Johanna
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“DAMOCLES” — SLEEP TOKEN
Present Day
Idon’t even get a chance to pretend I’m fine.
Against my better judgment, I try to slip away from the wedding party table once the speeches end—just long enough to catch my breath. Just long enough to get my head back on straight.
I don’t make it far.
A hand closes firmly around my wrist and starts pulling me towards the hallway behind the bar. I recognize it instantly—steady, familiar, and impossible to shake.
Grayson.
My stomach knots tighter with every step as he steers me into a quiet corner behind the bar, away from the noise and the laughter and the people who are blissfully unaware that I’m coming apart at the seams.
“We need to talk,” he says once he’s sure we’re alone.
No, I promise you—we really don’t.
He tries to get me to meet his gaze, but I just can’t make myself look at him. I keep my eyes trained on the floor, on the ugly patterned carpet—on anything except his face. I already know what I’m going to see when I look at him, and I can’t face it.
The disappointment.
I ruined his night—what’s supposed to be one of the best nights of his life—just like I ruin everything else in my life.
Grayson.
Eric and Rylee.
Brandon.
Ruined. All of them.
“Hey.” Grayson shifts closer, grabbing my hand this time, forcing my attention back to him. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” I ask, even though I know.
“The thing we do when we want to disappear inside our own heads,” he says quietly. “You’re spiraling. I’m your brother—and I do the same exact shit. So we’re talking—right here, right now.”
I don’t want to fight him. I don’t really have the energy, but I’m not ready to lay my cards out on the table with him just yet. Not when I’m not even sure what’s happening.
“It was just a speech, Gray.”
My voice is soft—thin and fragile. I can feel the burn of tears beginning to form behind my eyes.
His jaw tightens. He knows I’m lying—he always does. Grayson has seen right through me for my entire life. He’s the one person—well, besides Brandon—I’ve never been able to hide from, no matter how hard I try.
“Try again.”
I fold my arms across my chest instinctively, drawing myself inward like I can physically contain the damage if I make myself smaller. “I don’t want to do this right now.”
“Too bad, Joey,” he snaps, his frustration with my evasiveness apparently getting the better of him. “You don’t get to stand up in front of a room full of everyone we love, emotionally undress yourself, and pretend it didn’t happen.”
“I didn’t—”
“Bullshit,” he fires before I’ve even finished my sentence. “You don’t talk that way—ever. About anything. You bared your soul tonight, whether you meant to or not.”
I shake my head, panic buzzing in my chest and underneath my skin. “You’re reading too much into it. It was only a nice speech about you and Mia and your future together.”
“I promise you, I’m not,” he says, his voice lowering. “The fact that you think I am is exactly the problem.”
He takes a step closer, crowding me just enough that I have no choice but to look at him now. His expression isn’t one of anger.
It’s worse.
It’s a controlled, measured calm.
“It was a very nice speech, but I watched you tonight,” he continues. “I listened to you talk about second chances and unfinished business and love that doesn’t quit—and I watched you stare at Brandon like you were the only two people in the room while you said it.”
My breath catches painfully, as if all the air has left the room.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “This weekend isn’t supposed to be about me. I never wanted it to be. I don’t know how this happened.”
“You always do this,” he says, softly but no less sharp with a shake of his head. “You convince yourself you don’t know what’s happening, when really, you’re just avoiding the truth because it hurts too much to sit with it.”
“That’s not fair, Grayson.”
“Isn’t it?” he challenges. “You walked away six years ago without explaining a damn thing—to him, to me, to anyone. Then I got a front-row seat to Brandon Shame Spiral 2020, and watched him fall apart for the better part of a year trying to figure out what he did wrong.”
I flinch.
He doesn’t let me get another word in. I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. I’m seconds away from a monumental crash out, but he keeps going.
“You know, when I first found out about you and Brandon back then, I lost my fucking mind,” he continues, his voice rough.
“I was furious, because I knew neither of you understood exactly what the hell you were doing. You still had so much growing up to do and he…” He exhales and looks up at the ceiling, searching for the words.
“He’s one of my best fucking friends, Johanna.
I didn’t understand why it had to be him. I still don’t.”
There it is.
The words I’ve been dreading—the ones that make me want to dig a hole and die there.
I had been so scared about Grayson finding out back then because of this exact conversation. I knew he wouldn’t understand—because I didn’t at the time, either. Obviously, not much has changed.
“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” I whisper, trying to keep my voice from breaking. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
“I know you didn’t, Joey,” Grayson says immediately. “That’s why we’re standing here talking instead of tearing each other apart.”
He drags a hand down his face and gives a slow exhale as he takes a few steps back.
“I don’t want you thinking it didn’t take me a lot of time to work through it,” he admits. “I was really fucking angry. At him. At you. At the entire situation.”
“Why did we never talk about it again until now?” I ask.
“We weren’t close back then, not the way we are now,” he says simply. “After the anger faded a little, I realized you must’ve been so scared. You weren’t trying to be cruel. You were defending yourself the only way you knew how.”
My throat tightens.
“The thing is—Brandon would’ve followed you straight to hell if you’d asked him to.”
He’s not wrong, and knowing that hurts worse than yelling ever could.
“So yeah,” Grayson continues. “I was pissed. Brandon and I fought about it. The band almost broke up a couple times—but we finally worked through it. So I’m sure as hell not going to sit back and watch you two put us—all of us—through this shit again.”
I drop my head, feeling the panic and the burn of anxiety continuing to claw its way up my throat. “I don’t want to, Gray. I’d give anything not to feel this way.”
“I’m not going to let you destroy yourself trying to protect everyone else,” he counters.
“The reality is, this is happening. Still—all these years later. It scares the hell out of me Joey, but—you don’t get to unilaterally decide how this is going to go down.
You don’t get to make that call for him. ”
I squeeze my eyes shut, and a few tears escape down my cheek.
“Are you mad at me?” I ask again, quieter this time.
I open my eyes slowly to see him shaking his head. “No. I’m not.”
Then, with devastating honesty:
“I’m mad that you don’t see how much you matter. Not just to him—to all of us.”
He pulls me into his chest before I can run, holding me like he’s tethering me to the ground beneath us.
“You don’t have to decide anything right now,” he murmurs. “But you don’t get to shove this off and pretend this is nothing anymore. Not after what I just watched out there.”
When he finally pulls away—when I’ve finally stopped shaking—he grips me by the shoulders and meets my eyes.
“If I’d closed myself off after Lily,” he says with all the seriousness in the world.
“If I’d let the grief of losing Dad when I needed him most and losing Mom before I had a chance to turn it around with her take me over, I wouldn’t have let myself fall in love with Mia.
You can choose happiness, Johanna. They’d want you to. I want you to.”
As he lowers his arms and turns back towards the bustling dining room and his bride—towards the life he fought for and earned—I stay rooted in place with my heart cracked wide open.
If my brother can say it out loud like that, well…
Maybe the future I’ve always wanted isn’t so far off after all.
The truth I’ve been avoiding settles deep in my core:
This isn’t unfinished because it didn’t matter.
It’s unfinished because it mattered more than I’d ever intended it to—and yet, I can’t stop running.