Chapter 48 #2
Brinley made a strangled sound, and she began to respond, only she clipped off when little feet suddenly pattered into the kitchen.
Kai ambled his way around me and went directly for her, thumb in his mouth as he dragged his blanket behind him.
“Kai mewk? Go nigh-night?” He pointed at the stash of bottles that sat in a basket next to the fridge.
“Are you tired, sweet boy?” Brinley’s words were strained with emotion. Soft and saturated with affection.
“I tie-werd.” He bobbed his sweet head.
Her hands shook as she grabbed a bottle and dipped into the refrigerator before she reemerged with a gallon of milk.
“I know he uses the bottle to soothe himself,” she started to ramble. “But we’re going to have to wean him from it soon and figure something else out that makes him feel safe. Milk isn’t good for his teeth at night.”
Every word shook.
An avalanche of pain as Brinley fumbled over the words, choking when she gasped, “I mean, you all will have to ween him soon.”
Milk sloshed onto the counter as she tried to pour it into a bottle.
Energy whipped through the air. Striking against my spirit.
Lashes of anguish and affliction.
I took a regretful step forward. “Brinley.”
She held out a hand, squeezing her eyes closed tight for a beat, her voice ragged as she whispered, “I’m fine. I’m fine. Just let me take him.”
I slumped back, nerves marching across my flesh as I watched Brinley finish filling the bottle, twist on the cap, then swept Kai from his feet.
That little boy who drove a stake through the middle of me tucked to her chest.
She was nearly frantic as she peppered tiny kisses all over his head.
“My Bwinwey?”
She choked. “Yeah, baby. Your Brinley and my Kai.”
Agony.
Maybe before this very second, I didn’t really know what that meant.
She turned and started across the floor with him.
Trying to subdue it.
To contain it.
A quiet storm that swelled and whirled as she approached. A slow, babbling rain that still created a flashflood.
She had her hand on the back of his head as she passed, and she sent me this somber, understanding smile.
Like she got it.
No anger or blame, just the devastating acceptance that this was our lot.
I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
Is this what getting your heart broken felt like?
I had to force myself to remain rooted to the spot as I listened to her carrying Kai to my grandmother then my sister in the living room. Each of them kissed him and wished him goodnight.
His little squeals were subdued by his sleepiness, and when Elena offered to tuck him into bed, Brinley whispered, “No, I’d like to do it, if that’s okay?”
“Of course.” Meems’s voice was a low rumble as she flicked off the television. “I’m heading up to bed, too.”
“Same,” Elena said.
Meems and Elena headed upstairs.
Brinley was a few steps behind them.
My breaths jutted as the muted thud of her bare feet began to echo through the air as she ascended the stairs.
Retreating.
Dimming.
It wouldn’t be long before they faded into nothing.
Every piece of me recoiled, ripping and tearing at my consciousness as the faint thuds of them moving around upstairs filtered down to touch my ears.
Or maybe it was just her fingers sinking directly into my soul.
A prod.
A pull.
That fucking gravity that she exerted.
I couldn’t help but move.
Something unseen coaxing me into action.
But it was hindered.
Held in the trepidation that blustered through my insides. Warnings and reminders of who I was. Of the things I’d done and what I caused.
It didn’t seem to matter because I found myself standing in the hall two feet from Kai’s door.
Hazy light spilled out into the hall, and I could hear Brinley murmuring, “There we go,” as fabric rustled, and I could imagine her pulling his sleep shirt over his head.
The sleepy smile he’d give her as he squirmed on his changing pad.
This child who I wanted so much more for, too.
“Which one do you want to read tonight?”
“Doggies.” Kai giggled, and the book scraped as she pulled it from the small bookshelf, and I could feel her settling with him onto the rocker that Elena had set up in the corner of the room.
Drawn, I lowered with them. My back sliding down the wall as I sank to the floor. My head rocked back as I listened to Brinley begin to read.
Her voice soft and tender and lulling Kai right into a dream.
One where he felt safe and secure and loved. The way he should be. The way I wanted him to be.
And I could almost remember the sound of my mother’s voice. Could almost hear it whispering through the dense, rippling air.
It’s your heart. It’s your heart.
A tremor rocked through me.
Fuck.
I roughed a hand down my face.
What I wouldn’t give to be the man my mother had wanted me to be.
Brinley continued to murmur those soothing words, slower and quieter as Kai drifted to sleep.
For a few moments after she came to the story’s end, a hushed silence whisked through the atmosphere, then the rocking chair squeaked as she stood and I heard her feet padding across the room.
Overcome, I stood, too, and I shuffled to the doorway to watch as Brinley carefully laid Kai into his crib. Only a dim nightlight glowed in the room.
She stood gazing down at him, but I knew she felt me.
Hell, I was pretty sure she’d known I’d been there all along. It wasn’t like either of us were immune to the simmering fire that smoldered at the fringes of our beings.
Her back rose and fell with her uneven breaths, a slow severity rising and falling over me.
A breaking tide that kept crashing, riding higher with each undulation.
I took a single step through the door.
“Brinley.” I wheezed it, no way to staunch the flow of grief. I didn’t know if it was fueled by hers or if it was wholly mine.
This need that thrummed and throbbed. Something greater than the physical. A part that I didn’t recognize.
Brinley took it as an apology, and she sniffled, clearly working to shore up the pain.
“He’s so perfect,” she whispered, barely turning toward me. The gold flecks of her eyes flashed in the bare radiance of the nightlight. “I had no idea I could feel this way about a child who doesn’t belong to me, but God, I love him so much.”
The bones in my chest creaked with the pressure.
“Brinley,” I said again. That time it was a plea.
She barely shook her head. “It’s my fault. I knew. I mean, God, I’ve only been here for little more than two weeks, and I let myself go. I was the fool who let this place invade. The one who let your family invade. The one who let you invade.”
Her brow pinched. “But I don’t regret it. Sometimes we have to let ourselves feel—wholly and without reserve, the pain and loss included—to find who we really are.”
She inhaled a stuttered breath. “And I’ve been running from the pain for so long, fighting and fighting and barely surviving, that I forgot who I wanted to be.
I lost her, Silas. I lost her behind the walls and armor I built around myself.
I lost the hope and the belief and the joy of dreaming.
And I want to be her, Silas. And maybe because of you all, I finally might be. ”
“Brinley.” Her name hemorrhaged from my mouth, bleeding like a fatal wound, and I took another step forward. I realized I was basically chanting her name, unable to process or formulate the real chaos toiling in my conscience.
Her words were daggers that impaled. Arrowing through to the hidden places that had rotted and festered in the depths of me for what felt like a million years.
A different lifetime.
Sounded about right considering the good parts of me had died the day my mother had.
And fuck, because of Brinley, flickers of them had been rekindled.
“I want to give that to you.” The admission was grit, and I fisted my hands at my sides to keep myself from reaching out and taking what felt like mine.
Her lips trembled. “Do you?”
There was her fire.
A challenge in the lilt of her chin.
“If I were different—”
Her huff cut me off.
“If you were different? I don’t want you to be different. I fell for the man standing right here in front of me.”
I nearly bowed at her confession, and the connection that screamed between us burned a hole through the middle of me.
A keening wire that fought to draw us together.
I got the panicked sense I’d die if I didn’t do something to fill it.
She lifted that fierce chin higher. “Because of that man? Standing here? I’m no longer afraid.”
It was me who was afraid. Terrified of what she made me feel. Of what she made me want. The outright control she exerted over me.
I was the fucking president of a violent MC. The spearhead of our underbelly. The one who picked and chose who survived and who met death.
I’d cut down a host of demons and razed a legion of monsters. I’d been marked. Had a score of bounties on my head.
And all it took was this one fiery woman to bring me to my knees.
Wildfire.
“That’s because you’re the strongest woman I know.
Most beautiful. Kind and fierce and untamed.
Most giving, even when you know it’s going to cost you.
Willing to do anything for the ones you love even when they don’t come close to deserving that love.
You’re so fucking brave through everything you’ve been through, I’m the one who’s standing here in awe.
You deserve every fucking good thing in this world, Brinley Webber. ”
I’d meant it to come out as a parting. A goodbye. A severing of the bond we’d forged.
Except she stepped forward.
I was slammed by a deluge of fervency.
A torrent of everything she was.
She reached out and set her palm on my cheek.
“You’re right, Silas. I do deserve every good thing in this world. The question is, are you brave enough to accept what you deserve? What’s standing right in front of you?”