Chapter 25 #2
There’s a hysterical edge to his voice that frightens me.
His arm tightens around my waist, and my head bows as I feel my resolve crumble piece by pathetic piece.
He’s right. So right, in fact, that I’m trembling—because I can see that he really has changed, that his intentions are honorable.
That’s more terrifying than the alternative.
What happens when I let my guard down and let him into my head and heart again?
I can’t simply be his friend. Or his coworker.
I would never, ever get over him.
“What happens when I meet you halfway, Brandon?” I whisper shakily. “I can’t be your friend, if that’s what you want. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.” Because I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you . . . “I—”
His eyes soften, and I avert my misty gaze, unable to look at him. It feels like I’ve just cracked my ribs open and exposed my beating heart to him. Gently, he turns me to face him. Patient as ever, he waits for me to meet his gaze.
Slowly, my eyes lift.
“I don’t want to just be friends,” he says gruffly. “I never did. From the very beginning, I—”
My heart leaps into my throat. “You what?”
He grabs my face almost roughly. “I’ve wanted—” He squishes his forehead against mine as his grip on my cheeks tightens.
There’s a sudden blaze of determination in his eyes that takes my breath away.
“I more than like you, Spitfire. I love you. I love you. And I want you. All of you. Every part of you.”
My knees buckle. I forget to breathe.
Am I dreaming this?
“Not like that,” he clarifies, then pauses.
“Well, yes, like that.” He smirks once, his eyes sheepish before they go serious again.
“But it goes beyond that. I want you—your forgiveness, your trust, your heart, your time. But most importantly, I want things to be the way they were before. Before I messed up. Before everything changed between us.”
My heart falls with disappointment. So he doesn’t want what I want.
He wants to go back to the way things were . . . before.
“But I don’t think you’re ready for any of that, and I don’t blame you.
And at any rate, I don’t think I really deserve those things.
” I grimace. He hesitates, then sighs. “I know there’s still so much to talk about .
. . so much that was left unsaid after everything that happened, and I know that’s my fault, but—”
My hands cover his. “Brandon, stop.” I sniffle and cough, and it’s not for dramatic effect. I genuinely don’t feel well, and the idea of talking about how he broke my heart isn’t exactly on the top of my list of priorities right now.
That’s a wound I don’t think I can reopen tonight.
Or ever again.
“I’m sorry.” I stifle a yawn. “I’m just very, very tired, and my back—”
At the mention of my back pain, Brandon immediately steps back. “Let me take you to bed.”
Surprised, I nod. Sleep sounds like a five-star meal right about now. “Okay.”
Then he turns and crouches down.
Perplexed, I stare at his broad, muscular back.
He glances over his shoulder and gestures for me to hop on. “All aboard the Brandon Express.”
I laugh. “Um . . .”
“Come on,” he insists, still crouching in front of me like he’s poised to play leap frog. “Hop on.”
Embarrassed, I recall all the times I forced him and Jamie to give me piggyback rides while growing up. And maybe it’s the pain or the fatigue or the fact that we’ve finally addressed the elephant in the room, but for once, I don’t feel like rejecting him.
So I allow him to assist me up onto his back and carry me up the stairs piggyback style like I weigh nothing more than a backpack filled with feathers.
“Toot-toot,” he jokes when we’re halfway up the steps.
I laugh again.
He sighs like he’s relieved by the sound and squeezes my thigh.
When we make it upstairs, the TV is off, and the house is silent. Brandon tiptoes toward my bedroom, and our sneaking around feels eerily similar to all the times I snuck out to see him, or when he’d slip silently into Grandma’s house to see me.
I’m starting to wonder if Grandma knew about us the whole time.
Brandon gently deposits me onto the edge of my bed, but as he goes to step back, I grab his hand.
I regret it almost immediately, but it’s too late to backtrack.
He turns, then sinks to his knee before me.
He’s looking at me so expectantly, so attentively—as if he thinks I’m about to ask him to do me some complicated favor before he leaves.
He strokes my knuckles with his thumb. “Yes?”
“Stay,” I blurt thoughtlessly, my cheeks warming when I realize what I’m asking.
One night wouldn’t hurt, right?
“No,” he says instantly, firmly. I’m so floored by his blunt rejection that my mouth falls open and tears pool in my eyes. But then he drops a tender kiss to my knuckles. “Not because I don’t want to,” he adds, softening the blow. “It’s just . . . not a good idea. You know that.”
“I just want to cuddle,” I murmur enticingly, scooting back onto the bed and patting the space next to me. “Just for a little bit. Then you can go. Please?”
His eyes darken when he glances at the sheets. I shiver. “No.”
I didn’t expect to take his rejection so hard or so personally, but my eyes water again, and my chin wobbles.
Nodding, I flop down on the bed—wincing as my back protests—and pull the covers over my face as the waterworks set in.
Ever since Adam’s Bible study group prayed over me, I can’t seem to stop crying—even over the simplest, dumbest, most mundane things.
It’s infuriating.
“Evie,” Brandon murmurs, pulling the cover back. I roll away as another irrational tear slips down my cheek. The bed shifts as he sits down beside me. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” he whispers, wiping the tears away.
I know I’m being ridiculous. He just admitted that he loves me, that he wants me this way. So there’s no need for me to feel so hurt by his rejection. But . . . he still doesn’t want to be more than friends. He wants things to go back to the way they were before.
So where does that leave us?
I cry harder.
“Evie . . .”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Brandon. It’s just my back,” I snark before burying my face in my pillow.
“Okay.” He’s silent for a moment.
“You can go now,” I growl, irritated that he’s just watching me have an emotional breakdown over his very reasonable and responsible decision not to stay the night.
“Not before you tell me why you’re so upset,” he insists quietly. “Talk to me, Evie. Like you used to. Help me understand so I can make it better.”
I sob silently into my pillow, recalling all the times he left immediately after we were intimate, all the times he sent me home when I wanted to stay wrapped up in his arms. All the times I wanted him to stay the night with me, but he refused.
I remember how painful and embarrassing the rejection felt, how I always walked away from the experience feeling used and empty.
Each time, it seemed like he would give me less and less of himself.
First, he would stay for half the night, talking and cuddling with me like I was his whole world.
Then he would only stay for a few minutes afterward, claiming he needed to get up early the next morning.
Then he started leaving right after . . .
I didn’t know what to do. I got more and more desperate each time.
It felt as if I was losing him before I’d even had him, and I ended up giving everything to him—every part of me—just to try and put a stop to his slow, torturous, disinterested retreat.
To try and keep hold of him and his waning interest.
It didn’t work.
I mumble the words into the cotton, wishing they weren’t true. “It hurts when you leave.”
He’s quiet for so long that I wonder if he’s heard me. “I’ll stay, if you really want me to,” he finally whispers, stroking the back of my hair. Irrationally, I sob harder under his touch, my heart aching with an indescribable longing. My chest feels like it might implode under the pressure.
I wish I didn’t love him. How uncomplicated my life would be.
God, take this pain away. Please.
“But not all night,” he clarifies. “And not in the bed.”
My heart jumps. I peek a curious, tearful eye out of my pillow. “Where?”
He nods at the rocking chair, then motions for me to sit up. “Come here.”
The joy that those two simple words spark in my heart is unhealthy. Concerning, even. But I spring from the bed like my back doesn’t feel half broken—a miracle, really—and clamber into his arms, unwilling to let him go.
At least, not tonight.