Unexpected Protector (Isthmus Alliance)

by Sloan Johnson

  Any calm I had been feeling when I heard his soothing words to her is gone the moment I swing open the door. “What the fuck is going on in here?”

  I pull Holly away from Dylan, sliding her behind me because right now, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’ve never before felt so betrayed by someone I considered a friend. “Were you just apologizing to her so maybe I wouldn’t be quite so pissed that you forgot to mention that this asshole is back in town?”

  Staring at Liam Caprese, I feel as if I’m nine years old again. He’s bigger now, but he’s still the same guy I thought hung the moon when he was dating Maria. There was a time when I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. He never complained that Maria had to let me tag along on their dates; he simply reworked his plans so I wouldn’t be bored. He made me feel like he was my friend. Hell, to my nine-year-old mind, he was my friend. Foolishly, I think I considered him a combination of big brother, best friend and hero.

  That all changed the night of the accident. He went from being my idol to the man I would never forgive for taking Maria away from me. If he hadn’t been driving so fast, she might still be here. If he had left sooner, he wouldn’t have had to speed to get home. If he hadn’t wanted to go to that party, maybe I would have been with them and they wouldn’t have had to worry about curfew. If, if, if… life is filled with what-ifs, and you can’t change a damned one of them.

  “Tommy, let me explain…” My eyes snapped to the long counter where Liam is appraising the situation. I don’t want to hear what he has to say. Nothing he can say will take away the pain of newly opened wounds that I thought had healed years ago.

  “Fuck you, Liam,” I say through clenched teeth. “This is between me and Dylan.” I turn my attention to the man I thought was one of my best friends. “You know, I really thought you finally saw the light. That you finally opened up that jaded heart of yours and realized that Holly is a good person who made a big mistake. Now--”

  “Now what?” Dylan snaps, taking a step closer to me. I feel Holly jerk away from me. One quick look tells me that Zeke is pulling her out of harm’s way. Probably for the best given the fact that this place already holds nothing but bad memories for her. “Do you seriously believe I put together some elaborate scheme to pretend to forgive Holly? That there’s some master plan here? Jesus, Tommy! We’ve been friends for years now and I’ve never fucked you that way. What I said to Holly was sincere. Every single word.”

  No matter how much I want to believe him, the seed of doubt has been planted in my mind. And seeing Liam watch the exchange between his brother and me isn’t helping my ability to think clearly. I still want to cross the room and knock him unconscious.

  “So, why didn’t you think to warn me that he was coming back to town?” I ask accusingly. If I’d had time to prepare for this, maybe I wouldn’t feel like the broken nine year old I fought so hard to bury is trying to come back to the surface. While the adult part of me wants to physically hurt someone, there’s still that little boy inside who wants to break down and ask Liam why he took her away from me.

  “Tommy, can you listen to me for a minute?” Liam’s voice booms through the small room. As much as I want to tell him that I don’t care what he wants to say, the bigger part of me owes him that much. Then, I’ll be able to hate him with a clear mind.

  “Sure, explain to me how it is you get to come sailing back into town like nothing happened. And while you’re at it, why not explain why you are in the bathroom with my girlfriend. That should be a good story,” I sneer. I’m being petty and I know it. That doesn’t mean I’m going to do a damn thing to stop myself.

  “Tommy, don’t be upset with Dylan. Not telling you I was coming back to town was my idea.” I retreat toward the wall as Liam moves forward. He’s getting too close to me. As much as I want to hold onto the anger, it’s harder than I imagined it would be. “He tried telling me you needed to know ahead of time, but I assured him this was the best way to handle things.”

  “And what makes you think you have any fucking clue what’s best for me?” I rub the palms of my hands against my eyes, trying to sort through the current of emotions running through my body.

  “I know you don’t want to hear it,” he says uncertainly. “That’s something I remember about your sister. When we wanted some alone time, she said it was better to tell you right before we left so you would get mad about it and then move on. Maria said that if you knew sooner, you would get madder and madder until no one could calm you down.”

  He’s right. I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to hear him reliving old memories. He has no right to think about her. He lost that privilege the night he killed her.

  “Fuck you, Liam,” I shout, lunging toward him. Before I can make contact, I feel Dylan’s hand latch onto my shoulder. “Don’t fucking stop me, Dylan! I have every right to beat the shit out of him. He’s a fucking murderer!”

  Dylan somehow spins both of us around and has me pinned to the wall. We struggle as I try to break free from his grip. “You need to calm down, Tommy,” Dylan warns me. “First you know damn well he didn’t run his car off the road on purpose. Second, think about what you’re doing to Holly right now. You need to think about her too.”

  “Fuck you too, Dylan!” I yell. “I should have known that, push come to shove, you would have his side. And where the fuck do you get off telling me to think about Holly? You’re the one who’s done nothing but tell me to forget about her for the past four fucking months!”

  “Yeah, well some asshole kept telling me I needed to learn to forgive her. Now, maybe he needs to take his own advice.” Dylan’s grip on my arms eases. It would be easy for me to lunge at Liam and beat him to a pulp, but I don’t. Instead, I turn and exit the restroom without another word.

  It’s all too much right now.

  “Don’t,” Zeke warns when I slide my chair away from the table. I know he thought he was doing the right thing by getting me away from the testosterone and emotion overloaded situation, but I need to be there for Tommy. He’s been so good to me every single day; I need to repay him.

  “I have to,” I state firmly. “He promised me I won’t have to deal with the hard things in life alone anymore. I owe him the same in return.”

  Zeke reaches for my hand. “Sweetie, I know you think that, but you have to trust me on this. What’s going on in there is a storm almost twenty years in the making. I know all three of those men well enough to know it’s going to get ugly. I also know them well enough to know that once it blows up, they’ll be able to move on in life, and two of them desperately need that.”

  Tasha once told me that Zeke has this way of making you see his point of view so clearly that you think it’s your own. I see what she meant because I don’t find myself questioning him. Instead, I sit down and wait. For as much of a fun-loving screwball as Zeke can be, he may very well be the most levelheaded of the bunch.

  Five minutes later, I see Tommy sulking down the hall. The good news is he doesn’t look like he’s been in a fight. I think back to Zeke’s words of wisdom and wonder if that means the blow up didn’t happen.

  “Zeke, rain check on tonight,” he says as he approaches the table. “Holly, let’s head home.”

  I lace my fingers in his and we walk out the door, and through the parking lot without another word.

  That silence lasts the entire drive home. A few times, I think about saying something, asking how he’s doing, but I can’t form the words. Until tonight, I didn’t even know there was a dead sister, much less one who died in the manner she did. I want to know about her, from Tommy’s perspective, but his emotions are too raw to even think about asking.

  When we get home, Tommy opens my door and escorts me inside. My normally open and communicative boyfriend seems to have become mute.

  “Thank you,” I whisper, leaning in to kiss his cheek. When I only get a grunt in reply, I know it’s going to be a long night.

  I retire to the den in the basemen
t. Tommy has set this up as a makeshift office for me. He claims it’s easiest to concentrate on work when you have a dedicated area. I told him I had no problem using my room since I rarely sleep in there now, but he insisted it couldn’t be a bedroom. “It’s too easy to kick back for a while if you’re studying in bed,” he informed me when I asked him why that wouldn’t be allowed.

  Most nights, I like working down here. He’ll come down and watch TV, always with the volume turned down, while I do research. It’s especially helpful when I have issues with my Algebra course because I suck at math and he could do it in his sleep. Tonight, I can’t focus on the words before me because it’s too quiet.

  I turn on the television, hoping it will give me the illusion of him being with me, but nothing works. The more I try to concentrate, the more my thoughts drift to the man I thought could never break. The look of despair that filled his eyes for a split second before anger took over. He’s home with me and yet I feel more alone than I have in months.

  The bedroom door slammed shut shortly after we got home, so I know that’s where he is. I wonder what he’s doing up there. As tempting as it is to blow off my schoolwork, I have a Psych paper due in a week and I’ve barely started the first draft. I have to get through this before I can do anything because Tommy will be upset with me if I don’t.

  For nearly twenty years, I’ve thought about what I would do if I ever crossed paths with Liam again. About how I would tell him how much I hate him, then pound on his face until it is so bloody that he’s nearly unrecognizable. How I would stomp on his chest to make him feel a fraction of the pain that eroded my heart after Maria was gone.

  There’s so much more I want to say to him but nothing that needs to be said. To make matters worse, when he started talking about Maria, I realized what her death did to him. The anguish I could see in his eyes can’t be called up on demand.

  I never understood why my mom reprimanded me any time I blamed Liam for the accident. It was her first-born child who died, and yet it always felt as if she was sticking up for him. For a few years, her compassionate nature drove a wedge in our relationship. I felt like she was telling me that my feeling weren’t valid. In reality, she was trying to release me from the strangle hold of the negative emotions.

  “Tommy?” Holly knocks on my bedroom door before entering. Before answering her, I take a moment to compose myself. I’m supposed to be the strong one. I’m the one who takes care of her. Given her recent history, I can’t allow her to see me hovering over a box filled with Maria’s memories with tears rolling down my face. “Can I come in?”

  She tentatively crosses the room before I have a chance to stand. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Holly deserves to know all of me, including the single most painful event that molded me into who I am today. The problem is, I’m not sure I’m strong enough to face the truth because I know, logically, I will have to come to terms with the fact that Maria’s death was a horrible accident and Liam isn’t to blame. My throat constricts, choking off my words, so I simply shake my head.

  I feel her soft body pressing against my back. She doesn’t realize that, in this moment, she is my strength. “Will you tell me sometime?” She pleads as her fingers knead the knots in my shoulders.

  “Someday,” I promise her. “Right now, I just want to go to sleep.”

  I close Maria’s box and put it back on the closet shelf. Holly is the first person I’ve trusted to see the box, much less know where I keep it. Part of me is ashamed by the fact that I’ve held onto these little pieces of my sister because it feels juvenile.

  I feel like a self-absorbed fool for not seeing sooner that Tommy has been carrying this around for so long. I pull back the covers on the bed, trying to figure out what I can do to take care of him the same way he has done for me. I won’t push him to talk about his feelings because if he couldn’t even tell me he had a sister who died, he’s obviously not ready to go into the details of her life and death. And asking Dylan isn’t an option because I’m already fighting the feeling that we’ve somehow betrayed Tommy by discussing this without his knowledge.

  “Do you want to play?” I ask, clueless as to how to make his pain go away. It hits me that we’ve spent so much time dealing with my issues that I don’t really know the man walking across the room to join me in bed.

  Tommy curls up behind me, holding me tight to his chest. He’s reaching out for a lifeline; I just hope I’m strong enough to be that for him now. “No, baby. Tonight, I just want to hold you. Is that okay?”

  I roll over so we’re facing one another. “Yeah, Tommy. That’s fine.” His name sounds foreign rolling across my tongue as our bodies are entwined together in the dim light from the nightstand. “I’m here for whatever you need from me. I hope you know that.”

  He tenderly kisses my forehead and my entire body tingles. I’m trying to respect his need to cherish this closeness without going any further, but when his lips brush against my skin, there’s no way to ignore the primal reaction deep within my soul. He’s found his way in and I now crave him. In some ways, and I don’t think it’s entirely unhealthy, he’s become my replacement addiction.

  “I know, baby. You’re an amazing and beautiful woman. Thank you for not being upset with me.”

  His damp cheek is warm beneath my palm as I soothe him. His vulnerability is a gift to me. It shows me that he trusts me as much as I’ve grown to trust him. Lying next to him, feeling the heat of his body, I realize that I’m no longer capable of keeping him out of my heart. I’m falling in love with Tommy Reed.

  I lean in, tentatively kissing his lips, not wanting him to think I’m trying to advance things with him tonight. I would love nothing more, but that’s not my motive. I need my body to tell him what my voice can’t yet. I can’t come right out and tell him that I’m falling for him because I’m still trying to come to terms with the concept that loving and being loved is not a weakness.

  Tommy deepens the kiss, demanding entrance into my mouth with his tongue. The rough pads of his fingers scrape lightly against my arms before dipping beneath the hem of my tank top, tracing small circles on the small of my back.

  “She was amazing,” he whispers, burying his face in the crook of my neck. “Maria never made me feel like I was a pest. I think it’s because there were so many years in between us. She and Liam used to sit on the floor and build things with me. When Liam would get antsy to get going, she used to rub his back and remind him that I needed her.”

  His voice catches every time he says Liam’s name. I sit quietly, kneading the muscles in his back while I wait for him to continue.

  “I didn’t, really. I would have been fine with my other sisters and my parents, but Maria knew she was my favorite. I felt special when she took time out of her life to spend with me because I knew how many other things she could be doing at any given time.”

  When he doesn’t continue for a long moment, I kiss his neck, just below his ear. “Thank you for telling me about her,” I whisper, fighting the urge to ask for more information. I’m starting to see why everyone keeps pushing me to talk about my feelings and my past. Keeping it inside eventually turns the pain into a cancer that kills the possibility of ever being truly at peace with yourself.

  Tommy pulls away from me slightly, looking directly into my eyes. We sit there in an uncomfortable silence and I know he’s thinking about something. “I think she would have liked you,” he says after another long pause.

  “I don’t know about that,” I respond without thinking. Who am I to discount anything he has to say about Maria?

  “That’s the great thing about Ria,” he assures me. “She wouldn’t have seen the bad things in your past. She wasn’t that way. She would have seen the smart, sarcastic, witty woman I’ve fallen in love with and she would have loved you simply because you make me happy.”

  My heart races and I wonder if Tommy can feel my body shaking with nervous energy. I may have been thinking about the fact
that I’m falling in love, but to hear him say it out loud brings everything crashing down around me. It’s almost as if now that it’s out there, the internal countdown has started to when it’s all going to go to shit.