22. James
22
JAMES
L eading with your heart always ends up like this .
Pain. Drama. Stress.
I glanced over at my brother in the hospital bed. He looked pale and small, but he was still here. Broken, but alive. My relief was tinged with guilt. Had I missed the signs? Was I so wrapped up with Natalie and work that I’d neglected the one person who needed me most?
It was too painful for me to even consider. I’d allowed my life to stray from the well-worn path that had kept me in control, and now I was paying the price.
It was just after seven in the morning, and I’d managed to sleep in the uncomfortable bedside chair for a couple of hours. My back was screaming for a real bed, but I wasn’t going anywhere until Christopher woke up and we talked. I needed to be one hundred percent sure that he was going to be okay.
At least for now.
I was too tired to think through his next steps. Rehab again? Finding a new therapist? I closed my eyes, overwhelmed with everything I needed to work through, both with my family and my business.
I was tempted to call Natalie, since she and Christopher seemed to share a brother-sister bond—maybe seeing her would help him—but I soon realized that it wasn’t my place to say anything to her. Plus, she probably wouldn’t pick up my call anyway. I dragged my hand across my eyes, then ground my knuckles into them. So much had gone on that I’d barely had a chance to think about the Heidi debacle, and how Natalie had responded to it.
I glanced over when I heard rustling coming from the bed.
“Did she call?” Christopher asked in a groggy voice. “Amanda? Did she call you?”
Shit. His first waking thought was of his ex. He was worse off than I realized.
“Hey, dummy,” I said gently, reaching over to squeeze his bicep. “Nice to see you too.”
He gave me a half smile. “Hi, jackass. Guess I did something stupid, huh?”
“You think?”
His face cycled through a series of emotions as he seemed to remember what had led to him waking up in a hospital bed. “Does she know?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. At least I don’t think so.”
“Check my phone.” Christopher nodded towards the pile of his belongings on the table across the room. “I, uh, I think I texted her some weird stuff last night.”
I grabbed his phone and walked it back to him so he could unlock it.
“I don’t have my glasses,” he said, handing the phone out to me. “You can read it.”
I held my breath as I scrolled to his last series of texts to his ex and discovered it was as bad as I’d imagined. A selfie of him with tears running down his cheeks. Three texts in a row with just the word “Why?” A message saying he hated her, and that he was blocking her. Another one stating that she was going to be sorry. Then an unintelligible string of random letters and numbers. She finally texted back with just a question mark, then a follow-up text that said, “Call me.”
“So?” he asked. “Did I embarrass myself?”
“Uh…I’m gonna be honest. It’s not your best work, bro. The string ended with her asking you to call her.”
“Shit.” Christopher closed his eyes. “I can’t talk to her right now. Can you? Please? Don’t give her too many details, but tell her I’m okay, and I’ll leave her alone now.”
I didn’t have the heart to say that she probably wouldn’t care one way or the other. For that, and for everything else, I was glad that I was the one who’d be talking to her. I wasn’t about to lose the chance to stick up for my brother.
“Sure, you got it. I’m going to make this call on my own, okay? You rest, and I’ll take care of it.”
I strode down the hallway to a small meeting room with a door and made a mental note that I needed to have Christopher transferred to one of the private suites once he was stable. Privacy was paramount, especially given the timing of everything else that had just gone down.
I scrolled through Christopher’s contacts and frowned when I got to Amanda. The profile photo was from their wedding day, with his ex looking radiant in her gown and veil. Seeing it made me feel sad for my brother and everything he’d lost, and even more furious with Amanda for everything she’d taken from him. I pushed her number without even considering what I was going to say to her. I’d never liked Amanda and she knew it, but I was calling from Christopher’s phone, so she’d probably pick up, if only to yell at him for creeping her out the previous night.
I wasn’t expecting the deep voice that answered.
“What the hell do you want now, Christopher?” a deep voice snarled. “You’re a fucking psycho, you know that? You’re a total fucking weirdo, and you need to stop obsessing about Amanda. She hates you, dude. You hear me? When is that going to sink into your thick fucking skull, you freak?”
Thank god I was the one making the call. My fists curled in fury.
“Who are you?” I demanded in a low voice. “Put Amanda on.”
“It’s Tim, you idiot. Amanda doesn’t want to talk to you, got it? You need to leave us the hell alone. She needs her peace because she’s having my baby .”
He said it in a taunting voice, which made it clear that he knew how much it would hurt my brother. A haze of red-hot anger shot through me.
“This is James Branson, and you need to back the hell off, buddy,” I growled. “Put Amanda on the phone. Now .”
“Oh, fuck off,” he shot back. “She’s done with him. If he doesn’t stop calling, Amanda is going to file for a restraining order. You and your psycho brother need to leave us alone.”
He hung up before I could respond, and I was left staring at the phone. I collapsed into the chair so I could figure out my next steps before going back to Christopher’s room.
I had to be honest with him despite his tender state. It was time he understood that Amanda didn’t care about him, and he was only going to hurt himself more if he kept trying to connect with her. But why couldn’t he see that for himself? Was he so blinded by love that he’d lost all sense of reason?
The thought punched a hole through me. Love makes everything fall apart. And I could see that it had started to do that to me. Punching MG, nearly pulling away from Heidi and blowing the biggest PR coup I’d ever seen just because Natalie had looked sad . Hell, I’d almost ignored Christopher’s call just so I could try to fix things with her. And if I’d done that, my brother might now be dead. The feelings I had for Natalie…I didn’t want to call them love, but what else could they be? Still, whatever they were, I didn’t want them. Couldn’t handle them. Had no space in my life for them.
Relationships were a waste of time and effort. Someone always ended up hurt. It was better for me to stick to “no expectations” dating with women who only liked me for my bank account. Those types of women I could handle. I knew I could never lose my heart to a gold-digging fashionista who cared more about getting the perfect social media shot than actually living a genuine life.
I clenched my jaw, because I could almost feel the stirrings of missing Natalie already. But I wasn’t going to allow it to sway my resolve. Natalie had said it herself—we were over. And since she was the one who had ended it, I didn’t actually need to do anything. I didn’t have to find a way to explain to her why it wouldn’t work. Didn’t have to deal with her response, or with the possibility that it would make her cry. I could just do…nothing, and our relationship would be in the rearview mirror. Out of sight, hopefully, soon out of mind. It was better that way—for both of us.
Christopher was probably wondering what the hell was going on, and why I was taking so long. I let out a long sigh as I tried to come up with a way to tell him that he, too, needed to move on, once and for all.
A nurse bustled out of his room as I walked in, which meant he’d be wide awake for the conversation to come.
“What happened?” he demanded, sitting up in bed. “How did it go?”
I sat in the chair next to the bed. “We need to talk.”
“Why?” He shrank back and my heart fractured to see my strong brother so broken. “What did she say?”
“I didn’t talk to her, Tim picked up. He said that you need to stop calling.” I neglected to add the part about a restraining order.
“That asshole,” Christopher said.
“Yeah, he is, but…I agree with him. It’s time to move on.” I said it softly, sure that he was going to crumble. “She doesn’t love you anymore.”
He smacked the bed in frustration. “I know that. You think I don’t know that?”
“Well, I mean…” I gestured to the machines that were connected to him. “Honestly, I’m not sure.”
“James, I want clarity from her. I want to have a conversation with her, that’s it.”
“Then why did you end up here?” I asked, sounding more angry than I meant to. “You’re a smart guy, Christopher. You know you’re not going to find clarity in a bottle of pills.”
He closed his eyes and turned his head away from me.
“What clarity could Amanda even give you?” I asked, hoping that he wouldn’t shut me out completely.
He turned back to me, his face contorted and his eyes shining. “She could give me an answer about what Tim has that I don’t. Why that fucking clown is fit to be a father and I wasn’t.”
Seeing my brother in that kind of pain was a dagger in my heart, especially knowing there was nothing I could do to fix it.
“Is it me?” he asked, a desperate tone in his voice. “You can tell me, James. Is there something… off about me?”
The way he asked the question gutted me.
“No, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. You’re amazing.”
“And that’s why I need to talk to her,” Christopher yelled, caught in a loop of anger and pain. “If she would just talk to me, I could figure it out. Fix it, you know? One conversation, that’s all I need. It would be so good for us.”
I was exhausted from the past twenty-four hours and sick of his obsession with his ex. I needed to put a stop to his delusions. “Christopher, Tim said that if you ever reach out to them again, they’re filing a restraining order, okay? Do you get it now? They’ve moved on, and you should too. Your behavior is getting weird.”
The second the words were out of my mouth I regretted them. Christopher withered as if I’d punched him.
“She said that?”
I backtracked quickly. “Tim did, not her. But you shouldn’t test them, okay? Let’s focus on getting you out of here, and then we can work on a new strategy to keep you in a healthy place. Maybe we need to get you more involved at work? That could help, right? Staying busy is always a good idea.”
“Natalie said the same thing,” he murmured, staring at the wall beyond me.
She was the last person I wanted to think about in this moment.
“She’d almost convinced me to start coming back to the office one day a week.” He finally looked at me. “You two are good together; I envy your relationship. Maybe someday that’ll happen for me too.”
A painful sensation radiated in my chest. I wasn’t about to tell him what had gone down with her, not now while he was so vulnerable.
“The only person I’m thinking about right now is you,” I said, reaching out to grab my brother’s hand. “Got it?”
What I didn’t tell him was that my heart couldn’t handle any thoughts of the woman I was leaving behind.