by Lia Riley
“Evening, love.”
I almost jump from my skin at Uncle Chris’s soft voice. I turn to discover him illuminated by a laptop’s soft light. He’s in a pair of red silk pajamas. Sans wig, he resembles an elegant gentleman. The type you’d see walking a small fluffy dog, with a newspaper tucked firmly under his tweed-encased arm.
“Hey,” I say, trying to focus, struggling not to appear like the wayward girlfriend who snuck away to get her drink on.
Chris holds up a small china dish heaped with chocolate cookies. “Come, sit. Enjoy a Tim Tam.”
I’ve got no choice. To bow out would be unthinkably rude.
“Thanks.” I select a cookie and take a nibble. Holy shit, my stomach cries out. Sustenance. I force myself not to cram the entire thing in my mouth. “So what are you up to?”
“Trying to hit my daily word count, love.” He smiles. “The work of a writer with a day job means I only write at night.”
“Sounds hard.”
“My characters blather away to each other. I simply turn up and listen.”
“So you hear voices in your head?”
“And get paid to record them.” He selects another cookie with a boyish grin. “Isn’t that marvelous?”
“A pretty good gig.” Too bad my own personal brand of crazy isn’t creative or lucrative. The voice in my head is nothing but my own, droning on and on about “What if this?” or “Careful, because otherwise that may mean…” Or any other variation of the same boring fear.
“I see you went out tonight.” Chris’s tone reveals nothing; he’s a bit like his nephew in that particular mastery.
I shift in my seat, twisting a pillow tassel around my finger. “I wanted to do a little exploring.”
“Brandon told me about your tiff.” The open laptop casts a glow on Chris’s face, his expression nothing but kind concern.
“He did?” I whisper.
“Well, no. But I heard you leave and when you didn’t return for supper, questions were asked.”
“You must think I’m a brat.”
“Not at all.” Chris passes me the dish. I nab two cookies. “Brandon’s so much like his father at times.”
I choke on my bite.
“Oh my, do you need a mug of warm milk, love?”
I manage to shake my head. “No, I’ve not heard the most flattering things about Bran’s parents, that’s all.”
“My brother, Bryce, can be a right prig when he so chooses. Did Brandon discuss him with you?”
“Only a little. It doesn’t sound like they’re very close.”
“They are the type of people who see the world in absolutes. True, they tend to fall on opposite sides of the coin, but they’re two of the most hard-nosed people I’ve ever encountered. They have a devil of a time admitting wrongdoing, even when they know they are guilty of it.”
“Hmmm.” I make a noncommittal noise. It’s all fine and good for Chris to nephew bash, but I don’t want to stumble into a family drama; I’ve got enough of my own to worry about.
“I’m surprised he brought you here, after that muddle in Denmark.”
“Yes.” My foggy brain clears as a shiver spirals down my spine. Of course Chris knows about Denmark, and the girl Bran almost married when practically a zygote. “Adie Lind?”
“Such an awful muddle.” Chris settles in his chair with a faraway gaze. “And the whole mess with the pregnancy—I can’t blame Brandon for his foul mood this last year.”
The what?
“And perhaps I shouldn’t blame Adie. But Bran is my only nephew, like a son to me, truth be told, the son I never had. So I’m biased. And I do blame. I blame that girl for breaking poor Brandon’s heart.” He leans forward and pats my knee. “But it pleases me to no end to discover it’s not broken any longer.”
“The pregnancy, how hard.” I grab another cookie, even though my stomach revolts at the idea of food. I don’t want to end the conversation.
Talia Stolfi, you are hereby convicted of spying and being a very large hypocrite.
Bran isn’t even aware I know Adie Lind’s name. The only reason I’m familiar with anything regarding this mysterious story is because of that damn wedding invitation. I didn’t mean to intrude, but I did, and I can’t undo it. I deserve the icky uncertain guilt that settles into my gut.
But I can’t budge from my seat until I hear more.
“When Adie had the abortion, I almost thought the situation would resolve itself. He was so young. They both were. But poor Brandon. He took it so very hard.”
My blank face didn’t tip off Chris that this story was news to me. Holy crap, Bran got a girl pregnant and proposed marriage? My stomach, already unhappy to have been force-fed alcohol for dinner, begins to knot. Sweat slicks my palms.
I will not vomit in Uncle Chris’s parlor.
“I only met her the once, when I came up to watch her perform in Melbourne. She played so beautifully, first chair violinist and all. Still, Brandon gave up so much to follow her back to Denmark. Such a shame. I could see it from a mile away; she was a girl on her own path. There wasn’t room for another to walk beside her. She was driven, utterly single-minded, as you have to be in the hope of advancing in a career as a professional musician. Oh, I don’t doubt she cared for Bran. But he cared more. I knew that, warned him to execute caution before he quit school and followed her halfway across the world. He wouldn’t have a bar of my advice. He was smitten.”
He was smitten.
* * *
Five minutes later, I spit out my toothpaste into the narrow ceramic basin in the guest bathroom. No light seeps from under the closed door where Bran sleeps. Where I was expected to spend the night. I turn on the faucet and bend to drink directly from the tap.
Let’s review the facts as I know them for the hundredth time in the last few minutes. Bran had been in love. He’d gotten a girl pregnant. He’d asked her to marry him and she said yes. She had an abortion. They broke up. This must have been when Bran flew home, had the plane malfunction, and almost died.
These are the events he’d spent the last year trying to gain distance from.
I almost don’t blame him for not telling me. Almost but not quite.
I enter the room and ease myself into the bed. Bran’s breaths are shallow, not the deep, rhythmic inhalations of someone fast asleep. I tug the blankets around my shoulders and he rolls away, his back a fortress wall that I’ve no hope of breaching.
I’ve ripped so many shameful secrets from my belly, held them out, covered in toxic grime for his inspection, but there’s no reciprocity. I share and he holds back. This isn’t how to build a stable foundation.
The brain creates new synapses every time we make a memory, but not all remain. Some dwindle to gauzy shadows where details are less distinct, feelings stronger than actual facts. Others disappear altogether, like a Chinese lantern floating into the sky, magical for a few short-lived seconds before snuffing out.
I want to extinguish my memories from last night. Those feverish hours when I burned under his hands and foolishly trusted the moment was true. I tricked myself into believing Bran did think I was different, despite the evidence built up behind him like a scandalous mountain. Someone he could trust.
Who doesn’t want to be different? Be perfect to somebody? To matter?
Tears drench my cheeks, soak my neck to wet the pillow. But I don’t make a single sound.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Talia
It’s not yet light when I start awake. I know before opening my eyes that the bed is empty. There’s a coldness to the sheets that suggests this wasn’t a quick trip to the bathroom or to fetch a drink of water. Bran hasn’t been beside me for a long time.
“I heard you last night.” He’s in the chair across the room.
“What?” I rub my eyes, gritty with sleep and dried tears.
“I waited up—decided if you weren’t home by ten, I’d search for you. Even if you were still angry, there’s no way
I’d leave you out there a second longer. I was getting my shoes on when I heard the front door open. When you didn’t come straight up, I started to go down.”
Oh no.
“That’s when I heard Chris telling a story that wasn’t his to tell. My story.”
I haul onto my elbows. “Were you ever going to share?”
“Hell, yes, I was. Soon—today even.”
I want to believe him, but I’m not sure that I should or that I can.
“But you already knew, didn’t you?” His voice is soft, dangerously so.
“The day we first…hooked up. At your place? Bella got to me. I wanted to go home and my phone was dead, so I went in your desk to find scratch paper so I could leave you a note to meet me later.”
Bran is a statue. My only reward for divulging this story is an unfathomable stare.
“I pulled out the wedding invite from the top drawer.” I swallow. Shame surrounds me like tangled sheets. “I honestly didn’t set out to snoop. But I inadvertently did.”
“The wedding invitation,” he echoes, his voice stripped of any emotion. “My wedding.” There it was—a hint of something approaching human feeling. Even if it is mockery.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“A right fucking fairy tale that turned out to be.”
“What happened?”
“Well, you already know, Captain.” Dawn has arrived and the dim pink light contrasts with his bitter smile.
“I know facts without context.”
He watches me like I’m an exotic fish trapped in a bowl. “And you think you deserve a neat framework, a filled-in background so that everything makes sense? Let me tell you something, life isn’t a happy bedtime story.”
“You don’t need to tell me that,” I snap, heat rising up the back of my scalp. “What I did was shitty, yes. I didn’t mean to spy into your past. And I’m so sorry. I wanted to wait for you to tell me yourself. But your uncle Chris started talking to me like I knew everything and—”
“There was once a kid who had everything. Went to a posh school, had loads of friends, parents who didn’t hassle him and gave him money to buy whatever shit he fancied. And guess what? None of it mattered. He was a lonely bastard most of the time. Year twelve arrived and with it came a girl. On exchange from Denmark. She was gorgeous, had this sexy laugh and more talent in her little finger than most people have in their entire body. Everything she tried she was amazing at. She played violin, sang, was bloody brilliant at school.”
Maybe I didn’t want to hear this story after all.
“For some reason she chose me. She could have had any guy at the school. Everyone made a play. We had the year together—a single beautiful year. And I loved her. I loved her more than anyone else in my entire life. She returned home to Copenhagen and I was brokenhearted. A couple of years later she came back. She found a temporary gig with a chamber orchestra. She could have gone anywhere. New York, London, Moscow, but she came to Melbourne. Because of me. Because she couldn’t forget either.”
His words fall faster. “But soon after she arrived, the facts became obvious—whatever we’d once shared had shifted. She didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t either. But we weren’t seventeen anymore. We wanted different things. Everything fun and effortless became strained. But I didn’t want to let go. This was my first love. My big love, as far as I was concerned. All I needed to do was work harder. Try more. Adie—she was more practical; she seemed to get that what we had was gone. She pulled back.
“I should have let it go. But I kept trying. And finally she told me it wasn’t the same, and left. Here’s where the story gets predictable and boring. The condom broke our last night together and she found out she was pregnant once home in Denmark. Sure, I could have let it go. She didn’t ask anything from me. But I’m an idiot. So I called my honors supervisor two weeks before my project was set to begin and broke it off. I even raided my mom’s jewelry box. Found my grandma’s engagement ring and flew to Europe. I arrived at her front door and asked her to marry me in front of her entire fucking family. She said yes, but I heard the hesitation in her voice. And ignored it.
“Her dad owns a wind turbine business and he offered me an internship. I told myself it would take time for her to adjust, for me to change. We were young. Most everyone else our age was making plans to travel, or partying. Adie and I were looking at apartments and talking babies. She grew distant, more so each day. But I ignored it. Because all I had to do was try harder. Be better.
“One day I came home…she knew when to expect me. There was a strange bike by the front door. And she was on the floor, another guy’s dick in her mouth—the tuba player. I was trapped in a bad movie that refused to be serious. My pregnant fiancée broke off everything for a balding tuba player. After he ran off, she confessed she had an abortion. I was gutted. I’d given everything I had and it wasn’t enough. On my flight back to Australia two days later, the plane almost crashed. The universe rejected me.
“I landed a gig at the Wilderness League and found extra work tutoring environmental studies students. Started thinking about school again. But I needed to forget Adie. What her skin felt like. How she smelled. The way she looked while sleeping.” He breaks off and scrubs his face. “I figured the best way to do that was to cram as many other girls between me and her memory as possible. The more it didn’t work, the harder I fucking tried, and the lonelier I became. I thought she was ‘the one’ and that I blew my chance. And then there you were, standing above me in that little white dress. And I got it, even though I didn’t want to—at least not at first.”
“What?” I inch to the edge of the bed. “What did you get?”
He braces his elbows on his knees, rests his chin on clasped hands. His gaze has its own gravitational pull, sucks me into a dark orbit. “What if there are multiple ‘the ones’? Who knows, Talia, maybe you’re one of them.”
“Wow.” A string ties around my heart, cuts off circulation. “You’re gifted in making a girl feel special.”
“I’m not trying to feed you a line. I’m trying to tell you how my head works and where you fit into my heart. Because like it or not, you’re in here now. I’m pissed as fuck, but even still all I want to do is kiss you.”
I duck my head. “That’s lust.”
“Nah, I’m an expert in that area by now.” His smile’s wry. “This is more than wanting to get in your pants, trust me.”
“You’re not exactly charming me here.”
“I’m not that kind of guy.” He gets out of the chair and sits next to me. The mattress sinks under his weight, tipping me toward him. “I don’t want to waste time saying things that I think you’ll like. Because those might be the wrong things. And if you don’t want me for me, I’d rather know straight off.”
He glares, like he dares me to reject him. Like he wants me to, like maybe if I do it will be a relief. I know what he means. It’s easier not to feel. To merely exist. To survive. But eventually it gets harder to breathe. To choke back the desperate longing to matter, to be noticed, to be important to somebody, to be alive.
To be perfect for someone.
Without a conscious thought, my hand rises, rests on the side of his cheek, in the way I know he loves. “You matter, Bran.”
He relaxes into my palm and closes his eyes. “Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s true. We’re two screwed up people and still, for some reason when we are together, we’re okay.”
“I know, Talia. This I know.”
“I should have told you that I found the invitation. I’m sorry to have snooped in your desk, even if it was an accident.”
“And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Adie. What happened. It’s just—I didn’t want her here, between us.”
“She’s not.” I give him nothing but a light peck, but still he moans, tangling his fingers into my hair and easing me back against the unmade bed.
“Talia, Talia, Talia,” he whispers my name between i
ncreasingly urgent kisses. “What have I ever done right to deserve you?”
There is a loud click from the clock radio and the alarm goes off, blasting the AC/DC song “You Shook Me All Night Long.”
“Bloody hell.” Bran throws himself at the radio. “How do you turn this thing off?”
I clap my hand over my mouth and crack up.
“Oh, you’re a right help.” He yanks the plug from the wall and the song cuts.
I grab a pillow and shove it over my head, convulsing.
“Get over here, troublemaker,” Bran growls, seizing my hips and yanking me down. Our clothes are off in record time.
I pull back. “Where are the condoms?”
“There’s one in my wallet,” he says, closing his eyes tight as if he’s in pain.
I move fast and within seconds I’m sliding the latex over his length, which, swear to God, looks like it’s hardened even longer.
I straddle him and he curses under his breath. The details are hazy, but there’s a rush of incoherent language, mostly my name. I rub myself over his shaft. I’m so wet he enters effortlessly.
I love this. Riding him—being in control. He likes it, too, from the rapid pulse in his bowed throat, thrusting his hips to meet me stroke for stroke. Our rhythm grows in force and it’s good, really good, but I don’t think I’m going to come. That’s okay; I wanted to do this for other reasons, show myself I could take charge. My sexual inexperience doesn’t have to be an ongoing liability.
“I’m close,” Bran growls.
“Come.” It’s the only word I can muster.
“Not without you. Grind on me.”
“I am.”
He grabs my ass. “Use my body.”
“Isn’t that what I’m doing?” Hesitation and self-consciousness creep in. I am making this up as I go along. Maybe what feels super sexy and experienced to me looks like one lame amateur hour as far as Bran is concerned.
“Go for it.”