by Marni Mann
Hart: ?
Me: Doubt I’ll be into work tomorrow either. Not sure if I have sick days yet so just hold my pay until I come back.
Hart: Rae, what the hell is going on? I’m worried about you now.
Me: Don’t be. I’ll text you tomorrow morning.
Hart: Call me instead. Please.
I let him have the last word.
***
Several hours later, Shane walked through the door, carrying two plastic grocery bags and a twelve-pack. There had only been two beers in his fridge; I’d already downed both. He placed the bags on the counter and removed two beers from the case. He twisted off the caps, handed me one and joined me on the couch.
“I lied to my boss for you today,” he said.
We both took a sip, mine a little longer than his. “I’m sorry, Shane. I never wanted you to get in the middle of this.”
Since I was sitting in his usual spot, he took the one next to me, reclined into the cushions and put his feet on the other side of the table. We’d sat like this many times over the years. It had been a while, though. Too long, probably.
“You know I’d do anything for you.” His calm, compassionate hand went to my shoulder. “Shit gets messy when it involves my job, though.”
“You won’t ever have to lie for me again—I promise. Everything between us will all be fixed soon…however it ends up.”
He nodded. “I stopped by your uncle’s store to get the groceries and beer. He asked about you and said you haven’t been in lately to visit him.” His fingers squeezed gently. “I know you’ve got your issues with him and your mom, and I understand why, but he’s shaken up over Darren’s birthday, too.” He exhaled, the beer on his breath mingling with the other scents in the room. “Maybe you should just pop in there and say hello, just to put him at ease.”
The last time I’d seen him, I was asking for a job. “I’ll go over there soon. I don’t want him bugging you.”
“I don’t mind that part. I’m just thinking that when he lost Darren, he also lost you.” I had never even considered it that way. “Seeing what Brady’s going through, I can sympathize with the way he’s feeling. I know he wasn’t your uncle’s son, but Darren meant something to him and the loss had to devastate him.” His hand pressed down a bit harder. “Remember that Irving is innocent in all of this.”
Shane was right. My uncle had no idea what Gerald’s involvement had been; he was guilty of nothing other than being related to him. But it was enough of a connection to have made me uncomfortable for all this time. And there was a good chance my uncle had stayed in contact with him. He might have been the one who’d given him my new number—innocently enough, but still.
I rolled my head toward him. “You’re right. It’s just hard. All of this is so fucking hard.”
His hand dropped on top of mine, the warmth of it soothing me. “Every year since it happened, I’ve told you the same thing, and I mean it as much now as I did the first time I said it: we’ll get through the next six days together.”
I was so lucky to have him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
SHANE AND I met in Bangor at the rehab center for our visit with Brady. “Are you okay this morning?” he asked as we walked through the parking lot. “I didn’t see you before I left the house.”
I purposely avoided mentioning Hart. I didn’t want to know if he’d asked about me, or if he’d pressed Shane for information. I had already put him in the middle, though I hadn’t wanted to. I also didn’t want him to feel like every conversation had to be about Hart. So I answered simply, “I am,” gave him a long, tight hug, and headed into the reception area.
It had been more than two weeks since we’d last seen Brady. So much about him had changed in that time. The bruising on his face was completely gone; his skin had a warm, golden tone now. There was confidence in his step as he made his way to our table. He stood upright, his shoulders level, and his smile reached all the way to his eyes. When his arms wrapped around me, I could feel all of his strength.
“I’m glad you haven’t lost any more weight,” he said, noticing as much about me as I had about him. “I was worried you’d be even skinnier than the last time I saw you.”
“I’ve been eating a little more.” That was to say, I’d been eating enough to maintain, such as the pizza Shane had fed me the night before. I’d kept the two slices down, and a few beers. It was strange to not have it all come back up afterward.
“Hopefully when this is all over, you’ll gain it back like you usually do. You can’t let this shit with Hart and his mom screw that up for you. You need to get healthy again…five days.”
“Five days,” I echoed, nodding against his chest, taking in the scent of his shirt. The smell I remembered was lingering there, beneath the fabric softener and the subtleness of his cologne. The same pine-and-comfort scent of Shane’s house.
Brady broke free and hugged his dad, and the three of us sat down at the round table. Shane’s eyes never left his son. Neither did mine. It had been too long since we’d seen him so healthy, so alive. We wanted to know everything: how he was doing, how he’d been feeling, what he was learning, and what kind of progress he was making. We didn’t have to ask much; Brady read the questions on our faces, and the answers began pouring out of him. He used real, raw words, not the insincere anger we were used to hearing from him.
He had finally found a point of balance.
It allowed him to listen to his demon, to understand it and come to terms with it in a way that kept him in control as much as possible. I couldn’t help but notice how the whites of his eyes gleamed, how his hands stayed still and folded in front of him.
“You seem comfortable,” I said. Not just in his skin, but in accepting the depth of what he’d been dealing with, and what had happened as a result.
“I think I am,” he confirmed. “There’s a lot to it, and it’s complicated. I don’t want to spend our whole visit explaining it to you. I’m too happy to see you to do that.”
“We have plenty of time, son,” Shane told him. “Whenever you’re ready to share it with us, we’ll be ready to hear it.”
Maybe for the first time ever, Brady’s eyes told me he understood what that would mean from here forward. “Thank you.” He clamped onto my hand firmly, confidently, even as mine shook within his grasp. I noticed the contrast then, how he’d risen above while I’d been sinking deeper.
I had twisted even further from the light, and he had spun right into it.
“Dad,” he said, “do you mind if I talk to Rae privately for a minute?” I blinked and came back to the moment. “I don’t mean to shove you off like this, but I’d like to talk to her about some serious stuff.” He winked at me.
Shane paused and smiled warmly, like he was proudly watching his son look after his daughter. “Of course. Whatever you want.” He took his phone out of his pocket and checked the screen. “Looks like things are getting a little hairy on the jobsite, anyway. Perfect timing.” He gave Brady a hug that lasted longer and meant more than any embrace they’d probably ever shared. He looked at me. “Will I be seeing you at the house later?”
I nodded. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
He squinted. “Somehow, I don’t quite believe that. Drive safely and text me when you get to the house.” He rubbed Brady’s head. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, son.”
Then it was just Brady and me, sitting together by ourselves for the first time in what seemed like forever. I drank in those blue-ocean eyes I had so desperately missed—eyes that were so much more clear and knowing than I was used to. “I seriously doubt you want to hear about my sex life with Hart, so what is it that you couldn’t say in front of your dad?”
His hand leapt to his chin, his nails scratching at the sand-colored stubble covering it. “Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve been breaking a lot of things down in therapy. My feelings and shit. Things I’ve said and done in the past. I’ve come to some conclusions, and I wanted to be
honest with you about something.”
I didn’t like the feeling that rose in my stomach. It made my hands shake and my knees bounce underneath the table. He had never sounded like this before—not when he was sober, and definitely not when he was fucked-up.
Suddenly, he sounded like he’d grown up.
I clasped my hands together. “Okay.”
His eyes softened, though the intensity of his stare remained. “You’ve always been there for me, Rae. It didn’t matter how high or drunk I was, who I slept with, who I chased or fought. You never left me. I can’t say that about any of my boys. They may have been there, but they weren’t there…not like you.” I watched his chest rise and fall, his vision drifting down toward the table. “There was this one time when I got really drunk in front of Drew, and…” He hesitated.
Shit.
Just the sound of her name doubled the tremble in my stomach.
What the fuck else had she done?
“Whatever it is, you can tell me,” I assured him. “We’ll be fine on the other side of it.”
His eyes met mine again, and I could see his uncertainty. “I was telling her things I shouldn’t have even been talking about and…I told her Saint had grabbed you before I’d gotten the chance.” His confession stunned me. “My feelings were confused then—they had been for a while. There are different kinds of love, and I was mistaking one for another. I learned that in here.”
I tried to smile, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even fake it. “What are you trying to say?”
“You’ve been my constant for all these years, like a shadow, only you never stood behind me. You stood beside me, always, never ashamed or embarrassed of the things I did or the shitty decisions I made. You’ve been amazingly loyal to me.”
There was a knot in my throat and no matter how hard I swallowed it wouldn’t go away.
“You’ve done the same for me,” I whispered.
“I realize now that Saint never took you away from me. I was worried for a while that Hart would, but I know you’d never let that happen. We’re deeper than that, you and me. I mean, yeah, you’ll end up spending more time with him, and you’ll continue to live at his house instead of mine. But we’re us no matter what. I used to think whoever you were dating was going to get all your love, and you wouldn’t have enough left over for me. I know now how wrong I was.”
My eyes were wet, and my lips had begun to shake. “You’re right, Brady. It never happened, and I would never, ever let it. You and Shane are my family. I would never leave you and never stop loving you.” I reached across the table and squeezed his hands with all the strength I had. “Never.”
He lowered his face and pressed his forehead against the back of my palm. I could almost feel the emotion flowing from his skin. “I have so much regret, Rae, about so many things.” His lips brushed the tips of my fingers.
“You know I do, too.”
I didn’t have to go into detail; Brady knew exactly what I was talking about. There was one thing in my life that I wanted to take back. The night I had gotten my scar, the night I had left the house and returned too late. If I had only come back several minutes sooner or had never left at all, the last five years would have been completely different.
He lifted his head, and I saw how red the whites of his eyes had gone. I was sure mine looked the same. “I’m not going to tell you that none of it is your fault,” he said. “I’ve been saying that since the day you moved in with me, and you’ve been repeating those exact words, and our stubborn minds are going to believe what they want. I’m going to make you a promise instead: I’m not looking back anymore. I can’t afford to. There’s too much shit behind me, shit that can easily drag my sorry ass straight to Caleb’s and put four pills up my nose. Ahead is the only direction there is for me. And I hope you understand it’s the only direction for you, too.”
I respected that. I would have done anything to be able to move forward like he planned to do. But I didn’t know how to stop looking over my shoulder, especially when Gerald was leaving messages on my phone, or while I still cringed every time I thought about Hart’s hands coming anywhere near my face, or while the thought of going inside my mom’s house made me want to tuck into a corner and rock back and forth, and never stop.
He squeezed my hand until I met his eyes again. “Can you promise me the same thing?”
I wouldn’t lie to Brady; I wouldn’t even attempt it. He’d be able to see through my lie, anyway. I understood completely where he was coming from, but we weren’t in the same situation. His trouble had arrived in the form of a demon he’d fought long and hard to gain control of. Mine had come in the shape of ghosts that I had no chance of exorcising from my life.
The scars ran too deep for that.
“No,” I told him. “I can’t.”
“You haven’t hit rock bottom.” He didn’t phrase it as a question. He was right not to.
I shook my head. “I think I can see it from here, though.”
He fixed my gaze and held my hands firm. “Do you know where I was when I called you to come and get me?” I didn’t know if I was ready to hear this. “I woke up in the basement of some house in Bangor. I still don’t know how I got there…the last thing I remember was being in Boston. I couldn’t open my left eye; blood was running into the other. Every muscle in my body had either been kicked or punched. I have no idea what happened to me.” His voice caught. He closed his eyes and shook his head. I knew whatever had happened to him was bad, but I hadn’t really expected this. “I was naked, tied to a chair with my hands behind my back. My legs were wet because I’d pissed myself. In the back of my mouth, I could still taste the bitterness of the last pill I’d snorted. And it was all I could think about—not that my entire body ached, or might have been broken beyond repair, or that some stranger was standing in front of me with a bat in his hand or that I was bare-ass naked and covered in my own urine. All I wanted was more of what I tasted.”
“Brady…” I whispered. It hurt to speak that word. Everything hurt. I was aching for my best friend.
“I was there because I owed money—a shit-ton of fucking drug money. Turned out I knew a few of the guys in that house and they said I was good for it, so they let me go under two conditions: I have to give them my truck, and I have to pay back what I owe them within two months. Once I do, I’m starting over.” His eyes were filling. “That was my rock bottom, Rae…I don’t have another one in me.”
Brady had blown through his savings before he took off for Bangor, so I knew he didn’t have the cash to pay them. And he loved his truck; he’d worked so hard to pay it off. It broke my heart to know he had to give it to them. I figured he’d be getting out of rehab and starting his life completely fresh. I hadn’t considered he’d be starting it indebted to drug dealers.
“How much do you owe?” I asked.
His clear blue eyes showed fear. “With juice, close to fifteen.”
“That’s nothing—”
“Not fifteen hundred, Rae. Fifteen thousand.”
It felt like all the air had been kicked out of me. “Shit, Brady.”
“Shit is right.”
I swallowed and shook my head until I was able to get my emotions under control for him. “We’ll figure this out.”
“They gave me a break once, but guys like this don’t fuck around. You saw my face…they’re capable of doing much worse. If I don’t figure this out, they’ll kill me.”
I couldn’t accept this as part of his reality. “Nothing is going to happen to you. I won’t let it.”
He laughed, his nervousness and grief rained through the sound of those chuckles and soaked my bones. “Unless I pay them off, there’s nothing you can do to stop them from coming after me.”
I needed to be closer to him. So I slid forward and wrapped my arms around his neck, burying my face in his shirt. “We’ll find a way to pay them off just let me get through these next five days.”
I truly hoped we could figur
e this out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I WAS SLEEPING on Shane’s couch, tucked beneath a cozy blanket with the early morning darkness surrounding me, when I felt a pair of hands touch the outside of my thigh. They rubbed in circles, traveling to my waist and dipping to my knee. I knew the touch, without seeing the hands it belonged to.
Hart.
I smelled him before I even opened my eyes. The lavender from his house clung to his clothes; the sharpness of cedar and musk carried on his exhale.
I sat up abruptly. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t move. He stayed on the floor, kneeling in front of me as he reached over to turn on the lamp. “You know why I’m here. The question is, why are you?”
I hadn’t asked him for space—I hadn’t asked him for anything, in fact. I hadn’t answered his texts or his calls, and I hadn’t sent any more of my own, either.
That was wrong of me. I knew that. But Brady’s news only added to everything I had already been feeling. It was too much.
Four days was all I could handle.
Brady had been able to come clean and tell me everything that had been holding him down. Was I ready to do the same with Hart?
“The morning you let me sleep in, your mom came to the house.” Ready or not, there it was. By blurting it out, I didn’t have a chance to second-guess my decision.
He bit his lip and tapped his fist lightly against my knee. “It all makes sense now.”
I focused on his fingers. It was too hard to look at his eyes. “I’ve had a lot of accusations thrown at me over the years, Hart. Many of them I’ve deserved, but the things she said to me…” I paused, trying to figure out the right way to continue. I couldn’t repeat what she’d said; that would have only made me more emotional. I didn’t think that would help us at all.
“She thought you were the maid, didn’t she?” I nodded and finally looked into his eyes. He knew exactly what kind of cruelty she was capable of, which made my stomach hurt even worse. “She did the same thing to my last girlfriend.”