Red (A Brett MacLean Duet)

by J. M. Walker

  The only time Brett contacted me directly was when he sent me an email with an appointment date and time to meet with our lawyer. But first, we were meeting with Matteo. I didn’t want to. Matteo never judged but it still didn’t make me feel better.

  It was almost half past three in the afternoon and our appointment had been at three but I was scared. I was sitting in my car, white-knuckling the shit out of the steering wheel and hoping for the best that no one would notice that I was missing.

  I scoffed. Who was I kidding? Brett would notice. He noticed everything.

  Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to leave my car. I had to do this. I had to be strong. Even if it was just for my kids, I needed to do something other than going day to day like a damn zombie.

  Heading into the large building, a cold draft washed over me. I hugged myself, rubbing my hands up and down my bare arms. It was a warm summer day but the goose bumps spreading on my skin would indicate differently.

  “Evvie.”

  I stopped suddenly, my gaze landing on Matteo. Brett stood beside him, his dark eyes filled with so many questions like where the hell I had been for the past half hour.

  I ignored them and headed into Matteo’s office. Sitting at the end of the couch, I crossed my legs at the knee and waited.

  “How are you doing, Evvie?” Matteo asked, sitting in the chair across from the couch.

  I shrugged, swallowing past the hard lump in my throat.

  “Evvie,” Matteo said gently.

  “Don’t.” I pointed at him. “And you don’t either,” I said, pointing at my husband.

  Brett raised an eyebrow, lowering himself onto the seat at the other end of the couch. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You don’t have to. I haven’t seen you in a damn month, Brett. You’ve made no contact so don’t judge me for being late.” I crossed my arms under my chest, shaking my foot with the anxiety rushing through me.

  “You haven’t contacted me either,” Brett said, his voice laced with accusation.

  A laugh escaped me. “Wow. So that’s what this has come to, huh?” I stood.

  “Sit. Down,” Brett barked, his rough demand sliding over me.

  I sat before I knew what I was doing. Shit .

  “Okay.” Matteo leaned forward. “We need to work—”

  My gaze snapped to his.

  He raised an eyebrow. “You challenging me now, little girl? I don’t care if you started off as a patient. And I don’t give a fuck if you’re now family. I’ll unleash your husband on you if you aren’t careful.”

  I shivered.

  Stupid men and their stupid dominating ways.

  “Now, tell me, Brett.” Matteo’s gaze slowly slid away from mine. “Have you been in contact with Claire’s mother?”

  “Yes.”

  My head whipped around. “You have?”

  “Roxane finally called me. She used the excuse that she had been unwell but if she’s anything like her daughter, she lied.” Brett pinched the bridge of his nose which I had come to learn that he did that whenever he was stressed. Everything inside of me told me to reach out to him. To touch him. To at least hold his hand. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  “What did she say?” I asked, turning toward him.

  “She wants to set up a meeting with…” He cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

  “That’s a good start,” Matteo said, jotting down notes in his notepad. It made me wonder after all of these years, what those notes actually said or if he was just doodling this whole time. I wanted to ask but he wasn’t a man to joke with when it came to his profession.

  He caught my gaze. “Something on your mind?”

  Always . “No.”

  “You’re lying.” He pointed his pen at me. “Look at Brett and tell him what you’re thinking.”

  “I…” My cheeks burned.

  “Look at him,” Matteo insisted.

  My eyes slid to my husband.

  “Now tell him.”

  “I was wondering if Matteo actually wrote notes about us or just doodled in his notepad for all of these years.” I shrugged. “That’s what I was thinking,” I told Matteo.

  The corners of his mouth twitched. “Now tell your husband what else you’re thinking.”

  I took a breath. “I’m thinking that I love you.” I looked up at Brett. “I don’t want our marriage to end but I also don’t know how to move it forward either. You need to give me time.”

  “I haven’t lived at home for more than a fucking month, Evvie. I’ve been giving you time.” His eyes were cold as they peered right into my soul.

  “Yeah and you haven’t contacted me either.”

  “And say what?” he snapped. “What would you like me to say to you?”

  Tears burned the back of my eyes but I refused to cry. Not for him. Not for anyone. Never again, would I cry over this man sitting in front of me. Although I said the words in my head, I knew they weren’t true. I was strong but even warriors cracked.

  “I want you to say that you’re willing to fight for me. For us. I want what we had months ago. I want you to show me that you’re in this for the long run. I want us back.” A heavy weight lifted some as each sentence left my mouth.

  “I’m doing that. All of it.”

  “Are you?” I stood from the couch. “Are you really? If you wanted us to work that bad, you would have burnt this fucking world down to find Roxane and get answers. The Brett I fell in love with would have.”

  “Evvie,” he murmured.

  “No.” I headed to the door. “You just proved me right.”

  At that point, after everything, I did the only thing that felt familiar.

  I ran.

  ***

  (Brett)

  “I lost my wife,” I said, dropping my head in my hands. She was right. Everything Evvie said was right. I should have fought harder. I should have forced Roxane to give me the information about Claire’s whereabouts and my…daughter.

  “Brett.” Matteo sat on the couch beside me, placing a gentle but firm hand on my shoulder. “She loves you.”

  My head snapped up. “Is love enough? Tell me that, Matteo. Of all of your years of schooling, is love enough?”

  He looked away. “That’s a question I can’t answer.”

  “Fuck.” I gripped my hair, ripping some strands free. “What am I going to do?”

  “Have you met with your lawyer?”

  “We have an appointment. I put the paperwork in to get a blood test but Roxane needs to sign off on it because her granddaughter is in her care.” I couldn’t even call the girl mine. Until I knew for sure. Even if there was a chance that the girl wasn’t mine, it still put a strain on my marriage. And then it could be too late.

  “Do you think Evvie wants a divorce?”

  I sat back, rubbing my nape. “Sometimes I do and then other times, I’m not so sure. I don’t know what she wants. She’s not talking to me, but I don’t do much talking either. We never have. It’s one thing that made me fall in love with her. She didn’t ask for my feelings like other women.” My nose burned. “I can’t lose her, Matteo. I can’t. It’ll kill me. I’m not strong enough.”

  “Brett,” he said gently.

  “I’m serious.” I shook my head. “This will set me back. We both know it will.”

  Matteo looked away. “We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “How?”

  He stood. “I have no fucking idea. I’ve never seen a couple go through the amount of shit you two have. You have some serious bad luck, Brett.”

  “My mom always told me I wouldn’t amount to anything,” I confessed. “She said I wouldn’t find happiness. I didn’t deserve it. Any of it. And that was the philosophy I had lived by for years but then I met Evvie. And now…maybe my mom was right.” She had died before Miracle was born but she was still ingrained in my skull. I was forced to submit to her wrath as a child. Maybe she was getting me back from beyond the grave.

  �
�First thing I want you to do. Contact Roxane and get some more answers.”

  “She’s letting me meet her.” And that terrified the shit out of me.

  “That’s a start.” Matteo went to his desk across the room and opened his filing cabinet drawer. “You two are going to force me into an early retirement,” he mumbled, pulling out a bottle of rum. “Drink?”

  Evvie

  “EVVIE? ARE YOU home?” Brett called from the entrance.

  My heart jumped to my throat.

  After leaving Matteo’s office abruptly a couple of days ago, Brett didn’t try to contact me. Until last night.

  “I set up a meeting with her.”

  I gripped the phone tight in my hand. “Oh?”

  “I’m nervous.”

  I wanted to reach out to him. To comfort him. But I also wanted to yell and scream and tell him he had every right to be nervous because he fucked up.

  “I’m sure it’ll go fine,” was all I said.

  “How can you be so understanding?” he asked.

  “I’m not,” I muttered. “But I’m trying to be the better person. No matter how hard this is.” I cleared my throat. “Do you know where Claire is?”

  “No.”

  The conversation ended faster than I would have liked. I didn’t want to be that wife who was a nag, but he had to do something. He had to find out where Claire was, so we could get some answers. I prayed with everything in me that we would catch her on a good day. I wasn’t sure why but a part of me felt sorry for her. Even after everything she had done, mental health was no joke. I sympathized because I was married to a man who came into my life broken. I thought he was irreparable at first, but I soon realized that he just needed help learning how to deal with his demons.

  “Hey.” Brett stood at the entranceway to the kitchen. “I didn’t think you were home.”

  I shrugged. “Well I am.”

  “Evvie.” He took a tentative step toward me.

  I went back to cleaning. I put the dishes away that had been drying in the dish rack. I wiped the counter over and over again until I could practically see my own reflection in the granite top.

  “Evvie,” Brett repeated.

  “What?” I snapped, spinning on him. And that was when I actually looked at him.

  He wore a suit, but the jacket was hanging off his arm. The first three buttons of his dress shirt were undone. His hair was unkempt like he had been running his fingers through it all day. But what I noticed most were the bags under his eyes and the utter defeat in his dark gaze.

  I swallowed hard, my heart jumping in my chest. I shouldn’t have felt guilty, but I did. He caused me pain, but I was no different. Although he was the reason for this strain on our family, I shoved him away instead of trying to work through it.

  It took everything in me not to clean our home again. I was stressed and when I was stressed, I cleaned. I cleaned a lot. I could only wipe the counters down so many times before the granite started disappearing.

  I turned away, the sight of him was too painful anymore. Until we got our happiness back, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to truly look at him again.

  “Evvie,” he whispered, coming up behind me.

  I stiffened, sidestepping around him.

  Brett’s jaw clenched. He went back into the hall, disappearing from my view.

  I could do this. Brett would tell me how the meeting with his daughter went. I would respond accordingly, and I wouldn’t be a bitch about it. It wasn’t the girl’s fault. None of this was. But then why the hell did I blame her? No. I blamed my husband. No matter how much I lashed out at him, it didn’t make me feel better. We were going around in circles. He apologized. I would respond by telling him that it wasn’t enough. And we would go back to where we started. I knew we should see Matteo again, but he would only tell us what we were already aware of. We needed to talk.

  Letting out another deep sigh, I grabbed the plate of cookies I had baked earlier that morning. They weren’t healthy but at that point, I didn’t care. My kids would love them and after the stress of the last few weeks, we deserved a little fat and sugar in our diet.

  “Evvie.”

  My gaze snapped up to meet my husband’s.

  “I want you to meet Storm,” he said gently, placing his hand on a young girl’s shoulder.

  My heart jumped to my throat. My stomach did flips over itself.

  Before I knew what was happening, the plate fell from my hands and landed on the floor with a crash. It shattered, the cookies now dirty and no longer edible.

  I didn’t move, my eyes locking with the young girl who couldn’t have been older than Miracle. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Her deep blue eyes were wide and hid a strength much too powerful for a girl her age. But what caught my breath, what threatened to bring me to my knees was how much she looked like Brett.

  Her eyes fell to the mess at my feet.

  My cheeks burned, knowing Brett was wondering what the hell was going on with me. I knelt, picking up the pieces of the shattered plate, wishing I could do the same with my heart.

  My nose burned, a hard lump forming in my throat while I tried so damn hard not to cry.

  “I can help,” a small voice said.

  I met Storm’s gaze and nodded.

  After a couple of minutes of silence, while she helped me pick up the pieces of the broken plate, she placed her hand on mine.

  “I know you don’t like me,” she said softly. “And I know my mom has caused a lot of problems for you.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked, my voice cracking.

  “She wasn’t exactly quiet in the conversations she had with my grandmother.” Storm shrugged. “My grandma told me that a dark cloud will follow me for the rest of my life because of my name. She thinks I’m cursed.”

  “I…I think your name’s pretty,” I told her, brushing the broken plate onto the dust pan. She accused me of not liking her. Correct her, Evvie. Damn it. Grow a pair. It’s not her fault . “I never said that I don’t like you,” I whispered.

  She stood and sat at the table.

  I did the same and that was when I realized that Brett had left us alone. Knowing I needed this time with her, he gave me that space.

  “You don’t have to say it. I can see it,” Storm said. “It’s fine though. I’m used to it. I guess you could blame my mother for that. She’s made a lot of people unhappy over the years and I’ve been blamed for it.”

  “You’re way too young to hold this on your shoulders.” I ran my sweaty hands down my thighs, trying to find the right words. “Your mom did cause issues but a part of me wonders if it only made my husband…your fa…Brett…” I swallowed hard. “…and I stronger.”

  “Do you really think that?” she asked, crossing her arms under her chest.

  “I…” It was odd in a way to have a kid question my feelings but maybe she was right. Maybe the shit Claire caused in the beginning didn’t make us stronger. Clearly Brett was thinking with his dick and not about my feelings. My blood burned through me. No. I would not let this girl see that side of me. I would save my anger for my husband.

  “Listen.” Storm sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. “I know you have other children. I don’t want…I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for my grandma. My mom wanted to keep me to herself.”

  “Obviously, since it’s been almost fifteen years.” That was a huge fucking secret to keep to yourself for this long and I couldn’t wait to wrap my hands around the woman’s neck and make her beg.

  “I’m a well-kept secret apparently.” She smiled softly.

  I scoffed. “No kidding.”

  “It was nice meeting you, Mrs. MacLean. I understand it’s hard.”

  “Evvie,” I corrected her. “Please call me Evvie.”

  ***

  (Brett)

  I paced back and forth in my office. Waiting. Dreading the moment Evvie would come into the room and lose her shit over me bringing Storm
to our house. I had no other choice. I was a desperate man. I would soak up her wrath first before I let her leave for good.

  When Evvie dropped the plate of cookies after seeing my daughter, I wanted to go to her. To comfort her. But I knew she would only push me away. So, when Storm went to her instead, I knew it was time for me to give them a moment alone.

  A soft knock sounded on the door.

  I opened it, revealing Evvie and Storm.

  “Grandma is here,” Storm said, giving me a hug. Her small body wrapped around mine and she squeezed with everything in her. A part of me wondered if she got many hugs and took advantage of them when she could. She released me, chewing her bottom lip. “Can I…” She glanced at Evvie. “Can I hug you?”

  Evvie nodded.

  Storm wrapped her arms around her waist, her eyes fluttering closed. “You smell how a mom should,” she whispered.

  My heart tightened.

  Evvie’s breath caught in her throat but all she did was hug her back.

  Storm quickly said her goodbyes, ran down the hall, and left the house with a bang of the front door.

  “How the fuck could you do that to me?” Evvie yelled, punching me in the chest.

  My eyes widened, shock at her outburst coursing through me.

  “How could you force her on me? A little warning would have been fucking nice, Brett.” She stormed down the hall to our bedroom.

  “I didn’t know what else to do. Her grandmother asked if I could bring her here for a visit, she said it might help, and before I knew it, we were here,” I explained, following Evvie into our room.

  “I don’t give a shit,” she screamed. “That little girl knows that I don’t like her. She saw it. She could fucking feel it. How do you think that makes me feel? I’ll tell you. Like a monster! God, I can’t do this anymore.” She stomped around the room, whipping open drawer after drawer and throwing clothes onto the bed.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.

  “I’m leaving. I’m going to Anna and Evan’s like I said I would. I can’t…I can’t be here with you.” Her gaze snapped to mine. “I can’t do this.”