to be alone. To spend time with me.”
    She laughed, her tone light and airy. “My family didn’t understand what I meant.”
    But he did. In a way he did. “When life gets too difficult we need to know we aren’t alone but then it gets to the point of being something no one can help us get through. And if it’s just us alone then that’s what – who – we have to make peace with.”
    “Exactly. And in my case, I needed to assess what I’d done with my life up to that point. I was trying to forgive myself for not living and not making the most out of this thing called life.”
    “Again I have to ask – is that possible?”
    “I think so. I had so many plans, wishes, dreams, but they were off in the distance. Plans for when I had the money. When I had the time. Things that I’d assumed to be in my future but down the road. The children I’d planned to have. The husband I’d thought would be there in my life. I’d always wanted to have a house out of the city. Breed corgis. I don’t know why, but I love that short-legged dog. I had one growing up.” There was a catch in her voice. “I still miss him.”
    “Pets are like that.” He loved dogs. Hell he adored cats, but there was something special about dogs.
    “Yeah, but they still aren’t the same as people.” She smiled. “My father got really angry at me for trying to hide my illness.”
    “I’m sure he did.” Markus motioned toward the trees and directed her around several fallen branches on the ground. “No one wants to think of a loved one suffering.”
    “Exactly,” she exclaimed. “See, you understand.”
    He did but that was because after Fiona’s death nightmares had tormented him. He woke in a deep sweat always worrying she’d died painfully and alone.
    “But then when I did tell him, he couldn’t help, so there was just more of us upset. What good does that do?” she asked in exasperation. “If there was something he could do, that I needed him to do, then I’d have asked for help.”
    “Unless you had no resources left,” Markus said.
    She gave him a sideways look, the whites of her eyes bright in the moonlight. “You can’t know that.”
    “Yeah, I can. You sold everything you had to pay your own bills instead of asking him for help.”
    “But he doesn’t have much and he’s older, looking forward to retiring. What was the point in him wasting his money on me if I wasn’t going to make it?” she countered.
    “Now you’re going to make me mad,” he growled.
    “Why?” she asked, astonished.
    And to his surprise she really didn’t seem to understand. “Because when you love someone you’d do anything to help out. To make that journey easier. And if there was anything I had or could have done that would have saved someone I loved and I had the means available, only they wouldn’t let me help, I’d be angry too.”
    There was silence then.
    But he meant it. He’d have done anything to bring Fiona back. To think that pride might have stopped her from asking for help in a situation like Bree’s, hell yeah he’d be mad. “What’s the point of loving someone if you can’t help them in times of trouble? Love isn’t about sunshine and roses. It’s about being there in the stormy times too.”
    “Oh,” she said softly. “You must have really suffered.”
    “I did,” he said shortly. “I couldn’t save her, and I’d have done anything to have changed that.”
    “When it’s your time, it’s your time. I think that’s what I was trying to save my father from. I was already