by Sam Mariano
I sigh with relief as I take the first sip, then I put the lid on and make my way to the spare room—the room where that miserable bastard first fucked Alyssa after luring her in there to look at some shit on the computer.
I walk over to that computer now and pull out the chair. I shift and grab the gloves out of my back pocket, then I pull them on and start typing Theo’s farewell letter.
“Brant?”
My fingers freeze, hovering above the keyboard, and I turn to look in mild horror at my sister standing in the doorway. She looks like shit. Her face is puffy like she’s been crying all night long, her hair is frizzy like she spent a lot of time tossing and turning. She has a blue robe pulled around her body and she’s frowning at me in more than slight confusion.
“Good morning,” I say, keeping it simple since I don’t have the first idea what else to say.
“What are you doing here? And did you… make coffee?” she asks, completely bewildered.
Ah, shit. It’s early as hell, and I didn’t think she’d be awake yet after such a late night.
When I got off work last night, I had to come over here. Bri doesn’t like to tell me when she and Theo have been in a fight, so I knew this must have been a bad one since she did. Eager as I was to go home to Alyssa, I had to stop over here first and make sure my sister was all right.
Never crossed my mind the sorry son of a bitch would go to my house while I was at his, though.
“Brant?” she prompts since I haven’t answered her previous question. Then her frown deepens as she looks me over. “Are you wearing Theo’s coat?”
I had to wear Theo’s coat. I drove Theo’s car, wore Theo’s coat—in case anyone nearby was an early riser and saw me coming into the house this morning, they needed to think I was their neighbor when spotting me from a distance.
Now it’s all fucked up, though. My plan hinged on Bri being in bed, and here she stands, more awake than I am.
Her frown transforms into a full-on scowl as she comes farther into the room and starts to approach the computer monitor. “What is that you’re writing?”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” I say, standing up real quick so I can block her view. Putting a hand on her shoulder, I try to walk her back out of the room. “Why don’t you go back upstairs and get some sleep? You look tired, and I know you didn’t sleep much last night.”
Swatting my hand off, she pushes past me and rushes over to the computer.
Fuck.
I let my head fall back and I rake my fingers through my hair. It only takes her a moment of reading to realize what I was doing then she turns back to me, her face a mask of horror. “You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”
I open my mouth without knowing what I’m going to say, but before I have a chance, she flies at me and starts beating on my chest.
“Brantley Morrison, you promised! You promised!”
I tighten up on instinct when she starts hitting me, but I don’t want to inadvertently hurt her, so I don’t try to stop her.
“You promised you wouldn’t do anything! You said I could talk to you. I trusted you,” she shouts as she pounds her fists against my chest even harder.
“Shhh, Bri,” I say, trying to reach around to pat her back and calm her down. “You’re gonna wake the boys.”
“Fuck you, Brant,” she says, pulling back and staring at me like I’m an absolute monster.
“Bri, I didn’t…” I sigh, trailing off, because I don’t know how to explain that this has nothing to do with what she told me last night. I know the main reason she doesn’t like to complain to me about Theo is because she knows there’s a sliver of a chance I might actually kill the sorry bastard if he caused her too much heartache. It’s fucking Brandon all over again, except she had kids with this sorry sack of shit.
When I left her house last night, she wouldn’t let me go without making me swear up and down that despite all she’d told me about her fight with Theo, I wouldn’t harm a hair on his head.
I made that promise, but then about ten minutes later Alyssa called me and all bets were off.
Obviously, Bri doesn’t know about that.
“You didn’t what?” she demands, her face all red from the onslaught of tears wetting her cheeks. She manages to look hopeful, though, like maybe I’ll tell her I didn’t hurt the sorry bastard and he’s just sleeping off a hangover at my house or something
I run a hand through my hair again, not knowing what to say. After a pause that hangs between us for an eternity, I tell her, “Look, Bri, there are things you don’t know, and you’re better off not knowing, but—”
“Just answer me this: did you kill him?”
I just stare at her, at a loss for words.
“Is he dead?” she shrieks.
“Bri, come on, stop yelling.” I look over my shoulder then sigh and turn back to her.
“You’re unbelievable,” she says, shaking her head at me. “You’ve always been a lot of things, Brant, but a liar isn’t usually one of them.”
“I’m not trying to lie to you, Bri. I’m just trying to protect you,” I tell her honestly.
Barely managing words through her clenched teeth, she demands, “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I don’t need protecting? That maybe I’m a big fucking girl and I can take care of myself? Did that ever cross your mind, Brant?”
I am way too fucking tired for this.
I don’t want my sister to hate me again like she did for a while after Brandon, but hell, what am I supposed to say to her?
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly; it’s all I have.
Her eyes narrow with hatred. “No, you’re not. You hated him with a passion.”
My eyebrows shoot up in disbelief. “Yeah, because the bastard hurt you all the time. What, did you expect me to like him? I love you, Bri. It pisses me off watching someone treat you the way he did.”
Scrubbing at her tears with the palms of her hands, she shakes her head at me. “You had no right.”
I had every goddamn right in the world, but I can’t tell her that. My hands are tied and I can’t defend myself. All I can do is stand here and let her fling her hurt at me, and honestly, I have too many other things to do today.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
She stares at me across the room, her bottom lip quivering every now and then. I feel fucking terrible, but I don’t know how to fix her hurt right now. I doubt there’s any way to. Only time can make this ache a little less.
Her voice wobbles as she tells me, “I should turn you in.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I mean it,” she says, sniffling and wiping at her nose angrily. “I don’t have to let you get away with this.”
“Yeah, defending the women I love—what a fucking asshole,” I mutter, shaking my head at her. “I’m fucking exhausted, Bri. I don’t have time for this.”
Bri watches me for a minute, not saying a word, then she breaks her silence and asks calmly, “What is it you think I don’t know?”
“Not much point in telling you now, is there?” I ask tiredly. “Can you please just trust me on this? I didn’t go after Theo because of anything you said to me last night. I didn’t go after him at all. I’m sorry, but I can’t really explain any better than that.”
Bri sniffs again, then she nods her head. “Because you think I don’t know about him and Alyssa?”
My eyes widen to about the size of silver dollars and I look at my sister, unable to hide even a little bit of my shock. “What?”
Shooting me another look of mild disgust and annoyance, she tells me, “I’m not a fucking idiot, Brant.”
I am absolutely speechless.
“The funny thing is, I didn’t know know until I saw her with you. Before that I had suspicions about them, but not outright…” She trails off, shaking her head. “But then you were involved, and why would you be involved? You don’t even socialize, so how the hell would you ever meet Alyssa? No, the only way Alyssa cro
ssed your path was if she was part of some… some rescue mission to keep the life I’m so attached to from going down the drain. And at first, I thought that was all it was—you were just managing a crisis for me—but then she made you happy, for real, and I just…I just wanted you to be happy.”
I still can’t summon a single goddamn word.
“Why couldn’t you just want the same thing for me?” she demands tearfully. “Yes, my husband fucked around on me—why isn’t it up to me how to respond to that? Why is it that a man decides to cheat on a woman, and if she doesn’t immediately choose to ditch him, she gets judged far more harshly for not leaving than he does for the actual cheating? It’s such fucking bullshit,” she says, angry at someone who isn’t me, I think. She turns around and paces across the room. “I had a life, Brant, a whole life, and no, Theo wasn’t perfect, but don’t you get it now? No one is! No one, Brant. You love Alyssa, right? She’s not perfect!”
This is probably not the right place to start exercising my ability to speak again, but I do, anyway. “No, she’s not perfect, but she loves me and she’s loyal to me. Can you really say you believe Theo loves you? Loved you,” I amend awkwardly. “It’s not about perfection, Bri. It’s not about never making mistakes. It’s about being with someone who’d never hurt you on purpose. That’s all I want for you. That’s all anyone can really ask for.”
“But it wasn’t your call,” she grates out lowly, still so mad at me she could spit.
I swallow, hating what I have to say but knowing I have to say it. “He came to my house last night, Bri. He attacked Alyssa while she was sleeping in our bed.”
All the fury and the hellfire melts instantaneously, replaced by a numb sort of shock. “What?” she whispers. “No, he couldn’t— When?”
“When I was over here with you. Alyssa called me on my way home, hysterical, out of her fucking mind with terror. She was locked inside our bathroom hiding from him. She was a fucking mess when I got there. I never wanted you to have to know any of this, but especially not this part. I didn’t lay a hand on him because he broke your heart, Bri. I had to do it because he hurt my wife.”
Shaking her head in disbelief, she says, “He couldn’t have. Brant, he couldn’t have done that.”
“He did. It wasn’t the first time, either. When Alyssa first broke things off with him he got aggressive with her, then again shortly before our wedding. She didn’t tell me about that time because he threatened her, said he’d tell you about the affair if she told me what he did to her, but it all came spilling out of her last night. Your husband was not the man you thought he was,” I tell her gently.
I don’t add that even the man she thought him to be was about as valuable as a bucket of horse shit—a faithless, philandering, irresponsible bag of dicks.
None of that’ll help her. It doesn’t even matter now, because the son of a bitch is gone, and he can never hurt Bri or Alyssa ever again.
“When you say he attacked her…”
I lower my gaze, clenching my hands into fists at my sides. It hurts, too. My hands ache like hell from shoveling all that dirt this morning.
I need to take a couple aspirin, try to dull the pain a bit.
Bringing my focus back to my sister, I tell her, “It’s not really my place to say.”
“I need you to, Brant.”
These words burn like acid in my mouth, and I haven’t even spit them out yet. My jaw tightens, every aching muscle in my body tensing. “He raped her, Bri.”
I can imagine the shock she’s feeling right now. I feel for her, and I want to comfort her, but I stay where I’m at. I’m braced for her to try to defend Theo or trash Alyssa, and while I can try to look past that later when I’m feeling a little more sympathetic, I can’t fucking deal with it right now. Not with the memory of Alyssa crying and apologizing to me because someone hurt her so fresh in my mind.
I’m braced for Bri to say awful things, but she doesn’t.
She sits on the chair in front of the computer and doesn’t say a single word. She sorts through her thoughts the way I would, completely on her own, and after quite a long time, she finally looks over at me.
She swallows, then her gaze drifts out the window. “You can go. I’ll finish the letter,” she says quietly.
My brow furrows and I walk over closer to her. “Yeah?”
A bit woodenly, she nods her head. “If anyone asks, he left me, and I don’t know where he went.” Bri sniffles, rubbing the tip of her reddened nose. “He was fucking some mousy bitch he worked with, maybe he ran off with her.”
An immeasurable weight falls off my shoulders. I walk over to my sister, lean down, and give her a hug. “Thank you, Bri.”
She nods, bringing her hand up to rest on my arm around her neck.
“I’m sorry,” I say sincerely. “I’m so sorry.”
Looking up at me with a sad attempt at a brave face, she says, “Yeah. So am I.”
It’s the end of a long, miserable day, the kind of day that makes a man long for the comfort of home.
When I finally return to mine, my beautiful wife comes over and wraps her warm, loving arms around me. She sinks against my chest like she’s been counting every minute until she could be back in my embrace, and maybe she has. She’s crazy like that.
“Did everything go all right?” she asks, concerned.
I nod my head. “Everything’s taken care of, baby.”
Alyssa sighs with relief, completely trusting me to handle whatever needs handling. “Good. Did you see Bri?”
“We can talk about that later,” I tell her, tugging her back and settling my arm around her shoulders. “I’m so tired I can hardly stand up. What do you say we head up to the spare bedroom and take a nap?”
I know it’ll be a long time before she can go back to ours, if ever. On the drive home, I already started making plans to do some renovations to the house—not only because now there’s blood in places I’m not sure I can get it out of, but because maybe switching up the scenery will make things a little easier for her.
We only have a few months left until we meet Mackenzie, so I don’t know how much of that I’ll have time to do, but I need to at least gut our master bedroom. Maybe the master bathroom, too, since she got trapped in there during the ordeal.
“Are you hungry?” Alyssa asks, looking up at me. Her arm is wrapped snugly around my waist, and I can’t help smiling at her wanting to feed me.
“No. I’m too tired to be hungry.”
“Well, after you get some sleep, I’ll make you some dinner. I know most of the house is a mess, but the kitchen’s clean, so…”
“Do you like our kitchen?” I ask offhandedly.
Frowning mildly, she says, “Sure, I do. Why?”
I haven’t told her about my new plans to renovate so this probably won’t make much sense to her, but I’m too tired to care. “Maybe I should just knock the whole place down and start over. Then you could change any room in the house to look the way you want it, or have whatever you want. Our kitchen’s probably not as updated as you’d like, huh?”
Cocking her head in confusion, Alyssa looks up at me with growing concern. “What are you even talking about? Honey, you need to sleep.”
I do need to sleep, so I don’t argue with her. I let her walk with me to the stuffy spare bedroom I’ve only used twice since I bought this place. Alyssa pulls back the covers and finally, finally, I sink into bed.
This mattress isn’t nearly as comfortable as the one I’m used to sleeping on, but right now, it feels like heaven.
Feels even more like heaven when my little angel snuggles up beside me and throws her arms around me, curling up as close as she can.
She doesn’t say anything, and I don’t either. A little bit out of habit, a little bit because I just need to know our daughter’s okay, I rest my hand on Alyssa’s tummy.
I close my eyes, soaking up the peace and quiet. I’m just about asleep when all of a sudden I feel a little movement a
gainst my hand and Alyssa gasps.
Her eyes are wide with wonder when she looks up at me. “Did you feel it?”
A shit-eating grin spreads across my tired face. “I sure did.”
Alyssa grins even wider and throws her arms around my neck, pulling herself half on top of me. “That was the first big one. Oh my God, that was so adorable.” Easing onto her back but staying close to me with my arm around her, Alyssa puts her hand on her belly. “Mackenzie, what are you doing in there?”
She waits and waits and waits, but the baby doesn’t kick her.
It doesn’t seem to dull her excitement any.
Once Alyssa settles back down and turns more on her side like she was before, I put my hand back on her tummy. I only put it there because I like to feel like I’m holding both my girls, but when I press my hand against her, I feel another little kick.
Alyssa’s jaw falls open. “Hey! Why are you only kicking for him?”
I can’t stop another grin as I look over at Alyssa. “She’s gonna be a daddy’s girl.”
“Oh, that’s not even fair,” Alyssa says, but even as she objects, she can hardly contain her own happiness.
I chuckle and my arm tightens around her, tugging her closer since I can never seem to get her close enough to satisfy me.
Sighing with contentment, Alyssa settles in against me and runs her hand up and down my abdomen in soft, relaxing strokes. Just as I’m about to drift off again, she leans up and gives me a little kiss on the corner of my mouth.
“I love you so much, Brant.”
“I love you, too, baby.”
Epilogue
Two years later
Brant
“Bam, bam, bam, bam!”
I crack a smile, looking over at my nephew as he bangs his little plastic hammer against a block of scrap wood I gave him to play with.
Drawn by all the racket we’re making, Amber passes through the doorway into her daughter’s bedroom and shoots me a look while she twists her blonde hair up and secures it with a clip behind her head. “Can you not? Mommy’s getting a headache.”