Winning Brynn (Seattle Strikers)

81. Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-two

Brynn

Leo’s jaw is a nasty paint splatter of violet and maroon, intensified by the brilliant white of the bathroom’s spotlights. He winces as I hold the ice pack against the bruise, and I stroke my fingers down the other side of his face to counteract the pain.

“He got you good.”

He grimaces with a bitter laugh. His head sags as he stands between my legs, his hands gently stroking the small of my back, where I sit in front of him on the bathroom counter. “I deserved it.”

But he didn’t.

The worst thing he did to Alex was hiding our relationship from him. But we wouldn’t have had to hide it in the first place if my brother wasn’t so irrationally protective of me, if he hadn’t decided it was his responsibility to police who I can and can’t be with, simply because I was born with a vagina a few years after he was.

If I’d been born a boy, would he have treated me the same way? I don’t think so.

It’s sexist is what it is.

“You didn’t.”

“I fucked his little sister, Brynn. I went behind his back. I betrayed his trust. I lied to him. Hell, he should have hit me again.”

Anger bursts from my chest, red and explosive. “Don’t you dare diminish what we have to that word, Leo Sullivan.” I jab a finger into his arm. “You might have ‘fucked’ me, but you did so much more than that. You gave me a home, a future, and a family. You made me fall in love with you, and goddamnit, you fell in love with me too. Or has my brother gotten into your head enough to make you forget all that?”

His eyes are soft as he blinks up at me. His fingers inch under my jersey, whispering across my bare skin. “No, baby. I could never forget.”

“It is my choice who I welcome into my bed and my heart. It is not my brother’s.” I lift my hand back to his face and temper the bite in my voice. “I know it’s hurting you to be fighting with him, and it’s breaking my heart for you. But if bro code matters more to Alex than me being happy, then that’s on him. I will never apologize for being with you, Leo, not when you’re the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

His smile starts slowly, his lips stretching outward for several seconds, gaining in confidence and certainty. He bends his head to brush his mouth over mine, kissing me with something akin to reverence. “I love you, Brynn.”

“I love you too.” I let the moment shimmer for a second, feeling it glide over my shoulders like a breath of warm air. Then I push him away and hop off the counter.

He frowns. “Where are you going?”

“There’s something I need to do,” I tell him over my shoulder as I pad out of the bathroom. “You’ll need to look after your own child for once while I’m gone.”

I fire him a wink so he knows I’m only teasing, and he rolls his eyes in response.

“Will you be long?”

I huff. “Not if I can help it.”

Alex doesn’t answer his door when I knock. I give him three chances before calling the doorman and telling him I can smell smoke coming from my brother’s apartment.

Steve, a middle-aged man with a goatee and craggy face, lets me in, no questions asked.

“Thanks, Steve.” I pat him on the arm. “I’ll take it from here.”

“But Miss, if there’s a fire—”

“Huh, that’s weird.” I make a show of sniffing the air. “I can’t smell it here. Maybe it’s the apartment next door, you should go check that out.”

He looks at me in bewilderment, so I double down, shuffling him out the door. “It’s definitely that apartment.” I point to a random one down the hall. “Quick. They could be dying of carbon monoxide poisoning for all we know.”

His gaze flies between me and the other apartment, frozen between knowing that I’m up to no good and genuine concern that there’s a fire blazing somewhere in the building. So, I make the choice easier for him and shut the door in his face.

Poor Steve.

I’ll have Leo give him a generous tip for his troubles later.

“Alex!” I yell into the silence, my voice bouncing off the stark-white walls and black glass furniture. Ugh, he’s got no taste in interior design. His place is so cold and man-ish in comparison to the apartment a few floors above that I now call my home. “I know you’re here. Don’t ignore me, asshole!”

I pass the eight-foot mirror on the wall, where Alex spends most of his time taking photographs of himself, and turn into the main room. Like Leo’s place, it’s open-plan with a kitchen, dining space, and living area. Unlike Leo’s place, it’s all high-gloss and cold monotones, the opposite of cozy and the perfect representation of his bachelorhood.

It’s also empty.

“Stop being a coward, for Christ’s sake.”

An indignant grunt sounds somewhere. “In here.”

I spin on my heel, stomping back down the hallway until I’m standing in the doorway to his bedroom. My brother sits on the end of his bed with his head in his hands. The knuckles on his right hand are split and bruised the same color as Leo’s jaw. The sight reignites the fury inside of me.

I temper it down, though, knowing nothing good will come out of this conversation if I go in all guns blazing. That said, I’ve already tricked the doorman into letting me into the apartment, called my brother an asshole, and accused him of being a coward, so there’s a strong possibility I’ve already fucked that up.

But we live and learn.

“How did you get in here?” he asks, not bothering to uncover his face and look at me.

I wince. “Steve is concerned there’s a fire in the building.”

He scoffs. “There is. It’s standing right in front of me.”

“Kinda weird that you’d call your sister hot.”

He finally raises his gaze to meet mine, his nose scrunching in disgust. “I was going more for thoughtless and destructive.”

“Ouch.”

He shrugs as if to say, well, what were you expecting?

Blowing out a long breath through pursed lips to stop myself from losing my shit, I roll my neck. “We need to talk.”

“Oh no. Are you breaking up with me?”

“Stop being such an ass,” I snap. Evidently, my deep breath didn’t work out for me.

“You’re calling me an ass after what you did?” His eyes widen in incredulity. “And then you force your way into my apartment, wearing my best friend’s jersey to rub it in? Are you for real right now?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose between my fingers. “I don’t want to have this conversation here.”

“I don’t want to have it at all.”

“Tough shit.” I disappear into the hallway, grab his coat off the hook on the wall, then reappear only to throw it at him. It hits him square in the face. “Put that on.”

“Ow.”

I roll my eyes. “Don’t be a baby. It’s a coat, not a fist. How do you think Leo is feeling right now?”

He flinches at the reminder but quickly tries to cover it with a scowl. “Where are we going?”

“For a walk.”

Gravel crunches beneath my sneakers as the sun filters light through the Douglas firs lining either side of the Olympic mountain trail. It’s been years since I last hiked through this forest beside my brother, and though I wish we could have returned to the place that used to be so special to us under better circumstances, I figured that if we could work out our shit anywhere, it would be here.

The scent of pine and earth surrounds me, smelling so similar to Leo that it calms me just enough to get through the coming conversation without a show of violence.

To my surprise, it’s Alex that breaks the silence first. “Why him?” Gone is the earlier petulance in his tone, and in its place is a mourning note of utter sadness.

“You ask me that like it was a choice.”

Alex shoves his hands into his pockets with his brows pulled tight. “Wasn’t it?”

“No.” I couldn’t have stopped falling in love with Leo if I’d tried. “Neither of us went looking for it. It just happened. I guess it began when he started comforting me through my nightmares, and you know how ridiculous they are sometimes, but he never made me feel silly. He even helped me try to work out the meaning behind them then reassured me when I worked it out.” I trail off, remembering the first time I woke up in Leo’s arms. “He saw me. Not just the perpetually happy, sunshiny mask I wear with everyone else, always hiding how I really feel, never letting anyone close enough to see who I really am.”

Maybe that’s why it’s him.

Because he’s the only person I’ve never had to wear it with.

“I see you, don’t I?” Alex asks, his voice rough and strained. “Isn’t that enough?” Above us, birds click through the rustling leaves, their wing beats echoing through the trees as we walk farther into the forest. I stare up at them, counting the colors of their feathers as I consider my words. “I don’t think you do,” I whisper finally. “Not anymore.”

His steps falter. I pause with him, turning around to see his face falling with absolute devastation. “How can you say that?”

Tears prickle my eyes as I look at him. God, I hate hurting my brother, but my mom was right all those weeks ago at the soccer game. His overprotectiveness is killing me, even if it comes from a place of care.

My chest heaves with heavy, pained breaths. “You treat me like a child, Alex. You pick apart every relationship I have—not just my romantic ones, but my friends too. Even Ivy. You’re so dead set in trying to protect me from getting hurt that you don’t see it’s you who’s hurting me the most.”

I just broke his heart. And it hurts so bad that I almost wish I’d never said anything at all. But resentment has been festering inside me for months now—longer, even—and though it’s crushing me, I know this conversation is critical if I don’t want to lose my relationship with my brother.

He’s been my rock since I was six. My best friend. My whole world. Losing him would be catastrophic, but I can’t keep living like this. It isn’t healthy, and it isn’t fair.

His nostrils flare, his lip trembling as he fights for control over what he’s feeling. “I’m hurting you?”

A tear falls, and I nod through it. “I know you don’t mean to. I know you’re only trying to protect me, but it’s stifling. You don’t want anyone getting close enough to me to hurt me, I understand that, but what kind of life is that for me? I don’t want to be lonely for the rest of my life, Alex. I want to love and have friendships and care for little girls who don’t have anyone else looking out for them. I don’t want to only rely on you. I love you. You’re my brother. But to answer your earlier question, that isn’t enough for me.”

His eyes swim with defeat. His shoulders are curled in on themselves like he’s a wounded animal, not a six-foot-something soccer player who never takes anything seriously. “Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling like this?”

“I have told you,” I sigh. “You just didn’t listen.”

He covers his face with his hands as his body shudders. I can’t watch it. Closing my eyes, I chew ferociously at my bottom lip as more tears run down my cheeks, stinging my skin in the cool air.

When Alex finally lowers his hands, his eyes are red-rimmed and despairing. “I don’t know how much you remember from when our parents died—you were only six. But that night, on the steps of the children’s home, I watched you break. And every night after, for months, I had to listen to you screaming out for Mom, knowing that, no matter what I did, or how long I let you sleep in my bed with me, I couldn’t bring her back for you.”

His face contorts as tears of his own leak over his face. Mine are falling freely now. I’ve lost the strength to try to stop them, and seeing my brother cry brings forward a fresh, unstoppable wave.

Unable to take it anymore, I reach forward and clutch his hand in mine.

“Alex—”

He shakes his head. “No, let me finish. I was lying there with you after you’d spent another night crying yourself to sleep, and I swore to myself that, for as long as I live, I will never let you feel pain like that again. I couldn’t—I can’t— watch you go through that again.”

I smile up at him sadly. “I’m not six anymore,” I tell him gently. “I love you so much for what you did for me back then, for what you’ve done for me every day since, and I’m so sorry that you had to look after me so much that you weren’t able to grieve the way you needed to. You were a kid too, Alex. You needed someone just as much as I did.”

“You’re my baby sister. I’ll always look after you.”

“I know.” I nod. “And I’m so grateful to you for that. But I’m not afraid of pain, and it’s impossible to stop it from happening. Even if we could, I wouldn’t want to.”

He blinks in confusion. “Why?”

“Because pain is born out of beautiful things. If we get rid of the pain, we get rid of what came before it. The love that led to grief. The joy before the loss. I still want those things, even if it will hurt me afterward. You think it wouldn’t destroy me if something happened to you?” I ask. “It would. It would kill me. But it would be worth it, because I got to have you as my brother. Because you’re the best goddamn brother in the whole world, even if you’re unreasonable and insanely overprotective.”

His arms come around my shoulders, and he pulls me in for a long hug. I sigh into his shoulder, feeling like that six-year-old girl again who had no one in the world but her ten-year-old brother, who’d dedicated his whole life to protecting her.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers against my hair. “I’m so sorry, Brynn Bear.”

“I forgive you.” I sniff into his coat.

I’ll always forgive him. Because all he’s ever done is try to keep me safe, even if his methods were questionable.

“Do you think you’ll be able to forgive Leo?” I ask, peering tentatively up at him.

His eyes gloss over with a quick flare of anger. “I’m still mad at him.” His gaze finds the trees beside me as he thinks. “Even if I shouldn’t have tried to dictate who you could or couldn’t be with, he should have told me, you know? It hurts that he didn’t.”

“I understand.” I pull back from his hold and straighten my jersey. “It’s my fault too. I’m sorry for that.”

His eyes narrow before he whips his arm out and traps me in a headlock, rubbing his knuckles painfully across my scalp. I laugh, flailing against him until he finally releases me. “That was uncalled for.” I pout.

“You’re a little shit.”

“Me?” I hold my chest in feigned offense. It feels good to be laughing with him again. My shoulders feel lighter now, the air between us clear, any resentment I was feeling toward him drifting away on the early spring breeze. “You punched your best friend in the face, and I’m the little shit?”

The smile fades from his face as he winces. “Guess I have some apologies to make too, huh?”

“Come on.” I grab his arm and drag him back down the trail to the car. “Ain’t no time like the present.”