by Harlow Cole
“Shut up, Nathan. Just . . . shut up, okay? I’m not letting anyone do anything to me.”
My thoughts didn’t match my words. He was making me feel foolish and feeding into the insecurities that I’d just started to squelch down in my mind.
“You’d just better damn well be smart enough to realize you and this town are small potatoes to him now. He doesn’t give a damn about you. He has way bigger and better things to go back to. Sweet, small-town girls like you have no business tangling with people like him. You two aren’t cut from the same cloth anymore. And don’t start thinking that he’s some superhero who can fix all our problems. That’s a line of shit. Probably like the lines of crap he pumps into his body.”
He meant it as a dig toward Brayden, but in the back of my mind, I was still listening to Coral Lynn tell me I’d never be enough. I was still seeing her standing beside the bed, half-naked, hurling, I told you so, at me from across the room.
His words opened the door and let those memories tumble down on top of my head. I couldn’t stuff them back inside all at once.
“He’s here because he needs a backup plan, Ashley Jane. That’s all this is. Got himself hurt and finally stepped out of the spotlight long enough to realize he has nothing else in his life. No one there to give two shits about him. He’s not looking for redemption. He needs a crutch. That’s all you’ll ever be to him, Ash. Someplace safe to fall.”
I sucked in a breath, watching my earlier happiness slip away in tattered shreds.
“He’s different, Nathan,” I said quietly. “Maybe you should talk to him. He wants to see you. I told him no, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe it would be good for you.”
“I want him gone.”
“Nathan—”
“No. Stay away from him.”
“He brought someone I think you need to talk—”
His hand violently smacked down onto the table beside him, silencing me. “I don’t want him, or anyone he knows, anywhere near our family. Do you understand me? I think you owe me that much, don’t you?”
He’d never mentioned it that way before. Not once. My culpability in the whole disaster. He’d never directly placed the blame at my feet. Not that he needed to. I already felt it lying there like shackles.
“You asked something of me once. And I did it for you. Without question. Well, now, it’s my turn. Stay away from him. I can’t carry you now. I won’t be around to pick you up off the ground when he breaks you again. We’re done with him. All of us. Make sure he knows that. He needs to turn right back around and get the fuck out of this town. That’s what I want. Him. Gone. The whole damn town knows he owes me that much.”
* * *
“Ten more.”
“You trying to kill me, man?”
“Haven’t you heard? If it doesn’t nearly kill you, it won’t make you stronger. Ten more. Quit being such a pussy.”
I’d shouted for Brayden all through the house but acquired nothing for my trouble. His car sat in the driveway. A cup of coffee remained on the counter, still lukewarm to the touch. He had to be home.
After the house proved fruitless, I’d wandered down the path, too numb to think about the last time I’d taken those same steps. My bare just feet kept moving, one in front of the other.
I hadn’t been near Ginger’s boathouse in years. The outside looked the same, aside from the fresh pot of white impatiens next to the front door that I’d let myself inside.
Like Brayden’s old bedroom, nothing remained the same. Gone were the bodies and the pumping bass. The couches and chairs, the lamps and drywall. Everything was gone. The entire space had been cleared out, gutted right down to the studs. One massive room remained, renewed, with windows that looked out over calm, crystal water.
It was breathtaking and disorienting at the same time.
So was the man, half-naked from the waist up, down on a mat doing one-armed push-ups. His back glistened with sweat, muscles coiled around every square inch of him, jacked up from exertion.
“That’s it. Three more. You’ve got this.” Matt jotted notes down on a clipboard and then added, “This is even better than yesterday. You’re stronger than you think.”
I watched, mesmerized, fighting against the gravity that naturally pulled my body toward Brayden’s. I searched for any mark I might have left on him the night before, any sign I’d managed to leave behind showing he was mine again, for a little while.
Now, I had to give him back. To his new life.
To all the other women with their skintight dresses and French-made lingerie. To the girl on his phone at two in the morning.
The last time I’d done this, I’d meant every word, but hope always lingered somewhere in the back of my childish mind. Hope that, somehow, someday, he’d return, and things would work out.
That’s the wretched thing about hope. Even when you pledge not to subscribe to it, it crawls in through the seams, back into a fragile heart it can crush all over again.
This time had to be for real.
This time had to be for good.
“You have to go.” My words fell out on his final repetition.
He stalled halfway up. Matt swung around to stare at me, clearly surprised he hadn’t heard me come in. He probably wasn’t a guy people got a jump on very often. He assessed my disheveled appearance, finally staring down at my bare feet.
I hadn’t even combed my hair. I never managed sleep. My pillowcase hadn’t absorbed my tears as well as Brayden’s shirt. I was still clad in pajama shorts and a braless tank top. I’d crawled out of bed, desperate to get this over and done.
Before I had another minute to regret it.
Brayden lifted himself off the floor with ease, but he grunted and stretched his right arm across his chest to alleviate obvious discomfort.
“You have to go. Today,” I repeated.
“Go where, baby girl?” He smiled as he accepted a towel Matt thrust out toward him.
“This is a nice surprise.” Brayden looked at Matt as he wiped the sweat from his face. “This part of the training? You knew I wouldn’t wimp out if I had an audience.”
“Brayden.” My voice cracked.
A look of alarm replaced his smile as he finally picked up on my tone. Both men stared at me, suddenly on alert.
“What’s wrong?”
“You have to leave St. Michael’s. As soon as possible. You can’t stay here.”
Matt looked back and forth between us. “Uh, I’m gonna go fix up some breakfast. Keep stretching it out.” He tapped the clipboard against the side of Brayden’s shoulder and smiled at me with a sad nod as he took his leave.
I bowed my head and stared at my feet until the front door latched shut. “He knows you’re here.”
Silence filled the space between us, bubbling up with the same discomfort as my words. He walked to a bench on the side of the room and guzzled down half a bottle of water.
With his back to me, he finally spoke, “That’s good. It’s time for us to sit down and talk, face-to-face.”
“He doesn’t want you here, Brayden. He wants you to leave. Immediately. He forbid me to see you anymore.”
“Jesus Christ. He forbid you?” He quickly rounded on me, anger spreading where that smile had been. “You have to let me see him.”
“No.”
“Ashley, I’m not walking away. I can’t. I won’t do it again. Don’t even think about asking me to.”
“I’m not asking, Brayden. I’m telling you. You can’t stay here. And we can’t see each other anymore.”
“Bullshit. You’re not a child. He can’t make your decisions for you. Tell me that’s what you want. No lies, Ashley. No bullshit. Tell me you want me to go, and I’ll consider leaving.”
I squeezed my eyes shut as I turned my back on him. I couldn’t face any more white lies today.
“The sex was great. Last night was fun. But you’re delusional if you think it was anything more. It’s over now. I’ve had my fill. You should go
back to the city. Get on with your life. Let me get on with mine.”
The water bottle was hurled against the far wall, hitting with a pop. He strode to me, gripping my arms, spinning me around like a top. He shook me hard as his thumbs pressed into both my biceps, marking me.
“You’re fucking lying. I don’t think you’ve ever lied to me. Why are you starting now?”
My tears welled up as I finally looked at him. It was a bad move. The desolation in his eyes nearly struck me to my knees. His hands cupped my cheeks, fingertips digging into my hairline. I thought for a moment he was going to kiss me, but his brows creased again with anger.
“How long does he get to control you? How many dreams do you have to give up to pay penance for my sin? You have choices, Ashley. You deserve to have a life. There’s a huge world out there, waiting for you, but you’re letting him keep you here like a prisoner. Why are you letting him do this?”
I couldn’t answer. I was too raw. If I spoke the words, my heart would just crack further apart. Hot tears spilled down my cheeks.
“You’ve always said you would do anything I asked. You’d give me anything I needed. I need this, Brayden. I need you to go now and never look back.”
His forehead pressed into mine. “Don’t do this,” he whispered. Thumbs brushed across my wet cheeks.
“I have to,” I replied softly. My words renewed my resolve.
I lightly pressed my hands against his chest. He let me push him away.
“What do you want me to do, Brayden? He’s my brother.”
“I asked you once, why I’m so easy to leave. Why I’m so easy to send away.” He stepped farther back, shaking his head. “You think I walked off and never looked back. But you’re so wrong. I don’t know how you never felt my eyes on your skin. Don’t do this. Don’t try to force me out of your life again.”
Fresh tears silently spilled over. I knew what was going on inside him. Somewhere, beneath his layers of muscle and cocky self-assurance, there would always live the cracked little boy who’d been tossed aside by his own mother.
“I have no choice.”
For the second time in my life, I turned and walked away.
14
Angels & Taillights
Ashley
The grass was freshly cut. Manicured and perfect.
As if the people lying there cared what it looked like. Like they’d complain if everything didn’t appear just right.
I shucked off my shoes and sat down next to her, toying with the fresh flowers peeking out of the vase. They were the only symbol I had of my father. I didn’t want to be the asshole who wondered how much he spent having them delivered each week.
My mother would’ve loved them.
I came a lot. To talk to her. To beg for advice. To ask her for a leg up with the powers that be. She’d told me to do it. In her final hours, she’d told me to come here and visit whenever I needed a good haunting.
Those were her exact words.
She’d smiled and laughed when she said them through obvious pain. She’d made it a joke, but the message was clear. She would always be listening.
“I miss you.”
I traced the letters engraved in the marble below her name.
Beloved.
Simple. Plain. True. Chosen by my father on the day he’d clung to the sides of a wooden church pulpit and tried to find an adequate phrase to describe what my mother meant to him.
He’d called her his one. His one friend. His one lover. His one partner in crime. His beloved.
“How do you say goodbye to the person who was all those things to you?”
The agony on his face gave the unspoken answer.
For a second time in my life, I faced the same misery.
“He can’t stay, Mama. I know he can’t stay. I thought I was strong enough this time. But I’m just so, so . . . tired.”
I whispered the words as cracked pieces shattered. The tears I’d held back while I stood in front of Brayden fell hard now, cascading down my cheeks into my waiting palms. I curled onto my side, lying in the soft grass, as close to her as I could get, pretending her fingertips swept back and forth across my forehead.
I stayed beside her until my eyes ran dry and the sun grew bright, sweeping away the softness of morning. I was late. Logan was probably done with setting up for the day and plotting ways to kill me. Things were no doubt falling apart. But how the hell was I going to put anything back together today?
I didn’t hear footsteps. But a shadow fell across my shoulders, blocking the harshness of the sun.
“Joey told me you might be here. She said you come here when you’re upset.” His voice speared through me, making everything worse.
Brayden stood over me, hair slicked back and crusted with dried sweat. He wore the same gym shorts, paired with a crisp white T-shirt. It matched the bouquet of fresh tulips and bright purple hyacinth blossoms he held in his hand. Bending down, he carefully arranged them in the marble vase, adding them to the ones already there. He stared down at her headstone and scrubbed the back of his hand against his cheek.
Seeing her name did that. Her name with an end date too close to her beginning. The short dash in between had cheated us all.
His head bowed. He brushed his other cheek.
“I loved that you chose the yellow dress. There was so much black. And all those tearstained faces. Your dress was like one single ray of sunshine.”
“She asked me to wear it,” I said quietly.
His words kept skimming past my simple answer. The connection took me a minute longer, like the prongs of a plug wrestling with the slots of a light socket.
My eyes stretched wide as they sought his own. “How did you know?”
I glanced back down at my mother’s name etched into the smooth white stone.
She had asked me to wear that dress. She’d handpicked all our outfits. My brother and father donned bright blue ties, the exact color of a cloudless sky. I wore a bright yellow dress, the color of sunflowers. That’s what she wanted on her coffin. No bloody roses. Wildflowers—the kind you could find and gather while running in a field.
Throughout the service, I’d held a single sunflower. A tear-mangled tissue stayed balled up in my hand, wrapped around the fuzzy stem.
“You were here.” The words fell from my lips as an acknowledgment instead of a question.
His eyes darted up to meet mine, a small nod confirmed the statement. “I snuck into the back of the church after the service had already begun. I stayed in my car during the burial, so no one would see me.”
I looked back down at my feet, trying to conjure up visions of that day, wondering how I’d never sensed he was near.
“She would have wanted you there. She kept asking for you near the end.”
“I know. I got to see her.”
My brows furrowed.
“The night before she died, I stayed with her. I had to come. I had things I needed to say to her before . . .” His voice cracked as his body shook, overcome. He clutched on to the front of his shirt and inhaled deeply through his nose and mouth. “She sent me a note. Through Micky. She mailed it to his office. It was just two words with Memorial Hospital as the return address.”
He visibly swallowed. His fist slowly loosened against the white cotton of his shirt. He had sad eyes that made me want to wrap my arms around him and crawl back into that bubble we’d re-created last night.
My father and brother were both so closed off.
I never had anyone to share my grief.
“What did it say?”
“Red twenty.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, bemused.
“It was a play name we always used on our all-star team. The first summer we had to memorize them, she kept a list pinned to the refrigerator. It was the call sign Coach used when he wanted us to steal home.”
My eyes filled up again. “She was telling you to come.”
“I was on the next flight. I had to see h
er. Had to thank her.”
“Thank her?”
“She saved my life. In more ways than one.” He glanced off into the distance again with a bittersweet smirk that held more secrets. “When I woke up that first morning—the first morning home after the accident—I stood at the bathroom sink and thought about swallowing a whole bottle of pills. I didn’t know how to exist.” He paused, giving me time to take the breath I needed.
I’d worried about him in those first days. Worried about where he was, whom he was with. Wondered if his father used the information I passed along. Not knowing where he was felt so foreign in the beginning. For so long, he filled so much noisy space in my life, and suddenly, there was just . . . nothing.
That’s how I learned loneliness doesn’t have a sound.
After the note on my car windshield, he just evaporated. I struggled against the void.
When he reemerged, just in time for the draft, the void only grew deeper. His name was splashed across the Internet and highlighted on SportsCenter as it played in all-day waiting rooms. That’s when my emptiness had morphed into full-fledged rage.
When I’d known he’d just gone on and forgotten us.
“I didn’t think of myself as suicidal. I didn’t want to die. I just didn’t want to be alive either.” He licked his lips before he continued, “She sent me a note then, too. Right before I left town that afternoon. She had the sheriff drive it over. I was pretty sure he was coming to arrest me. Figured the tests they’d run at the hospital showed I was high as a kite when the accident happened.”
“My mother sent you a note that day?” My voice gave away my added surprise. She’d been sitting in Nathan’s hospital room around the clock, beside herself with the awesome depth of a mother’s grief.
He nodded his head. “That one only had two words as well.” His head lifted. “Forgive yourself.”
I stared down at her name again. The marble shone in the sun, perfectly complemented by the blooming white and purple flowers.
Another memory tumbled out of the closet.
“Brayden?” I plucked one up from the vase. Twirled it in my fingers before settling it back into a better place. “Why did you bring these exact flowers today? How did you know?”
