Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Theo
It was like a scene from a horror movie, replaying over and over in my mind. Alex’s indignant fury on Esther’s behalf, the look in her beautiful moonlight eyes as her trust in me shattered into a thousand pieces.
What the hell was wrong with me?
I knew the answer. I had plenty of time to think about it, because Esther refused to speak to me in the days that followed. It all boiled down to a single night, the span of a few hours in the midst of my thirty-eight years.
It was fear.
Fear that someone else would be hurt because of me, that I wouldn’t be able to give her what she needed and tragedy would ensue. Fear that I might lose someone else I cared about.
I’d fucked this up royally. For twenty years, I let Michelle’s death keep me from living my life to the fullest, and now I’d hurt Esther in my own idiotic belief that I could somehow keep her from harm.
Though I tried not to bombard her, I texted and called at least once each day—to apologize again, to beg her forgiveness, to seek any sign that she didn’t utterly despise me now.
She never answered.
The roiling anxiety in my stomach grew with each passing hour of radio silence. Even Toni seemed to be glaring in silent judgment over my idiocy.
On Wednesday morning, Esther finally replied to my text, but it did nothing to assuage my guilt nor to reassure me that I hadn’t caused irreparable damage to our relationship. In fact, I was fairly certain the two word response only amplified those feelings.
I’m fine.
An icy fist clenched around my heart. What can I do to fix this? I texted back, desperate. The little dots bounced, then disappeared. Even after waiting half an hour, they never showed up again.
I wanted to lay my head down and weep, but that wouldn’t solve anything.
Instead, I went to the corkboard in the kitchen, found my brother’s phone number, and called him.
There were other relationships left to repair, and if I couldn’t make things right with Esther just yet, I could at least bury the hatchet with my brother.
If my future was here, I wanted to move forward with a clean slate.
“Hello?” he said, sounding distracted.
I realized that he didn’t have my phone number in his contacts and felt immediately like a jerk. “Alex, it’s me.”
His voice turned wary as he replied, “What do you want?”
The clock on the kitchen wall ticked loudly in the silence as I pondered that. I wanted to rewind it, go back to Sunday’s snowball fight, stop myself from becoming the kind of asshole who inadvertently wounded the woman he loved.
Loved.
The word hit me like a hammer striking an anvil, echoing into my chest.
“I wondered if we could talk.” My voice was hoarse from disuse these last few days. It seemed fitting that I would sound as terrible as I felt.
My brother was silent for so long I glanced down at my phone screen to see if he’d hung up on me. Just before I asked if he was still there, he said, “Okay. When and where?”
We settled on meeting at a coffee shop at the edge of town in an hour.
I checked my texts again to see if Esther had replied, but there was nothing more.
Since I’d been operating in lovelorn dumbass mode for three days now, I ran upstairs to shower, threw on clean clothes, and headed out to the cafe.
Alex was already seated at a table with a tall coffee cup in front of him like a shield. His cool gaze raked over my face, but he must’ve decided to take pity on me because his expression softened slightly.
“Go get yourself some coffee, you look like hell.”
By the time I returned to the table, my brother seemed significantly more relaxed, tipping back his chair so it balanced on two legs—I could practically hear Mom’s voice scolding him for it as she had throughout our entire childhood.
Apparently my misery was disarming, but I’d take whatever advantage I could get if I was going to grovel.
Somehow, Esther had gotten past her comparisons between Steve and my brother. If she could find the good in him, I would try my hardest to do the same.
The apology I’d been rehearsing evaporated as soon as I opened my mouth. “How’ve you been?” I asked, wincing at the inanity of the question.
Alex puffed out his cheeks. “Good, actually. Really good. But I can’t imagine we’re here for small talk, Theo. Is Esther still pissed?”
“She’s not speaking to me,” I said miserably. “Well, she finally replied to a text today with two words, but that’s the first I’ve heard since she slammed the door on Sunday.”
“Tell me one thing, man. What difference does it make if she stops speaking to you now or in a few weeks when you leave town again without a backward glance?”
I flinched, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment. “I deserved that.”
Alex sat forward, bracing his arms on the table. “Yes, you did. Hasn’t she been through enough? What the hell have you been thinking, getting involved with her?”
“As you so wisely pointed out, she’s a human being who sure as hell knows her own mind,” I replied, then I hesitated.
Maybe patching up my disaster of a relationship with my brother wouldn’t fix anything with Esther, but it felt like the necessary next step.
I swallowed hard and said, “I’m in love with her. ”
“Shit, man,” Alex muttered.
“You’re telling me,” I replied weakly. “While I was home last week, I talked to my partner about buying out my half of the business.”
His eyes widened. “You’re moving back here?”
I gave a humorless laugh. “I haven’t talked to Esther about any of it yet. If she can’t forgive me, then…I don’t know. I just can’t imagine the rest of my life without her.”
For a long moment, my brother was silent, studying my face like it was the first time he’d seen me.
Hell, it practically was—my parents had sent me photos and updates over the years, so I was sure they’d done the same for him, but he’d just been a kid when I left.
A sad, broken kid, suffering for a single moment in time that had changed the course of so many lives.
I studied him in return. Of the two of us, he looked like an exact replica of our father.
It hit me in one breathless rush that I’d missed out on seeing my little brother turn into the man sitting before me. At the time, I hadn’t believed I could do anything but get as far away from Spruce Hill as possible. Looking back, I realized my path had been the easier route.
Alex had recovered, rebuilt himself despite everyone in town knowing about the worst moments of his life.
I must have stared for too long, because he finally lifted a brow and said, “What? Something on my face?”
“You grew up.” It was a simple statement, but it was true.
Alex scoffed. “You’re the one who became an old man,” he replied, his eyes sparking with that familiar mischief I remembered so clearly from our youth.
“I’m sorry I left.” The words were quiet, but I saw their immediate impact on him.
“You know you’re not the one who needs to apologize,” he countered. “Can you ever forgive me?”
I closed my eyes. Some of the memories had dimmed, but I could still see his face in the flashing lights from the ambulance, his expression of abject horror, the tears streaming down his face. I could hear him screaming at me, fighting to get to Michelle, begging God to take him instead.
When I opened my eyes again, I saw all of it reflected in his own dark gaze. “We were just kids,” I said. “It was an accident. Nothing that happened was your fault.”
“A kid who started throwing punches at the top of the fucking lighthouse in the middle of the night. It might have been an accident, but I was the one who caused it,” he replied, so matter-of-fact that I knew he hadn’t ever forgiven himself.
“I never meant to hurt you,” I croaked. “I didn’t know. If I’d ended it sooner, if I’d just—”
His brows tugged downward. “Wait. You’ve been blaming yourself this whole time? I thought you left because you hated me after that.”
“Jesus, Alex, of course not. It was my fault.”
For a moment, he simply stared at me, looking utterly appalled. “Explain.”
“We’d agreed to break up when I left for school that summer, but I guess I misunderstood her feelings on the subject. She brought me up there to try to convince me to stay with her. If I’d ended things sooner, she’d still be alive.”
“Fuck me,” he whispered. “That’s why you’re so afraid. Why you’re fucking things up with Esther. It’s like a subconscious defense mechanism.”
I blinked at him, wondering how the hell my baby brother had turned into the man sitting in front of me. “How do you know all that after five minutes of conversation?”
“My girlfriend is a social worker. I’ve been in counseling since just after the accident, but Isabelle and I talk a lot about processing things in a healthier way. I came with a lot of baggage, as you can imagine, but I owe it to her to deal with my shit, you know?”
“That’s why you tried to talk this time instead of punching me in the face?” I joked, but my voice broke.
He shook his head at me, a tiny smile tugging at his lips. “I should have talked to you before prom night, and I should never have gone with you to the party. Third-wheeling with my big brother and the girl I was obsessed with? No way.”
“I wish you’d told me you were into her. I wish I’d realized how much you hated me back then.”
At that, Alex shook his head. “I never hated you, Theo. I should have done a lot of things differently before that night, and during, but none of it was on you. I loved you. Still do, you asshole.”
Christ, if anyone had told me I’d start blubbering in the corner of a coffee shop with my brother during this trip, I wouldn’t have believed it.
I covered my face as the tears fell. When Alex moved into the chair beside me and wrapped his arm around my shoulders, I didn’t protest, just leaned my head against his.
He didn’t speak as he offered the kind of unconditional support that I’d denied him ever since that night.
“I’m so sorry,” I told him again, the words muffled by my hands.
“I’ll forgive you for everything if you sort this shit out with Esther,” he said dryly, but he squeezed my shoulder. “Seriously, Theo. She deserves to know what you’re feeling. It’s her future, too.”
I wiped my cheeks and looked up at the ceiling to try to quell any more tears. “You’re right. I know you’re right. I’m just so fucking afraid that she doesn’t feel the same.”
With a laugh, Alex said, “Dude, she hasn’t dated since that bastard died.
I’ve never heard so much as a whisper that she’s had even a one-night stand.
She’s barely seen her friends, for fuck’s sake.
If she’s been putting up with your stupid ass day in and day out for weeks now, I think that’s a pretty good sign. ”
“When did my baby brother get so wise?”
“Probably since I started dating Isabelle. You’ll like her, man. She has a two-year-old son who’s just the coolest kid I’ve ever met. Before her, I was just, I don’t know, surviving. Coasting along. I didn’t think I deserved to find real happiness.”
I flinched. Eighteen years later and he was still paying penance for an accident. “And you found it with her?”
His smile widened. “Yeah, I did. Dominic has food allergies. That’s why I put her in touch with Esther. They emailed back and forth a bit, and Isabelle wanted me to drop off a Christmas card for her.”
“I am the world’s biggest asshole,” I muttered.
“Maybe, but you’re a lovable asshole. Tell her everything, Theo. The truth, all of it. Let her make a decision based on that. If she thinks you’re still planning to leave, then I can’t say I’d blame her for not wanting to put up with your bullshit just to see you walk away.”
I turned and hugged him tight to my chest, releasing him only when he thumped my back twice to get me to let go. “I love you, even when you’re pointing out what a dick I am. If Esther forgives me, maybe we can all have dinner sometime, the five of us.”
Alex’s smile lit up like the Christmas tree in Town Park. “Yeah, man, that’d be great. Good luck with Esther.”
I thanked him, hugged him again, and took my coffee with me as I stepped out into the cold.
If Alex could forgive me even after eighteen years of pain, hopefully Esther could, too.
Throughout the short drive home, I started to think maybe my luck would turn again, that she would gladly open the door to let me throw myself at her feet and beg her forgiveness.
But my luck had apparently run out, because when I got back to the house, Esther’s car was gone.