I let my mind drift, thinking about that dream and exactly how I’d woken up.
Jason was giving me a weird look, and I figured I should probably stop thinking about that particular Chris dream period. I would save it for later. When I was alone. Because after this dinner? I was definitely going to be alone. There was no way I was going on a second date with Jason.
Regardless of how perfect his teeth and jaw were.
We ordered our food and talked pleasantries about the weather and our favorite TV shows.
We talked about families, and how our parents and grandparents knew each other from the country club. I just nodded. I figured if he wanted to talk about the country club set, he would probably mention this date to his parents or his grandparents and then those people would speak to my family. And I really did not want to deal with that. I loved my family. Seriously adored them. But, sometimes, they were just a little too much for me. Hence why I worked at a nonprofit and hung out at a bar downtown with my friends rather than at the country club where Jason apparently spent most of his time.
We finished our food, and I declined an offer to taste the lamb. He, however, did not decline to try my pasta.
Well, who was eating pasta and cream sauce now? Huh, Jason?
We were just about to order dessert, or at least he was because I wasn’t about to touch dessert right then, when his phone buzzed again, and he cursed.
My brows rose, not at the curse but the way he said it. I cursed all the time, but he had very pleasantly not done so. As if this were maybe a façade. Or perhaps I was just looking too much into it.
“Is there something wrong?”
He shook his head and then nodded. Well, that wasn’t confusing at all.
“I hate to do this, but I have to go.”
I blinked. “Oh?” This couldn’t be one of those emergency calls or texts, could it? The same type my friend Violet had sent to me earlier to see if I needed to get out of the date? Emergency calls didn’t usually come after dinner had been served.
“Yeah, something with work.” He cleared his throat and wiped his mouth with his linen napkin. “I’ll leave some cash on the table for my half, and we’ll call it a day?”
Oh. This was one of those dates.
“You know, the whole women’s liberation thing. Don’t want you to feel like I have to take care of you or anything.” And then he winked. Again. I officially hated winking.
“It’s no problem, Jason.” I smiled, knowing it surely didn’t reach my eyes this time. And then I patted the side of the table as if I were patting the check that hadn’t arrived. “How about I take care of this one?”
“That sounds great.” He grinned, pulling on his coat. “Maybe I’ll take care of the next one?”
I didn’t say anything, I just smiled.
He leaned over, kissed my cheek, and then was off doing a job I didn’t actually know anything about.
I blinked and then carefully took my linen napkin and wiped my cheek.
Well. Looked like I just paid for a very expensive dinner at a place that wasn’t my favorite, but at least the date was over. Thank God.
The waitress came, frowning just slightly before she gave me that placid smile again.
“Is there anything else I can get you?” I knew there were more questions in those eyes of hers, but she didn’t ask them. This was a nice place, after all.
“I would love a cup of tea. Do you mind taking the plates away?”
“Of course, miss.” She named off a few tea types, and I ordered the chamomile, needing something to settle my nerves. It was either that or a shot of whiskey.
I sat alone at the table, something I was definitely used to. After Moyer, I had learned how to eat alone at restaurants. Learned how to ignore the curious looks of people wondering why I was alone and not with another person. It didn’t bother me anymore, and oddly enough, being left in the middle of a date really didn’t bother me either.
“Harmony?”
I had just taken a sip of my newly arrived tea when I heard his voice.
His.
Brendon.
“Brendon?”
“Hey, there. I was heading to the bar to eat rather than at a table since it’s busy tonight.”
He smiled at me. This time, I smiled back.
Brendon was my friend, and he didn’t wink unless something was actually funny.
“Well, why don’t you join me?” I said, gesturing towards the other side of the table.
He frowned and looked over his shoulder. “Are you sure? Are you waiting for someone?”
I shook my head. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll hear about it eventually, but my date is officially over.”
Something flashed across his eyes, and I wondered what it was.
“Do I need to hurt someone for you?”
That made me laugh. “No, but why don’t you eat something, and maybe I’ll get some dessert.” With extra whipped cream, though I didn’t say that.
“Are you sure?”
I nodded. “Don’t sit at the bar, share my table. Okay?”
He sat down, and the waitress whisked away Jason’s water glass and put down a glass for Brendon. He quickly ordered what he wanted, having apparently memorized the menu much like I had, and soon we were sitting there, me drinking tea, him drinking a glass of red wine, and both of us just talking.
When I looked at Brendon, I couldn’t help but think of Moyer, but not in the way most people might think.
You know that part of the movie Practical Magic when you’re screaming at the husband to move out of the way because you know what’s coming since the curse hadn’t been broken? When you’re so worried about the bikes that you don’t see the truck coming?
I felt as though I lived through that, even though I wasn’t there and I’m not a witch.
Brendon was there, though.
He and Moyer worked together for a few years after they got out of college, and they had become good friends. They’d gone out to lunch to meet me since I could spare the time from work and were running late.
So, it was Brendon who stood on the corner and watched my husband die.
Witnesses would tell my family, who would later tell me, that Brendon had reached out for Moyer. He’d called his name as if trying to will my husband not to take that final step.
But Moyer hadn’t heard. No, he had been too focused on answering my call rather than listening to his friend as he called out to him. Moyer hadn’t chosen to listen, or maybe he just hadn’t had the time. He hadn’t heard.
After all, the split-second decisions where one could make the wrong choice or the right one was out of our hands when the true things mattered. The ones where there isn’t a choice at all.
The driver of the delivery truck hadn’t seen the red light. He hadn’t seen my husband in the crosswalk. He hadn’t been tired, hadn’t been drunk, but he had been confused in the series of one-way streets as he got delayed in his delivery.
He’d missed the light changing from green to yellow to red at the precise wrong moment.
And Brendon had looked at his shoe—at least that’s what the others told me later. He’d looked down because he had stepped in gum or something, and he’d hesitated for a brief moment before going out to the crosswalk.
The one that had signaled them to move. My husband had moved. He had walked. There was no countdown, no red hand telling him to stop. Instead, there was a man in white, telling him to go.
And I had called at the precise right moment…or was it the wrong one?
I hadn’t heard my husband die. The phone had connected, but I hadn’t heard him say hello. He hadn’t heard me say hello either. All I knew was that the call connected quickly, and then nothing. There were no sirens, no sounds of the truck. There were no traffic sounds or screaming.
And like in Practical Magic, I wasn’t there.
Nor was I searching for the black beetle.
My husband had died because of an accident. In a quick—
hopefully painless—way. At least, that’s what the doctors told me.
Brendon had been the one to see it all. And it had changed everything. Not just for me, but also for him. Months passed where I didn’t speak to Brendon. He’d been Moyer’s friend, and mine too in a way. But we had drifted. And maybe that was for a reason.
Maybe it was because of him.
Maybe it was because of me.
Maybe Brendon saw Moyer when he looked at me. I didn’t know. After all, when my guards were down like they were tonight, I saw my husband in Brendon, as well.
We’d drifted so far apart that seeing him now was a bit jarring, but it shouldn’t have been. When our friend Allison died, the Connolly brothers came back into my life. Just as they were brought back into the lives of my friends.
But now Brendon was here in front of me, and there were no ghosts in the room.
Only in my heart.
And maybe his.
Chapter Two
Brendon
I ran from the sound, but my legs weren’t moving fast enough. It was like no matter what I did, something kept pulling me back, screaming at me. Yet it was a whisper at the same time. I tried to shout, attempted to call for help, but it was like my mouth was full of wet paper.
I froze where I was, even though I knew I should run, and tried to pull the obstruction out, but it just kept coming back, as if my mouth, my throat, and my lungs were full of it.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t find a way to not have whatever it was in my mouth.
I couldn’t call for help, couldn’t do anything.
And then, suddenly, I could taste again, I could breathe. So I moved my feet, only I couldn’t keep them on the ground, it was like I was floating in midair just slightly, enough so I couldn’t move forward but I also wasn’t moving up.
I was just in stasis, floating as if I were waiting for something.
The darkness came, and I could feel its spindly claws wrapping around my ankle, pulling me closer to it. It whispered my name, a soft caress that went straight to my heart, twisting it into pulp. Tears ran down my face, and I tried to call out again, but there were no words, was no breath.
I kicked out and was somehow able to lift a little higher away from the darkness. I tried to move my arms and my legs. I didn’t know how to fly. But I knew how to swim. Maybe if I could just breaststroke through the air as if I were underwater, I could get away from the darkness.
But it kept coming after me.
It kept screaming my name, screaming so loudly that it filled my ears and ended in a whisper. An echo.
“Brendon.”
A scrape of nails.
“Brendon.”
A breath of air on the back of my neck.
And then it was above me, waiting. It touched my neck, and I screamed.
I opened my eyes, and I knew that I was finally awake. I wiped my brow, sweat coating my skin as I let out a sigh.
One day, I would stop having these dreams, but considering that I was almost thirty, I figured it wouldn’t be anytime soon. It wasn’t even like they were full anxiety dreams. Those always stressed me out.
When I was away from the bar, from my family, I’d always had dreams where I couldn’t wait tables fast enough or couldn’t get enough beer into glasses for all of my foster father’s customers.
It was like I was suddenly right back in my old place, and everyone was saying that I had missed a shift but that I still had to work for the rest of the week. Or I was back in school or college and I hadn’t turned in a paper, even though I’d thought I finished everything on time. Then there were those anxiety dreams where I had apparently missed a class for the whole semester and had to take a final that I wasn’t prepared for.
All of those stress dreams were something I was used to. Something I could wake up from and wonder why I was so stressed out. But these dreams weren’t anxiety dreams. It was like they were memories. Memories of a time I’d rather forget. But, apparently, my mind was never going to let me forget exactly what had happened when I was younger.
The time before Jack, before Rose, before I met my brothers and found a family.
No, those dreams would just keep creeping in on me until I felt as if I had nothing left to give, nothing left to take.
I turned over and looked at my phone, squinting at the glare. Apparently, during an update, I had taken off the filter that usually helps with the brightness. I cursed myself. It was four-thirty in the morning. Too late for anything to be really happening, and too early for me to be up.
But there was no way I could go back to sleep. At least it wasn’t three-thirty like it usually was. For some reason, between three and three-thirty in the morning was when I normally had my nightmares. As if that were the time when I knew I should be awake and annoyed with myself. It was around that time that I could usually last about an hour, tossing and turning, maybe even getting up to go pee. But at four-thirty? Considering that my alarm would go off in about an hour, I didn’t really know if I had that in me. I turned on my side again and frowned. Maybe I should just get up. I knew I had enough work to do. I was working two jobs, even though I had told myself I would only stick to one. But, apparently, old me hadn’t changed.
At least not enough.
When I was in high school, I had worked two jobs. At Jack and Rose’s bar, and at a restaurant down the street. I had wanted to save money for college even though Jack and Rose had said they would cover it. It was hard to rely on people, even the ones who were the best people in the entire world.
Even those who had never once failed me or let me down.
I’d needed a backup plan.
I had needed a way to escape just in case I couldn’t rely on anyone.
It didn’t matter that I loved Jack and Rose. That they were my parents. They had adopted me, just like they’d taken in Cameron and Aiden. I loved my family, but I was so afraid that everything was going to fall apart again that I always had one foot out the door.
Maybe they had known that. Perhaps that’s why they’d held me so close and didn’t give me space. Maybe that was why it was so easy to walk away when Cameron did.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, remembering that time, recalling the fact that my go-bag was still in my closet.
I let out a rough breath. I was almost thirty years old, and I still had a go-bag packed just in case I had to leave.
Nothing was chasing me, no one was coming after me anymore. I had no ties to the places I used to live before Jack and Rose found me. No connections to the world that had tried to beat me down and take everything from me.
The world that had beaten me down and taken too much from me.
When I lived in Jack and Rose’s house before I moved out to go to college, I’d always had a go-bag. One that was filled with clothes, money, things I could use on the road, while on the run.
I wasn’t an international thief or someone who actually needed a go-bag, but when I was injured, I had put everything I had into a bag and held it close to me. I’d slept with it when I was on the streets, even when I had been in different foster homes before I landed on Jack and Rose’s doorstep.
Hell, I had slept with it for far longer than I cared to admit when I was in their house. Aiden and Cameron never once made fun of me for it. They had their own issues, and they just looked at me and shrugged and then went about their business. It really wasn’t until I put that go-bag in the closet rather than in my bed that I felt like maybe there could be a connection between the twins and me.
And I still had a go-bag in my closet. It just kept me safe, helped me with my anxiety. Although with the dreams I’d been having lately, maybe my anxiety was still a little off the charts.
But I couldn’t really help it. Between my job and saving Jack’s bar, I sort of felt like I was burning the candle at both ends.
It also didn’t help that my family was finally starting to come back together after we had fallen apart.
I looked over at the clock and
realized that twenty minutes had passed. I didn’t think that I was going back to sleep. It seemed that today would be at least a four-cup coffee day. Usually, I could last on two—sometimes three. But today? Totally four. Maybe even five if I lived dangerously.
I slid out of bed and turned off my alarm. Then I went to pee and brush my teeth and take a shower. I would have to take another one later, but I really wanted to wash off the cold sweat that had added a filmy layer to my skin thanks to the nightmare.
I hadn’t had that particular nightmare in a while, the one that sort of mixed everything together. I wasn’t really happy about it.
I had no idea what had triggered it, other than the fact that, apparently, there was a fourth Connolly brother.
I let the lukewarm water slide over me, not wanting to go too hot or too cold this morning since my skin felt a little irritated from the dream.
When Cameron had left us to go see his birth mom, it had created a rift in the family.
He’d still talked to my parents, mostly because he couldn’t really not talk to Jack and Rose. They were family. But he had broken ties with both Aiden and me because we hadn’t been there when he needed us. Aiden had felt betrayed or some shit because he assumed that Cameron had chosen their mom over him, the same woman who’d left them behind and preferred drugs and men over her children. And so, I had stayed behind too. Hadn’t answered Cameron’s calls for a while because I was on Aiden’s side. I had thought my brother left me, too.
My go-bag had been filled to the brim at that point, even though we were out of college and starting our lives in the adult world of jobs and mortgages.
But now Dillon was here, Cameron was back, and we were a family again. Rose had died a few years ago, and Cameron had come home for the funeral, but he hadn’t brought Dillon then. He hadn’t even really spoken to us, just grieved with Jack and then left. I hadn’t understood it then, but Cameron had been dealing with his own hell when it came to Dillon and trying to raise him after finally losing their mother when she overdosed.
And then Cameron had come back when Jack died, and the bar had been left to the three of us.
Shouldn't Have You Page 2