All She Wanted (Letting Go)

by Deese, Nicole

  I was beginning to hate that phrase, yet even as he said it, I could feel a tiny spark of hope.

  “I don’t think today could have gone any worse.”

  Kai chuckled at that, “Oh it could have, go read the story of Jacob and Rachel. That poor guy had to spend seven years doing slave labor for his future father-in-law to earn his blessing, only to be given the wrong sister on their wedding night. He then had to work another seven years to marry Rachel. At least we know the Chief likes you—and we also know that he doesn’t have another daughter he wants to pawn off.”

  I felt a faint smile cross my lips as I pulled the bag from his hands to steady it back in place. Kai backed away at the start of a new a new sequence.

  “I’m here for you brother.”

  “I know.”

  Charlie

  As I walked out of my dad’s office, I smacked straight into Kai.

  “Oh…uh, hi Charlie,” Kai said, looking quite surprised to see me.

  “Hi,” I laughed, awkwardly.

  What is going on around here today?

  “Were you headed in here?” I asked, gesturing toward the office door.

  Kai nodded once, a strange look passing over his face as he took me in for the second time.

  “Oh, okay. Well, do you happen to know where Briggs is? Is he out on a call?”

  Another strange look—I knew I hadn’t imagined it this time; something was off.

  “He’s uh…he’s working out.”

  I stared at him, searching for some hidden meaning lurking behind his guarded words. I came up with nothing.

  “Okay…is there some kind of problem?” I asked, cautiously. I suddenly felt the need to speak in a coded language.

  “No?”

  “Then why did you answer with a question?”

  To see a lack of confidence in any of these men was rare, but the fact that he was reacting this way toward me was completely unsettling.

  “To be honest Charlie, I don’t know if you want to see Briggs right now. He’s… having a bit of a bad day.” A forced smile returned to Kai’s face as he shrugged his shoulders, as if his explanation was the only one I would need.

  It wasn’t.

  “Well, I would like to see him. He’s my friend,” I said a bit more passionately than the moment probably called for.

  I won.

  Kai led me through the far hallway to the workout room, and in no way was I prepared for what I saw. Kai put his hand on my shoulder. “You might want to stay back until he sees you…he wouldn’t want you to get too close.” He hesitated before walking away a moment later.

  My jaw fell open at the sight of Briggs.

  The music was turned up loud, the bass resonating in my chest like a heartbeat. When he said he was into fighting before, this was not what I had pictured—not even close. I had imagined some broken bar chairs and drunken men throwing aimless punches at each other, but this, was far from that.

  I knew he was fit—that was obvious to anyone who had eyes to see, but that word did not apply to him. He was instead what some might call…shredded. Every contour of his abs and arms reflected in the lights overhead. His hair was completely soaked—beads of sweat flinging in every direction with each punch he threw. I could not take my eyes off him. It was like watching a performance. Because I was not particularly athletic, this kind of endurance was beyond mystifying.

  His hits were hard. I could hear each impact as it pounded against the leather, even above the booming bass line of his music. I slid my body against the wall slowly, sinking to the floor, watching, wide-eyed. His back faced me, but every once in a while I could see the profile of his face. His eyes were focused, intense.

  A trickle of uneasiness ran up my spine, igniting my mind.

  I wondered if I hadn’t trusted Briggs the way I did, if this sight would have frightened me. I wanted the answer to be no, but I couldn’t be certain. This was the first time I had seen even the slightest glimpse of the Briggs he spoke of in his past—the hard Briggs, the fighter. But then I remembered, he was still the Briggs that I knew. He was the Briggs who had wrapped my wrist, the one who had held my hand and kissed my lips. He was my Briggs.

  As the song died out, he stopped the bag to pick up his iPod. It was then that he saw me. He wiped his eyes with the back of his sweaty arm, and blinked.

  Slowly, I raised my hand, giving him the smallest version of a wave I could, which seemed to confirm his suspicion: I was in fact, really here.

  There was no emotion I could detect on his face as he stared back. I stood, unsure of what I should do next. This was a first for us—I was the one playing the role of creepy-stalker this time.

  “I…I’m sorry. I texted you a little while ago to let you know I was bringing lunch by,” I lifted the crumpled bag off the floor, “And then I got here, and you looked pretty…uh, focused. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  He blinked a few more times before walking over to a weight bench to grab his towel, wiping his face and hair. I tried to keep my eyes focused upward, it was a challenge.

  “How long have you been sitting there?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, feeling the slow rise of panic in my chest at the cold tone of his voice, “Do you…want me to leave?”

  There was no immediate answer—no reassuring smile to ease my doubt. There was just a blank face on a beautiful man-body, one that looked completely spent. I could see his arms shake slightly as he stood before me catching his breath.

  I swallowed hard, realizing Kai had been right. I shouldn’t have come back here.

  “I’ll go,” I said softly, placing the lunch bag near the back door. “This is for you.”

  My chest heaved with the weight of rejection bearing down on it.

  “Charlie…wait.”

  I stopped, turning back to him slowly.

  “Can you give me ten minutes? I need to shower.”

  “Sure,” I squeaked.

  Briggs

  I stood in the cool stream, letting it revive the body I had just beat to a pulp. My knuckles, despite the wrapping, were cracked and bleeding already.

  I banged my head against the wall.

  Why did she have to come today?

  After I had dried off and put a new uniform on, I found her sitting outside the station on a bench seat, to-go bag sitting in the spot next to her. My heart seized as I watched her tuck a rebellious strand of hair behind her ear.

  How can I live without her?

  She faced me when she heard the door close behind me.

  “I’m sorry if intruded on your personal space, Briggs. I should have-”

  “Stop, Charlie. You didn’t intrude, I should have seen you there.” I picked up the bag on the bench, thanking her. I was starving.

  “You were, uh, really hard core in there.”

  I looked up at her briefly, taking a large bite of the chicken and rice.

  Did I scare her? I focused back on my plate.

  “It was…amazing, I’ve never seen anything like that before,” she said.

  This time I looked up, meeting her eyes so I could gauge her response.

  “Were you afraid of me?”

  She thought for half a second before responding. “No. I’m a bit in awe of you, though,” she laughed, “I wish I could learn some moves like that. Maybe you could teach me someday. My piano hands aren’t quite athletically gifted.” She held her hands out as if inspecting them in the sunshine.

  “Your hands are perfect the way they are, Shortcake,” I said.

  She gasped then and reached out for me, seeing my knuckles for the first time.

  “Oh my gosh, Briggs…that looks horrible!”

  She grazed the outline of my knuckles with her warm fingers. I could feel her touch more than the burning of my cracked skin.

  “It’s just superficial. I’ll clean them up in a bit,” I said.

  “Uh…I’m no paramedic or anything, but that doesn’t look superficial to me,” she said.


  I winked at her, but kept eating.

  “So are you going to tell me why you’re having such a bad day?”

  I shook my head no instantly, my mouth still full with my last bite.

  “Does it have to do with Angie or Cody? Please tell me if there is something going on with them Briggs.”

  Urgh! Why does she have to be so dang compassionate all the time?

  “It doesn’t, Charlie. I just have to figure some stuff out, okay? I’m sorry that I’m not very good company today.”

  “I don’t care what kind of company you think you are today…we’re friends. Friends have bad days sometimes. You’ve seen plenty of mine. And…I’ll have you know I’m a pretty good figure-er outer,” she said, puffing herself up with pride.

  “Is that right?” I laughed.

  “Yep,” she said, smiling.

  “Well, I’ll keep that in mind then,” I said, smiling at her.

  I love when she smiles like that.

  “Briggs?”

  “Yeah?” I put the container back inside the bag, smashing it down before throwing it into the trashcan a couple feet away.

  “Why did you stop fighting?”

  Her hand moved to rest on my knee softly, her eyes filled with sincere curiosity. My chest ached at the sight. I had every intention of telling her someday, but today was definitely not the day I had imagined for such a heavy conversation.

  And yet…

  I made the decision as I stared down at her hand. If I couldn’t tell her the truths I wanted to say—the words that filled up my heart and poured over into my soul, then I would tell her my other truths, the ones that haunted me most, the ones that couldn’t be shaken off or forgotten.

  The ones that would dissuade whatever affection she might have for me.

  I had plenty inside of me that was unlovable. Maybe it was time for Charlie to know that part of me, too. There was no benefit to her loving me—not if the end result would ultimately rob her of the future she should have.

  I kept my voice low, even, steady; though my heart raced a thousand beats a minute.

  “Because I almost murdered a man.” She went very still, but I continued on, undeterred. “I told you that Angie and I moved here when she was pregnant, to get away from her ex-husband, but there is more to that story. He found her, a couple years later—staked out the house, waiting for me to leave. I did, only I forgot my wallet. When I came back, Angie was lying on the ground in a pool of blood, Cody was screaming.”

  Charlie’s hand moved to her mouth, “No…no, how awful.”

  “I had trained for years as a fighter, my sensei drilling into my head how important it was to remain in control—to not give away my power, my mind or my body to any opponent, but something snapped in me that night—a rage like I had never known. I charged him, while listening to the screams of my nephew in the front seat of his truck. I could hear the sirens in the distance and I knew I had to make a choice…go to my sister, or stop Dirk from taking Cody. I chose the latter, and when I did, I had already decided that I was going to kill him. I wanted to make him suffer for every hurt he had caused her, I wanted his death to be painful.”

  Charlie’s breathing was so soft beside me. I refused to look at her, I didn’t want to see the revulsion in her eyes. “When the ambulance and police arrived after responding to the neighbor’s call, I was covered in his blood, and in a daze.”

  “Did he die?” She asked.

  I shook my head staring down at my feet, “No, they revived him. Angie was touch and go for seven days, though. I thought I was going to lose her.”

  She was quiet for several seconds. “I’m so sorry, Briggs. I can’t even imagine the horror of that night. Angie is so lucky to have you as her brother—you saved her son.”

  I looked up at her face incredulously, “Don’t sugar coat it, Charlie. I was far from heroic—I was out of control! If the police hadn’t arrived when they did, I would likely be in prison right now—serving time right alongside Dirk.”

  She furrowed her brows slightly, “So what, you stopped training because you were afraid it could happen again, the rage feeling? Is that why you changed—the reason you decided you wanted to live differently?”

  If only.

  I could feel her gaze hot on my face as the acid drip of shame ran down the back of my throat, “That was the end of my training and fighting, but it was far from the end of my destructive wake. You might think that going through something like that would cause me to reflect on my life—search for answers—find God, but that wasn’t what happened. I went in the opposite direction,” I laughed, though there was nothing funny about my next statement. “When I wasn’t at the station, I was usually drunk—I can’t even count the number of times Kai picked me up after a night of drinking, or how many girls he saw me go home with.”

  Charlie tensed, physically recoiling at my words. Her reaction made my stomach sick, but I wasn’t done yet. “I lived that way for over a year—drinking, partying, sleeping with any girl that showed interest in me…” I stopped, the words on my tongue refusing to come out.

  “What?” Her voice was a whisper. “What happened, Briggs?”

  “I walked out to my truck one morning after work and a woman was standing there, waiting for me. She looked vaguely familiar, but I didn’t know why.” I stopped again, sliding my elbows to my knees while raking my hands through my hair. “She asked me if I remembered her. I told her I didn’t, but when she started to cry I knew that my selfish decisions had finally caught up to me. She told me her name was Brenna, and I waited for her to drop the pregnancy bomb on me, but that wasn’t why she had come. She was angry, cussing me out as she cried, telling me that I was just like her father—a drunk who cared about no one but himself. She ranted about how she would never put a child of her own through that kind of life, and that if I had been a better man she wouldn’t have had to make the decision that she did. And that’s when I realized that she wasn’t telling me she was pregnant, she was telling me that she had just had an abortion.”

  Neither of us spoke for several seconds, but my words continued to play over and over in my mind…the shameful truth that was mine to own. All the pain and rejection I had tried to forget as a child, all the grief and fear I had experienced over Angie’s assault, and all the murderous rage I had felt the night I attacked Dirk, had finally come to a head that morning.

  An innocent life had paid the penalty for my sin.

  I turned my face toward Charlie, the silence weighing heavy between us, like a thick, itchy blanket.

  Her eyes glistened as she spoke. “That’s a lot to deal with.”

  It was a lot for her to deal with. She had every right to think differently of me now. I had never been fool enough to believe I deserved her in the first place—friend or otherwise.

  “It is, I just think it best you know what’s in my past, as dark as it is-”

  “What? No,” she said, shaking her head, “I didn’t mean it was a lot for me to handle; I meant that it must be a lot for you to wrestle with—even now. I know there’s nothing more difficult than stepping out from the shadows of our past into the light, but you’ve already taken that step—and many more after it. You told me once that you never wanted to be that man again, and I see nothing of him when I look at you now.” She held my gaze as words failed me. “I see you, Briggs, and I am lucky to call you my friend.” A tear slid down her cheek as she said the last word, shredding my heart.

  “You are not the lucky one, Shortcake.”

  She smiled, as she skimmed her finger over my knuckles, “And you are not your past.”

  I closed my eyes, willing myself to move away from her touch, while everything in me screamed in protest. “I should get back inside.”

  “Okay,” she said softly, standing up from the bench a second later.

  “Okay,” I said, following her lead.

  She smiled, “I hope your day gets better.”

  You make everything better.<
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  “Thanks for bringing me lunch.”

  She nodded, waving as she walked on the path that led to the front parking lot.

  As I watched her go, the ache inside my chest intensified. My plan to diminish the spark between us had not only failed, it had backfired with epic proportions. She wasn’t supposed to accept the shameful secrets of my past…but she had.

  And if it was possible, I loved her even more than I had an hour ago.

  “I can’t make you choose to do what’s right for her, Briggs, but I hope you will.”

  In that moment, any wavering in my resolve disappeared. I had made too many decisions in the past for my benefit alone, and Charlie wasn’t in my past. I would choose what was best for her, even if it meant she wasn’t in my future, either.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Charlie

  Thursday morning I met Tori for coffee at my favorite used bookstore in the University district. I brought an old pile of books in with me to sell for store credit while I waited for her to arrive. It was just after ten when I saw her.

  “Good morning!” Tori said as she approached.

  “Good morning to you, too.” I hugged her.

  We ordered our drinks and scones as she filled me in on the latest wedding drama. There was no stress in her voice when it came to the wedding, just when it came to the coordinators.

  “I swear I might go insane if I have to be in on one more meeting where I hear about the different uses of chiffon verses organza, or the argument about twinkle lights verses Chinese lanterns. I don’t know how else I can possibly say, I don’t care, but I feel I am losing the battle with those three.”

  “Three?” I asked her.

  “Yes, Mom, Stacie and Betty—the official coordinator.”

  “Yikes, you’re a bit out numbered.”

  She laughed and rolled her eyes as we went found a table to sit down at. “Well I am done talking about all that,” She waved her hand in front of her face as if to dismiss the conversation. “I will be so happy when the wedding part is over so I can just focus on being married.”