“At first, he didn’t say anything. He drove us back to my apartment, nothing in the way he was acting could have prepared me for what came next. The second the door shut behind us, he started in on me. Asked me how long I’d been cheating on him. Slung hateful words at me. Played into my insecurities.”
“What the fuck,” I growl. “Just over talking to a guy?” I’m breathing heavy, and every single cell in my body is warning me to run, that I’m not going to want to hear the rest of the story.
She nods sadly. “But it was only that one isolated incident and, of course, he apologized immediately. Said he was just worried because he didn’t want to lose me. He was so sneaky. I don’t know why I believed him or why I didn’t leave him. It sounds cliché, but his apologies came quickly, seemed sincere. ‘I love you so much, I can’t stand the idea of sharing you with anyone else.’ he would always say.”
Somehow, I manage to calm myself down enough to ask, “And Jack? What happened when he came to your place?”
“When Jack barged in, it was because he heard something break first but then the shouting.”
Shit. “What do you mean?”
Eyes filled with tears, I move to crouch in front of her, taking her hands in mine. I send up a prayer that what I think she’s about to tell me is so far from the truth.
“You can tell me, Bri,” I tell her, moving to sit beside her. What I want to do is pull her onto my lap, to go back in time, stop this whole fucked-up situation from ever happening in the first place.
“My weight was at its lowest when I saw Aaron at a coffee shop. The look on his face when he took in my appearance is something I’ll never forget. I had this overwhelming desire to apologize to him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Grady, I felt like such a failure in every facet of my life and when he first approached me, even though we’d never met, I knew he had the right to. I was very aware of the fact that I had an eating disorder. I didn’t know how to get a handle on it. I knew he was coming to me from a place of concern. Anyway, Aaron pulled me aside and sat down at a table with me. But rather than sitting across from me, he took a seat next to mine. He was speaking quietly to me, so he was leaning in close. Trent had apparently been tracking my phone because when he came in the door it was obvious he already knew I’d be there. I was so much like Aaron’s sister Ava, and he wanted so badly to help her—to make her better. When Trent saw Aaron and I talking, I knew it was going to be bad.”
“How bad?”
“Trent and I, we had never been intimate. At least, not sex. He assumed that was because I had been cheating on him the entire time with Aaron. There was no convincing him otherwise. He threw a beer bottle across the room and it shattered.”
My nostrils flare. “And that’s when Jack came in?”
She nods, pressing her lips together, chin trembling.
“Yes. He could hear him shouting at me from the other side of the door. If he hadn’t been there, I don’t know if he would have turned physical against me.”
“And he what, got you to safety? Trent just let him walk in and leave with you?” I ask, incredulously.
“No. But a neighbor had already called 911 and told them they’d heard the same thing Jack had. Jack got in Trent’s face, stood in front of me to keep me safe. The police showed up only a few minutes later, took our statements. The next morning I filed a restraining order against Trent and Jack stayed with me for a couple days. After everything that happened with your Aunt Carly, I’m sure he was having some pretty major flashbacks of his own, you know?”
I nod. We all know Carly’s story. She was lucky to get out of the abusive marriage, but not before Jack witnessed the worst of it. He was only thirteen and walked into the living room at the same time her ex-husband started physically abusing her. Carly didn’t stay around for it to happen again and moved to our hometown. She’d been living in Liberty for a few years and found happiness with my uncle James when Vince, her ex, found where she and Jack were living and tried to recreate history. Jack came home just in time to stop it.
“So yeah, he saved my life. I don’t know how long I would have stayed with Trent or continued to let my body dwindle to nothing if Jack hadn’t come in.”
I let all the news she just told me settle in a little bit but quickly realize if I stay in this house I’m likely going to break something. “I think we need a break.”
She nods sadly.
“I mean a break from story time.” How I’m able to speak calmly, I’m not sure. What I want to do is track down this fucker and finish off whatever Jack did to stop him from hurting Bri. I’m hoping he used some form of fists.
“Oh. I’m sorry. Was it…”
I stand up and hold my hand out to her. “Bri, stop it. I needed to hear everything. It’s a lot to take in. Let’s take Rocky for a walk.”
The second he hears the word ‘walk,’ his ears perk up and he races to the door where his leash hangs.
“Oh! Okay, yeah. That would be good.”
I look down at her feet and notice she’s still in flip flops. They’re not the flimsy rubber kind, but they’re not the most supportive, either. “Want to put on sneakers?”
She quirks a brow at me. “Are we planning to do some speed walking? A quick 5K? I think I’ll be alright in these.”
“Glad to see you never lost your smart ass.”
She smirks but it’s her next move that takes me by complete surprise. She lifts up on her toes, bringing our joined hands behind her so my hand is resting on the small of her back and kisses me on the cheek, lips lingering on my skin for a few seconds.
When she lowers herself, our hands are still in the same position, our bodies so close together I can feel her chest rise and fall. I want to wrap my other arm around her and say fuck it all to taking Rocky on a walk.
“Thank you, Grady.”
“For?”
“Listening. Not judging me. Being honest about your feelings, especially when you have every right to be angry with me for not speaking to you for six years.”
I shift, framing her face in the palms of my hands, and lean down, letting my forehead rest against hers.
“Don’t you get it, yet, Bri?”
“Get what?”
“It doesn’t matter what happened in your past. What mistakes you made. My love for you, it doesn’t have a beginning or an end. I would have waited for you forever.”
Bri
Rocky’s pulling on his leash, anxious to smell everything in his path. He walks five feet then smells a tree or blade of grass. I already feel a great kinship with him. I get distracted easily too.
He stops and pees on a rock then sniffs his own pee to make sure he’s still claimed it as his own. Maybe I don’t have that much in common with him.
My arm brushes against Grady’s every few steps we take, but he makes no move to stop our constant touching, so I don’t either.
If I thought my eyes felt like sandpaper when I woke up this morning, now they feel like sawdust mixed with broken glass was sprinkled directly into my eyes. Reliving those two ugly years was exactly as hard as I knew it would be. But Grady deserves to know everything that happened.
“Can I ask you another question?” he asks, pulling back on Rocky’s leash to keep him on the sidewalk as best he can.
“Of course.”
“It’s not really a question, more like a confirmation.”
“Grady, whatever it is you’re wondering, I promise to be honest with you.”
“The reason you stayed away… it was because you were ashamed and embarrassed?”
“Yes and no. I wasn’t the same person you knew me as. The anorexia, it messed with me in so many ways. I had to give myself time to become mentally and physically healthy again. I knew you deserved that much. But so did I. One of the things I learned about during therapy while I was in treatment for anorexia—”
“Treatment?”
“Yes. Jack gave me exactly two days at home. Kep
t my mom and Andy informed of what was happening. Kept the boys away even though they were dying to get to Peoria and go after Trent. Anyway, he gave me two days at home to cry, to think. Then he said he was taking me to a treatment facility for people with eating disorders. With Lily’s connections as a social worker, she knew which facility would be best for me.”
“Another one of my family members who knew everything that was going on without telling me,” he says, a far-off look to his face.
I stop, grip his forearm, and turn him to face me. “You need to understand something. I had to get better without you. That’s what I learned in therapy. You and I, we had a habit of relying and leaning heavily on each other. It’s not a bad thing, but if they had told you what was going on, you’d try to fix it. Fix me. I had to do it on my own. I needed to get stronger without you. For me, and I had hoped, for us. And then… well, the accident.”
“What about the accident?”
I wait, letting him connect the timeline. His eyebrows scrunch together. “Were you in treatment when I had the accident?”
“I was, though it’s not like I was locked up. I was allowed to leave if I needed to,” I explain, again wondering if my words are going to trigger a memory. “If something happened that was important enough for me to leave.”
He looks at me closely then down at my hand that’s still resting on his arm. He takes it in his own. His eyes are glistening when they meet mine once again.
“You were there.”
All I can do is nod and shrug.
“It wasn’t a dream? You were really there? In my hospital room after the accident?”
“I didn’t know you remembered.”
“I thought… fuck, Bri, I thought I had imagined you being there. Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you come back?”
“I did come back. The next day after your surgery.”
He shakes his head like he’s about to argue with me, but he didn’t see me. No one did.
“You had a visitor.”
He thinks for a moment then his eyes flare. “Kennedy.”
In my head, he said a four-letter word.
“She was very… emotional.”
He squeezes my hand but doesn’t let go, bringing me the comfort I desperately seek from him. We start walking again as Rocky seems to be losing his attention span for smelling the bushes we stopped near.
“She was worried,” he says after a while.
“Yeah.” I want to say I was too but think better of it.
We continue in silence for several more blocks before arriving back at his house. He tugs me along, not releasing his grip on my hand.
As soon as Grady unhooks Rocky’s leash, he rushes over to his water dish. I excuse myself to use the restroom. He points me in the direction of a small powder room off the laundry room, and he tells me he’s going to use the one off his bedroom.
I do my business quickly and walk back into the kitchen just in time to see Grady pouring us each a glass of iced tea from a pitcher in his fridge.
Glad I made a pitstop in the restroom.
“I think we need to clear up the question rolling around in your head about Kennedy,” he tells me, settling us both into chairs on his patio.
I don’t even try to argue with him or lie that I don’t have questions. I have so many questions I can’t even begin to count them.
“I met her the summer after my sophomore year. We went on a couple dates. It didn’t feel right, but we became good friends. We remained that way. In the recent weeks, it appears she may be wanting more. It’s possible when we discussed only being friends, she may not have been as on board with the idea as I originally thought. Last night she stopped by unannounced. She overheard Drew say something that led her to believe I was in love with her. Without waiting for me to tell her otherwise, she kissed me, which, of course, you saw.” A dark single eyebrow raises above his right eye, and I feel my face flush. “If your face would have stayed planted to the window, you would’ve seen I stopped the kiss and gently let her know she misunderstood what she heard, who we were talking about.”
“Oh.”
He grins. “Oh? That’s it? You’re not going to do a little dance? Cheer? Fist pump?”
“Fist pump? Really?” I joke with a roll of my eyes. He doesn’t need to know that I already mentally did all three of those as well as high-fived myself.
“You’re so transparent,” he chuckles. “I’m not with Kennedy or anyone else, Bri. One week ago, you were on my lap and we were well on our way to doing far more than just kissing when Drew interrupted us. I wouldn’t have allowed that to happen if I was seeing someone else.”
“I’m sorry I accused you of that. I know better.”
“Well, I guess if the situation was reversed, I probably would have reacted similarly.”
Is it wrong for those words to make the butterfly farm in my stomach start to riot?
“That makes you happy?” he asks me, and I realize my mouth has broken out into a smile. One I can’t seem to wipe away.
Leaning over the table, he reaches out, the tip of his finger drawing a pattern on the palm of my hand. Eyes zero in on the tattoo I had inked into my wrist. I silently cried the entire time the gun was buzzing, inking forever into my skin.
“Does it make you mad?”
“That it makes you happy or the tattoo?”
“Both.”
“I’d never be mad at you for feeling happy about something.”
“And the tattoo?”
He lifts one shoulder. “Well, we did have a plan.”
I absorb his words, let them wrap around me like a cozy blanket. “I didn’t think we’d ever…” My words trail off as the damn tears start up again. “Ugh,” I groan, “I can’t stop crying. It’s like I broke the seal.”
We share a quiet laugh then I’m not laughing because his lips are softly brushing against mine. Once. Twice. The kiss is unexpected and over too quickly. “Next time? Wait for me, too.”
“We don’t have to worry about that.”
His eyes bounce back and forth between mine. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?” he whispers.
“There won’t be a next time.”
Grady
I walk into Cole’s house without knocking or ringing the doorbell. We’ve had an open-door policy since well… always, and luckily, I haven’t walked in on anything that would make me need to bleach my eyeballs.
I hear voices coming from the living room so head in that direction. As it turns out, my luck has run out.
“Whoa. Sorry! Sorry!” I cover my eyes. The eyes that have just gotten a good look at Mia’s ginormous left boob. Good golly—she could milk a small cow with that thing.
Mia starts laughing, while Cole says, “Dude!”
“I’m sorry, okay!? I had no idea it would be out! You knew I was coming over, why didn’t you warn me? And what the hell happened to them? They’re huge! She’s going to poke someone’s eye out with the size of her nipple!”
Mia’s cackling at this point. “Stop! Seriously, I’m gonna pee my pants, and I can’t get up.”
My hand is still covering my eye, and I use the other arm to guide me to the couch. I sit down and turn so my back is to my sister-in-law and her gigantic porn boob.
“Seriously. Not that I spent a lot of time staring at your chest, because you’re like a sister to me, but damn. When the hell did that happen?” To drive my point home, I point in her direction, then out of the corner of my eye, see Cole smirk. “And are you covered yet? I can’t un-see that as it is, but I’ll really have a hard time forgetting if I look a second time.”
“I’m covered.”
I turn around and realize she’s a big fat liar.
“You are not! I still see boob!”
“Grady, I’m feeding the baby! What do you expect? Obviously, he doesn’t need to fit the whole breast in his mouth. He only sucks on the nipple.”
“Oh my gosh stop talking about your boobs and nipples!”
> “You’re the one who started it!”
“Well you can let it go, now, yeah? Oh, and yes, I’m well aware he can’t fit your entire boob in his mouth. He would suffocate!”
“They’re huge, right?” Cole says, grinning like a moron.
“Seriously. Is that normal?” I ask, my voice incredulous. I’m not trying to stare but dang, it’s like a bad wreck on the side of the road. I can’t stop looking.
“My milk came in so, yes, they’ve gotten a little bigger.”
“Not trying to be the bearer of bad news here, but that’s not just a little bigger.”
“You say bad news, I say fun,” Cole chuckles.
“If you ever get to play with them,” I tease, pointing at Anderson who’s obviously enjoying Mia’s enlarged breasts far more than Cole will be for the foreseeable future.
Cole grumbles and Mia giggles.
I leave Mia to it, so she can have some privacy, and walk into their kitchen to grab a drink. I pull a can of soda out of the fridge and crack it open.
“I heard you had a little visitor last night.”
Cole’s leaning his hip against the counter, arms crossed over his chest.
I nod, the fizzy liquid burning down my throat.
“How’d that happen?”
I narrow my eyes.
“What do you know?”
He laughs way harder than the conversation warrants. You’d think going through medical school and residency he’d be used to no sleep. Seems he’s become delirious in fatherhood. “It’d probably be quicker for me to say what I don’t know.”
Such a funny, tired man.
“What was Kennedy doing there?”
I raise my eyebrows.
He smirks. “I might be tired, but I was awake enough to hear the gossip.”
“This family needs to get a life,” I mumble.
For as long as I can remember, our family, extended and otherwise, hasn’t done well with keeping secrets. Well, aside from keeping everything regarding Bri from me.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but she was trying to convince me to come with her to a work party tonight.”
“By sticking her tongue down your throat?”
Waiting for Her Page 16