by Dana Mason
“We just don’t want either of you to get hurt again.”
Brian sat down, already exhausted with the conversation. “You guys are over-thinking this.” He lay back, his eyes resting on the ceiling. “Melissa is just trying to help. This isn’t a relationship forming. She’s engaged, and I love my wife. Okay?”
Nora held her hands out. “We don’t doubt your love for Julie, but knowing your history with Melissa, we want you to be careful.” She glanced at his pop and said, “We’re worried about you both.”
Brian rubbed his face with both hands. Why was he having this conversation? Seriously? What the hell? He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, looking between his mother and father. “I will not do anything to disrespect the memory of my wife, and I will not do anything to hurt Melissa again.”
Nora perched herself on the edge of her chair. “Brian—”
“Ma—“
She pointed her finger at him. “Don’t you interrupt me, Brian Martin! I have something to say to you, and I want you to listen.”
He dropped his eyes to the floor. “I’m listening.”
“I understand. We,” she emphasized, looking at his pop before looking back at him, “understand how important both of these women are to you. It hasn’t been so long that we don’t remember how much you were hurt by . . . things. We just don’t want you to enter into another friendship with Melissa blindly. We don’t want to see either of you get hurt. Emotions are high right now, you’re not thinking clearly, and I just don’t want you to do something you’ll regret later.”
Brian listened, and he heard her—he got it—and now he wanted a fucking drink. “Thank you. I get what you’re saying, and I appreciate your concern. I promise to tread carefully with Melissa.”
“Then why is she wearing your clothes, Brian?” Greg asked.
Brian looked up at his father. “What? Are you kidding me? You think I’m sleeping with Melissa?” He pointed over his shoulder. “You have such a low opinion of me—of her—that you think we hopped in the sack before Julie’s even cold?”
“No! Brian!” Nora said, laying a hand over her mouth. “We’re just concerned.”
Brian slapped his knees with his hands and vaulted off the couch, completely done with this conversation. “Well, thanks for your concern. It’s fine. We’re fine. I need to go help Cody.”
“Hey.” Melissa walked back into the bedroom with Erin. “You okay?”
Erin nodded into Melissa’s hug. “This is my fault. I should’ve told Daddy, but I don’t want him to hate me.”
“None of this is your fault. Your mother was a grown woman who made her own decisions. You can’t blame yourself for her mistakes.” Melissa pulled away to meet Erin’s eye. “He certainly will not hate you, but you need to tell him. I don’t like keeping this secret from him.”
“Are you and my dad getting back together?”
“What? No!” Melissa wanted to bite her tongue at the too quick and too rude response. “Honey, your dad and I are just friends. He loves your mother. Not me.”
“He shouldn’t after what she did.”
“One mistake doesn’t take away love, Erin. Lots of people make mistakes.”
“Like Daddy did when he slept with my mom the first time . . . when he should have married you?”
Melissa stared at her, frozen with shock. “Erin, how do you know that?” Erin lowered her eyes, not answering the question. “Did your mom tell you that?”
“No.”
“How . . . how do you know?”
“When I saw you in my Dad’s clothes, I thought maybe you two were together.”
“Oh.” Melissa looked down at her baggy clothes. “No, I helped him clean up, and my clothes weren’t fit for wearing after that, so he loaned me some. We’re not together, just friends.”
“My mom said, before you went away to college, she and you and Dad were all best friends.”
“That’s true.” Melissa nodded, and her eyes welled up with tears. “I loved your mother very much, Erin.”
“She told me you and Auntie Ali, Uncle Mark, and she and Daddy were all friends in school.”
“We were always together.” Melissa stood to fold the stack of clothes Erin had piled on the bed, trying not to give in to her tears. She dropped the jeans in the duffle bag and said, “How are you doing in school, Erin. Is Mr. Jeffries bothering you?”
“No. Coach has stayed away from me. I think he’s scared of Daddy.”
“Good, he should be. Why do you call him Coach?”
“He was my water polo coach last year.”
“Do you think that’s how he met your mom?”
Erin nodded. “She used to run all the sports fundraisers at the school, and they worked together on it.”
“Do you want me to help you talk to Brian about your mom and Coach Jeffries?”
Her brows came together. “But not today, please.”
“We can give it another couple of days.”
Chapter Sixteen
When they arrived back at Brian’s house, Melissa helped Brian find his way around the kitchen and started cooking a big pot of soup. As the soup simmered, she started a broccoli casserole. “Your kids will eat this stuff, right?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah, they eat pretty much anything, except Cody hates any kind of seafood.”
“Seafood. Okay, no fish, I can handle that.”
When she had enough food prepared to get them through the rest of the week, she gathered her still-wet clothes and got ready to leave.
“You’re leaving?” Brian and Erin said at the same time.
“Yes, but I’ll come check on you guys tomorrow.”
“Why don’t you stay?” Erin asked earnestly. “You can sleep on my bed. I’ll take the couch.”
“No, babe, you just got home. I’m sure you want to sleep in your own bed.” Melissa looked up at Brian. “And I’m sure you guys don’t want me in your way,” she said with a heavy heart.
“It’s okay . . . if you want to stay,” Brian said, his eyes darting between her and Erin. “And you’re not in the way. Thank you for all your help.”
“C’mon, Melissa,” Erin begged.
“I don’t have any clothes.” She didn’t want to leave them, but she needed to call Chase and Ali. “How about I pick you and Cody up in the morning and take you to school. That way, Brian can sleep in.”
“Will you come here when we get home?” Erin asked.
“How about I pick you up and bring you home after school.”
“You can stay for dinner, since you made it,” Brian said.
She nodded. “We’ll see what happens.”
“That’s a no,” Erin said, her face downcast.
“No, it’s not a no.”
“Then it’s a yes!” Erin did a little pirouette and hugged Melissa goodbye. “See you in the morning?”
Melissa chuckled. “Okay, see you in the morning.”
Brian walked her out after she said a tearful goodbye to Cody. The last couple of days had been emotionally draining. Her nerves were fried and her heart so heavy, it hurt to breathe. If she felt this bad, she wondered how he was holding up.
When she stopped in front of her car, Brian pulled her into a tight embrace. For a few minutes, they didn’t speak. Melissa felt his chest move up and down, and she wondered if he was crying. She stroked the back of his head, wishing she’d taken them up on the offer to stay, but she was nearing her breaking point.
“If you need me, Bri, I can stay. I just thought . . .”
He shook his head, but still didn’t speak.
After another minute, he said, “Thank you. In a million years, I’ll never be able to make this up to you.” His heavy voice made Melissa feel bad for needing to get away from him. Holding him again felt good, and regardless of how tired she was, being the one to help his family through this seemed right to her. And, no, that wouldn’t make sense to the outside world, but she didn’t care.
Brian nodded but still didn’t let go. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you, and I don’t deserve kindness from you. These kids are everything to me, and knowing you care about them too means the world to me, especially after what I’ve done to you in the past.”
“Stop,” Melissa said, feeling the heaviness of his words and trying not to choke up. She couldn’t afford to lose control now, not when she was so raw and drained.
“I’m sorry for being mean to you and pushing you into the shower this morning.”
She tried to lean out of his grip, but he wouldn’t loosen his hold. “It’s okay, Brian.”
“You’re the only person who ever understood me. My whole life, you’re the only person who ever thought I was important.”
Melissa pulled back, forcing him to let her go now. She stared into his face, hardly able to see him in the darkness. “That is not true.” She reached up and cupped his cheek, brushing the hair off his face. “Those kids in there think you’re very important.”
“It’s not the same.” He took a step back, tucking his hands in his pockets.
“Why isn’t it the same?”
“They think I’m important because I’m Dad. You think I’m important just because I’m Brian.” He dropped his eyes to her feet and said, “That’s a big difference.”
Melissa held her breath to keep from sobbing. She wanted to punch him. She wanted to connect fist to face several times to get her frustrations out. After everything that had happened over the years, after staying away and living her life without him, moving on, deciding to marry Chase, everything she’d done to push him out of her head and out of her heart, how was it he still held the power to hurt her without even trying?
“I need to go,” she said breathlessly. She rushed to the other side of the car and clicked the locks. Brian caught her arm, but she jerked away. “Don’t touch me.” She almost shrieked it as she yanked the car door open and put it between them.
He held his hand up palm out. “Wait, Lis, wait a minute—”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll be here in the morning to get the kids.” She slid into the car, reaching for the door, but he grabbed it before she could slam it closed.
“Damn it! Give me a minute, will you.”
Melissa stared ahead and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Julie was pregnant! Okay!”
Melissa jerked her head toward him and met his eyes under the dim interior light of the car. “What?”
He squatted next to the open door. “Julie and I went out one night after you left for college. It was an innocent night out. We both wanted to drink ourselves numb, and we succeeded to the point of ending up in bed together. It was the first and only time—or at least, it should have been.” He took a deep breath and focused his eyes on the ground, obviously trying to avoid looking at her. “A few weeks later, she told me she was pregnant. She was scared to death, just freaking out. I thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown.” He went silent for a moment then said, “Her parents were dead, and she didn’t have anyone but me.”
As much as she tried, Melissa couldn’t clear her mind enough to find an appropriate response, so she went with the first thing that popped into her head. “You’re such a liar.”
“No, I’m not lying. I asked Julie to marry me. I wasn’t in love with her, but I did love her. She was one of my best friends, and I had gotten her in trouble. I wouldn’t do anything different if it happened today. I love my kids, and I would never begrudge their existence by saying I wish I’d done something different.”
Melissa held her breath, fighting the rapidly flowing tears as she did the math in her head. “Erin’s birthday is in November, which means Julie would have gotten pregnant in February.”
“Lis, she had a miscarriage a month after our wedding. It was too much stress for her. She actually got pregnant again the following March. Erin was due December but was born a few weeks early.” He shifted uncomfortably. “The point is, I didn’t change my mind about you . . . about us.”
“You didn’t even break up with me. For years, I’ve believed . . .”
Brian finally looked up at her. “What? What did you believe?”
She closed her eyes, wishing she had the power to shrink into a hole and hide. The ache she felt for all those years, always wondering why, always questioning what she’d done wrong. Blaming herself for picking a school in New York instead of California.
“Lis?”
She opened her eyes. “Let me go. I need to go home.”
“We should talk about this.”
She glared at him. “I don’t want to talk.” After strapping on her seatbelt, she reached for the door handle. “Get out of the way, Brian.”
Brian jumped back as she pulled the door closed and sped away. She glanced in the mirror to find him still standing there, staring at her as she turned off of his street.
Melissa turned the corner and pulled the car over before covering her face with her hands, inhaling great heaving breaths. She didn’t understand how this had slipped past her. Seventeen years and she never imagined that Julie had been pregnant before they got married. Melissa had convinced herself she was just a fool in love and thought her overwhelming feelings for him were unrealistic. But then again, she knew he had loved her just as much as she loved him.
They were made for each other, built from the same mold. Put on this earth for each other, she felt it deeply, which is why it’d been so hard for her to accept what had happened. Losing him nearly killed her. She’d never understood it, and not knowing what had gone wrong had pushed her into a deep depression. Knowing the truth now . . . she shook her head in disgust. It shouldn’t have played out the way it did. They should have talked. Brian should have called and told her. Melissa should have called him, forced him to break up with her himself, but what was the point? At the time, all she could think about was that he’d gotten married. It wasn’t like he was seeing someone else—he’d freaking married Julie. What could she have done, come home and tried to break up a marriage? She just couldn’t compete with wedding vows. He was lost to her and she couldn’t force herself to call him, to hear him say he didn’t love her.
When her cell phone rang, she screamed, “Leave me alone!” then pounded the steering wheel. She reached over and grabbed it from her purse. “Hello!”
“What the hell is going on?”
“Nothing, Ali,” Melissa said abruptly.
“Liar.”
“I can’t. I just can’t now, Al,” Melissa said, holding her breath.
“Melissa . . . do you want me to come over?”
“I’m not home.”
“You’re still at Brian’s?”
“I just left. I’m in the car.”
“You can’t drive like this. Pull over.”
“I already did, okay? God. I’m around the corner from Brian’s.”
“I’m going to call him so he can come get you.”
“No! Don’t you dare! I barely made it out of there with my sanity.” She inhaled again and counted as she exhaled. “I’m going home. I’m tired, and I need to call Chase. I haven’t talked to him in days.”
“Why don’t you come here?”
“No, I want to crawl into bed and sleep for a few decades.”
“Okay, text me when you get home so I know you made it. I love you.”
Melissa rested her head on the steering wheel and mumbled, “I love you, too.”
When Melissa pulled into the parking lot of her building, she sighed as the lights came to life. “Thank God for Mark,” she whispered to herself. No more stumbling around in the dark, worried about monsters jumping out at her.
When she climbed out of the driver’s seat, she looked over to see Chase’s car parked a few spots down from her. She squinted to see inside, but the car was empty. When she turned, he was standing right beside her. She jumped back and shrieked, “Agh!
Oh my God, Chase!”
“It’s just me.” He held his hands out to settle her.
“Chase,” she breathed and grabbed him tight around the neck. “You scared me.”
“Sorry, sweetheart, but you scared me, too. I haven’t been able to get in touch with you for two days.”
“Oh, I’ve missed you,” she whined, squeezing him tighter and breathing a sigh of relief. It scared her how much she needed to feel his arms around her at that moment.
“I couldn’t get inside, so I waited, hoping you’d show up.”
“I’m sorry you had to wait outside. I’ll give you a key so you can let yourself in next time.”
Chase pulled away to look at her. “What the hell are you wearing?” He looked into her eyes and frowned. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look awful.”
“I don’t care. I’m just so glad you’re here.”
“He took a step back and looked at her clothes again. You’re wearing men’s clothes. Melissa . . . where have you been?”
“They’re Brian’s. I’ve been over there.”
“Brian’s?”
“Yes, Chase, his wife was killed in a car accident. You know this.”
“That was weeks ago, and that doesn’t explain why you’re wearing his clothes.”
“I helped him get the house in order so he could bring the kids home. He needed someone there, Chase.”
“Why you? It doesn’t seem like that should be your responsibility.”
“He’s my friend,” she said. “Is this the end of the inquisition? Can we go inside now?”
He gestured toward the door. “Fine.”
When Melissa stepped inside her apartment, she clicked on the lamp next to the door and turned to face him. The frown and his posture were so disheartening. She didn’t want to fight with him. “I don’t understand why you’re upset with me.”
“You’re wearing another man’s clothes, Melissa.” He said her name so formally, it made her angry.
“I thought you trusted me.”
“You’re making it hard.”
Her face heated in anger. “I’ve done nothing to make you doubt me—ever.”