by Lexi Ryan
His smile falls away, but he keeps his eyes locked on mine for a long minute. Am I supposed to know what he’s thinking? Because I don’t. I can’t tell if he doesn’t give a shit or if this information makes him angry. He doesn’t speak to me enough yet for me to guess his thoughts.
He walks Katie over to the changing table and begins to change her diaper. “I’ll talk to her.”
“No, don’t, Arrow. There’s no point.”
He nods, and again I wish I knew what he was thinking. He lets me in his bed, even comes to mine, touches me. Holds me.
I haven’t done anything wrong, and I’m not the kind of girl who dreams of marrying her way to financial security. But when I wake up in the middle of the night and Arrow’s arms are wrapped around me, I wish we were sleeping together. When my brain is still half asleep, my body wakes. I want him to roll me over and make me feel the way he did that night in the kitchen. I want his mouth and hands to chase my numbness away. I want him to use me to chase his away.
Then when my brain wakes, I remember Brogan and my guilt, and I’m so glad I didn’t let my body decide. I’m so glad I didn’t give in to that need to feel something, so glad I didn’t give in. Even though there are nights when the fear of never feeling anything again is worse than the guilt and the grief.
“How convenient for you that your little boyfriend turned into a vegetable that night. And now you’re free to fuck a Woodison, which I’m guessing is what you wanted all along.”
I know she’s only giving voice to what others will think. She’s probably not the first to think it, and I hate that. It’s not fair to Brogan or Arrow.
“It’s going to be fine,” I assure Arrow. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Do you think she’s going to tell my dad?”
I draw in a sharp breath. Tell my dad. I imagine that wouldn’t end well for him. “I don’t know, Arrow. If you’re worried about it, maybe you should talk to him. Let him know what she thinks and set the record straight if you need to. But don’t do it for me.”
He only fumbles a little as he changes Katie’s diaper, but mostly I’m impressed that he knows which way to put it on and how to button the onesie. He’s a natural.
He grabs the bottle from the warmer, puts his finger on the nipple, and shakes it as he takes a seat in the rocker.
“You don’t have to do that,” I tell him.
He cocks a brow. “Maybe I want to. I mean, she seems to like you, so I figure she can’t be all that bad.”
There it is. That tugging in my chest again. But this time it’s worse.
After the accident, I felt my heart going into hibernation. After I buried my brother. After they told me Brogan would never be himself again. I could feel my heart wrapping itself up and retreating to the cave where it could hide safely. And I was glad when it did, because it meant I didn’t have to breathe around the constant aching anymore. I was glad, but I had no idea how much it would hurt to feel it wake up.
When I pull up to the Barretts’ home, I have to sit in the car for twenty minutes trying to catch my breath. How many times did I come here and wish I didn’t have to go inside? How many chances did I have to tell him everything I was thinking, and I talked to him about the weather as if he were some stranger passing the time with me in the line at the DMV? I know that with Brogan’s current health, I need to treat each visit as if it’s the last I get. Because it might be. Suddenly, there’s not enough time. I need more time. More quiet minutes to hold his hand. More long afternoons by his side in the sunroom. More opportunities to reiterate the apology that will never be enough.
When Mrs. Barrett sticks her head out the front door and waves to me, I decide my pity party is over, wipe my cheeks, and go inside.
She pulls me into a hug—a little longer and a little tighter than any hug before—and I return it in kind. “Say your goodbyes,” she whispers in my ear. “You say your goodbyes today.”
“I know.” I don’t want her to have to coddle me. She’s going to bury her son soon, and she shouldn’t be responsible for tending to my grief. “I will.”
Pulling away, she shakes her head. “We’re, um, making arrangements. Just trying to get things in order for the funeral. We’ll have it in Blackhawk Valley, of course.” The hope has drained from her eyes. The blue irises she shared with her son are empty. “He always talked about how beautiful your voice was, and I think he’d want to hear it when he says goodbye to us. We were hoping you’d sing.”
I suck in a breath. It’s not her job to comfort you. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to answer right now. Think about it.”
“Okay.”
She tilts her head toward the back hallway. “He’s in bed. Hospice is coming. We’re just trying to make him comfortable now.”
Make him comfortable. Those words make it real, and I rush back to the bedroom as if he might disappear before I can traverse the length of the hallway.
Brogan is lying in bed, just like she said he would be. His eyes are closed, and his body doesn’t look like his own. It’s small and lanky. All bones and weakness. This is no longer the man who begged me to stay with him. He’s no longer even the man who whispered my name after the accident. Not even the one who took my shaking hand while I looked for a pulse.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
His last words to me were an apology. And now it’s my turn. “Brogan.” I sweep his hair off his forehead, and just the touch of my fingertips against his skin makes me want to fall apart. “I wanted to be in love with you. I wanted you to be the one for me. Every girl deserves a guy who can make her laugh the way you did, and I thought if I just held on tight enough, you could be enough.”
I swallow hard. I’ve never stopped regretting my decision to end it with him that night. Never stopped hating myself for telling him the truth about what happened with Arrow. He was being so irrational, and I thought that if I could just hurt him, he’d let me out of the car.
Instead, he kept the doors locked, and his last moments were of anger, frustration, and sadness.
“I love you. And I’m so grateful that you loved me.” I put my fingers against his soft lips. Those lips that kissed me so many times. The lips that uttered sweet words I came to take for granted. “I never should have ended it like I did. Or tried to end it, or whatever. If I could change the way it all unraveled . . .”
I close my eyes and listen. As if maybe if I don’t look at Brogan’s empty shell of a body, he’ll be able to talk to me—he’ll be able to tell me he understands. But all I get is the ceiling fan—Whoomph. Whoomph. Whoomph—and cars spraying water on the sidewalk as they drive down the street in front of the house.
“Of course you would, sweetie.” That’s not the voice I’ve been waiting for, and I feel exposed as I turn to see Trish step into the room. How long has she been listening? “We all would,” she continues. She’s been crying. Her face is red and blotchy, her eyes swollen. She comes to stand beside me, and I’m glad she’s there. Something about her falling apart helps me hold it together.
I don’t need to feel stronger than her. This isn’t about strength. The comfort of shared grief is the antithesis of trying to be the stronger one. This is about understanding that our pain is what makes us human, and allowing ourselves to feel it. I can’t feel angry with Trish anymore and can’t blame her for Brogan’s decisions, not when I see her like this, grief laid out and exposed.
“This sucks,” she whispers. “As if it’s not hard enough to say goodbye to someone you love—this is all tangled up in the fight you two had.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “It’s tangled up in our mistakes. I know he betrayed you, but if you feel like you have to blame someone, don’t blame him.” She takes my hands in hers and squeezes them. Her hands are so cold, as if she’s been cuddling with the dead. “I loved him and I decided I’d do whatever it took to get him. I screwed up. I am to blame.” Her eyes plead as she lifts them to mine. “Everyone wants someone to blame,
and no one will blame me. I knew he was in love with you and I still . . .”
I turn and wrap her in my arms, and she dissolves into silent sobs against my chest.
“I loved him so much.”
“I know.” I stroke her hair and take a long, deep breath. Damn you, Brogan. He had to have known how she felt, and he should never have messed around with her if he wasn’t going to pursue it. He shouldn’t have done a lot of things, and the reminder of his flaws gives my grief a jagged edge, makes it hurt more with everything that was left unsaid and undone. No wonder we paint our lost loved ones without flaws. This is harder.
When Trish pulls away, she pastes on a smile I know is for my benefit. “He loved you, you know? He loved you with the kind of intensity that makes teenage girls obsessed with romance. He loved you, and I was just so jealous of that. I wanted to steal it. To make it mine. I’m the one to blame here. And I’d trade my life for his.” She holds me by my shoulders for a long time, staring into my eyes. “I want you to know that. I need you to know that I’d give my own life to make it right.”
She seems so melodramatic, and I grimace. I’ve probably said the same to someone along the way. I have to believe her, because if I ever said it, I’m sure I meant it, too. “It doesn’t work like that,” I tell her softly.
“Right.” She releases me and steps around me to study Brogan. She touches his face and runs her fingers along his jaw. “But if it did . . .”
There are too many people at my house. A quick glance out the back windows and onto the patio and I count a dozen guys from the team and nearly as many girls.
Mia went to say goodbye to Brogan today, and there have been people milling around since she got home, so I haven’t been able to get her alone and ask how she’s doing.
Trish comes in from the patio and props her sunglasses on the top of her head. She’s had them on out back all afternoon, so I never noticed how swollen her eyes are. She looks as if she’s been crying for days.
“Are you okay?” I ask. It seems like she shows up here as often as she can since I got home, always trying to get me alone. My irritation with her kept me from registering that she’s got to be as upset as the rest of us about the end of Brogan’s life.
“I’m not.” With a glance to the crowd out back, she grabs my wrist and drags me down the hall and away from the kitchen.
“Trish,” I say, the warning in my voice. “I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong idea, but I’m seriously—”
“Shut up!” She pushes me into the study and pulls the door closed behind her. “We need to talk, and I’m sick of trying to get you alone.”
“I’m sorry about New Year’s Eve.” It’s an apology I should have given her a long time ago. “I didn’t mean to lead you on. I didn’t—”
“Fuck that, Arrow. I’m in love with Brogan, not you. That night wasn’t about you. It was about him.”
“Okay,” I say cautiously.
She paces the length of the room behind the dark leather couch. “Do you remember?”
My stomach sinks. I really don’t want to do this. “Do I remember New Year’s Eve?”
She stops and lifts her eyes to mine. “Yeah.”
I swallow hard. “Not a lot, Trish. I mean, I remember us . . . you know.”
She stares at me hard, and I don’t know what else to say. How much does she know? Has her dad told her something? Jesus, I don’t want to talk about this. “Arrow,” she says, holding my gaze. “I remember it.”
“I’m sorry. I think we were both screwed up that night.”
She shakes her head. “No. Not the party. After the party.”
“After your dad picked you up?” I ask. Because as fragmented as my memory is, that piece is there—Coach showing up at the party to pick up Trish, because her punishment for her latest screw-up was having to ring in the New Year at home.
“I convinced him to let me stay with you, to let you drive me home. He didn’t know you’d been drinking, but I thought it’d be okay. You’d stopped drinking and were trying to sober up.”
My stomach turns sour. “What are you saying?”
“I was in the car.” She folds her arms and squeezes her eyes shut. “I remember it all. The sick thunking sound. The screeching tires. The silence in those seconds after and before we . . . I know my dad covered it up. I wanted you to know that I know.”
I just stare at her. I can’t speak. There’s nothing to be said. She knows about this prison I’m trapped in. And she’s been trapped here, too. All this time. “How could you keep this secret? Why didn’t you stop me, Trish?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t remember anything after leaving the party.” I don’t even remember leaving the party.
“I know you don’t. Consider yourself lucky.”
I shake my head. “I hit them and I just . . . drove away? I can’t fucking remember.”
“Stopping wouldn’t have changed anything,” she whispers.
I squeeze my eyes shut, as if this new piece of information might make the memory appear in my brain, but nothing’s there.
“I’m an idiot,” she whispers. “I thought the best way I could get Brogan’s attention was to hurt him. I thought the worst I could do to him was to be with you. I thought he’d see pictures of us together and hear people talking about how we were all over each other. I wanted to hurt him so he’d wake up and realize he wanted me more than he wanted her.”
“This is more than some stupid jealousy!” My voice booms, echoing off the walls of my study, and I have to take a breath. There are people out there who’d be destroyed by this conversation if they heard it. Mia is out there.
“That’s my point,” Trish says. “I thought hurting him like he’d hurt me was so important, and then suddenly none of that mattered. It didn’t matter how many pictures there were of you and me on Facebook. Brogan couldn’t look at pictures. He couldn’t get jealous.”
“You were in the car?” I can’t wrap my mind around it, and my brain keeps going back to the morning after the accident. I got a ride from the hospital to Coach’s house, and that damn deer was hanging in the garage, bleeding all over the place. I grabbed a bucket and some bleach water and scrubbed at the garage floor until my hands were raw, as if I could clean it up, wipe it away, change the thing I couldn’t even remember.
“It was a terrible night for everyone,” Trish says.
“If you’d just made me stop and call the cops, your dad wouldn’t have had the chance to cover it up.” I press the flat of my palm to my chest and rub it around, as if it might be able to rub away the hurt. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? You’ve known what I’ve been living with.”
“Dad wouldn’t let me talk to you about it. He didn’t want you knowing I’d—” She looks away and shakes her head. “And I was scared. It was awful. You’re lucky you can’t remember.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. Because I see it on her face now—the evidence of torment I should have recognized months ago. The torment of living with a horrible secret that’s eating you from the inside.
“I remember it all. The sick thunking sound. The screeching tires. The silence in those seconds after.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, because I can’t apologize to Brogan’s parents. To Mia. To the people who really deserve to hear my apology. “I can’t figure out why I would have thought I was okay to drive. I’m not that guy.”
“I’m not looking for your apology, Arrow. Stop apologizing.” She draws in a breath and straightens her shoulders. “I just wanted you to know that I know.”
“Okay.”
Mia opens the door and steps into the room with Katie in her arms. She spots me and Trish and does a double take. “Oh. Sorry, I was just looking for a quiet place to . . . I’ll get out of here.” She rushes out of the room and down the hall.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
Trish raises a brow. “Are you two . . .?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“I want to hate her,” she says, staring down the hall where Mia disappeared. “Hate is so much more comfortable than the guilt. But I can’t help it. I try to hate her and can only hate myself for what I did.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugs. “It’s not like I thought he’d broken up with her. I just thought it was only a matter of time. I think I always loved Brogan, but she had him under some spell. I couldn’t compete, so I played dirty.”
“Forgive yourself, Trish. Carrying around this regret isn’t going to help anyone. Try to forgive yourself.”
She releases a puff of air that’s probably supposed to be laughter, and her lips twist into something that’s probably supposed to be a smile. It’s all so much uglier than the girl she was before the accident. The girl who lost the guy she loved.
“Have you forgiven yourself for that night?” she asks me.
“Of course not.”
“Then you understand why I can’t forgive myself either.”
He’s free to be with whomever he wants, I tell myself. But it doesn’t feel that way. Finding Trish in the study with Arrow—behind a closed door—felt like as much of a betrayal as the night I walked in on Trish and Brogan.
That’s not fair. He’s not mine. But tell that to my waking heart.
I go to the nursery to give Katie her bottle and rock her to sleep, and after she drifts off in my arms, I settle her into the crib.
When I got back from Indianapolis this afternoon, everyone was at the house. Again. It seems like they spend more time here than they do at their own homes. And I know for a fact that Mason and Chris just got a new apartment off-campus, and I thought they’d want to spend some time there.
But no. Arrow has the pool. Arrow has the cool theater room in the basement with the state-of-the-art sound system. He has the rec room and the air-hockey table and the always-stocked fridge.
So they’re here. And I’m actually starting to like it.
At first it was torture, a reminder of the life I used to have. The life Brogan used to have. It was a reminder of normal when it felt like normal was an insult to the man I loved. But now it’s the new normal, and I’m starting to feel like maybe it’s okay. We don’t know how much longer Brogan has, and I’m starting to feel like that’s okay, too.
