Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Mo had to turn Bronwyn loose when Cal parked in his driveway. He hated to let her go, but really, he had no right to keep hanging on to her.
They had been friends.
More than friends.
Then enemies.
Then nothing.
Then something weird that no one could figure out.
And now they were . . . something different. Friends? Maybe. People who’d been through a traumatic experience and who were experiencing heightened emotions? Definitely.
Was this one of those times when eight hours of sleep would return them to the status quo?
He hoped not.
But what would their new normal be?
Not that they’d ever been normal.
He stumbled into his house to brush his teeth and change into pajamas.
Thanks to Aunt Carol, he’d had to leave the hospital in borrowed scrubs.
He took the time to clean as much of his skin as he could with a washcloth.
He didn’t want to get any blood in Meredith’s guest bed.
But mostly he didn’t want Bronwyn to see it.
She got a funny look on her face when she focused on his injured arm, and he didn’t want her dwelling on the thoughts behind that look.
By the time he made it the thirty feet from his tiny house to Meredith’s, Bronwyn was upstairs and in Meredith’s bed.
Meredith waited for him in the kitchen. She had her work clothes draped over the sofa. “I promise to be quiet when I get ready. I’ll drink coffee when I get to work.”
He grinned at her. “I was messing with you.”
She tried to smile, but her face went through some bizarre contortions before tears filled her eyes and she threw herself into his arms.
“Shh, shh. It’s okay. I’m okay.” He muttered the words over and over until her quiet sobs eased and she relaxed in his arms.
“You . . . almost—”
“I’m okay.” He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “And if Bronwyn keeps talking to me, it was worth it.”
She pulled back a little. “Look at you, finding the silver lining. Bronwyn’s already been good for you and it’s only been a few hours.”
He didn’t disagree, but he didn’t have the mental capacity to do anything more than shrug. “Are we surprised by that?”
Meredith gave him a watery smile. “Not even a little. Now, go to sleep. And don’t be mad at me when I come up and check on you before I go to work.”
He gave her another quick hug. “Go. Sleep. Let tomorrow take care of itself.”
She chuckled at one of Granny Quinn’s famous sayings. The fact that it came straight out of Scripture made it hard to argue with. Not that he hadn’t tried a few times.
“Back at ya.” She left her house and jogged over to his. Mo waited until she was safely inside before he turned out the lights and headed up to bed.
They’d built Meredith’s home with a double staircase.
One side went to the small loft where she’d made a guest room.
The other went to her bedroom, which was a cozy nook that suited her personality.
The stairs met on a small, raised landing a few feet from the main floor.
Mo had one foot on the landing when he heard Bronwyn’s voice.
“Mo?” she whispered the word into the near darkness.
He turned on his cell phone light and found her. Bronwyn sat at the top of the stairs to Meredith’s bedroom, leaning against the wall. Her hair was a mess. No makeup. Eyes down.
Mo considered joining her, but instead, he climbed the stairs on his side and took a position mirroring hers. Then he turned off the light on his phone.
“Hi there. What are you doing, sitting in the dark?”
“I should have spoken to you sooner.”
“Bronwyn—”
“No. I need to say this now. I won’t keep you. You need to sleep. So do I. But if I don’t say it now—” Her voice broke and Mo realized she’d been crying.
Bronwyn took a deep breath. “I never apologized. Not really.”
“You tried.”
“I made a mess out of that one, didn’t I? You were right. I was still working through a lot of stuff, and I’d deluded myself into thinking you would welcome me back with open arms. It was selfish and small of me.”
“We were young, Bronwyn.”
She made a scoffing sound. “Young enough to be stupid, old enough to regret it.”
“We’ve both made mistakes. If I could go back to that day, I’d stand there and listen.
I’d take you out for dinner and coffee and I’d let you tell me everything.
And I would have told you everything. How it felt when I came home and you were”—Mo cleared his throat and fought against the sudden moisture in his eyes—“gone. How furious I was with your family for not making you come back. And how I wanted you to be okay. I wanted you to be happy. And if that was far away from here, then that would be okay. But not with him.”
“Yes. Him.” Bronwyn’s voice quavered. “We can’t have this conversation now, but I wanted you to know that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving without saying goodbye. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for treating you like someone who would always come to my beck and call.”
Mo didn’t know what to say. What could he say?
Bronwyn continued, “But I’m not sorry for going no contact after that last episode. I was not okay, and I couldn’t be around you for a while. I needed the distance.”
“Can I say that I’m so sorry for that?” Mo shook his head. “I have no excuse. But again, I wish I’d listened to you. I wish I’d asked you why you were at the hospital and what was going on in your life. I didn’t. And I deserved your wrath.”
“Well, you sure got it. And for a little while, maybe you deserved it. But not for the past year or so. I should have shown up here one day and said, ‘Mo, we need to talk.’ But I didn’t. I was . . . embarrassed? Afraid? Stubborn?”
“Waiting for me to do something else to prove that you’d made the right choice the first time?” Mo suggested.
He couldn’t see her face in the darkness, but he heard what might have been a shrug. “Maybe. But mostly it was stubborn pride. You hurt me and you were sorry. But I wanted to punish you for it, anyway. And that was where I went too far.”
“I think it’s safe to say we both screwed up. Big time and on repeat.”
They sat in silence for so long, Mo wondered if she’d fallen asleep on the stairs.
“Mo?”
“Yeah?”
“What happens when we wake up?”
That was the million-dollar question. “What do you want to happen?”
“I don’t know.” He didn’t think she was lying. But maybe she wasn’t being entirely truthful either. “I don’t want to go back to the way it was.”
“Agreed.” With his whole heart.
“But I’m not sure how to move on from here.”
He didn’t respond immediately. “I think we have to take it as it comes, Bronwyn. We have so much history and so much still in common that finding our way might not be as hard as we think.”
“Or it could blow up in our faces.” She sounded so sad. “We don’t have a great track record.”
“You mean I don’t have a great track record.” He would own his part in the debacle they’d turned into.
“No—”
“I’m not blaming. It’s true. How about this?
Let’s say we don’t know where we’re going, but let’s agree that we’re going somewhere good.
We aren’t going backward. We aren’t devolving into mistrust and anger.
We’re moving forward. Taking the next step.
We don’t have to be able to see the whole path to know that’s the right move, do we? ”
“I think,” she said the words slowly, like she was being very careful to get them right, “that sounds like a good idea.”
“Good.” Mo sounded relieved. Had he really thought she would reject his proposal? Taking it a step at a time was as much as she could have possibly hoped for.
“Go get in bed, Bronwyn. You’re tired. I think we’ll both feel better tomorrow.”
She stood and took one step up the stairs, but then, “Mo?”
“Yeah?”
She wanted to tell him she’d missed him and that she was so thankful they were talking. But what she said was, “Don’t think I’ll be throwing the game. I play to win.”
His low chuckle warmed her to her toes. “As long as you understand that the same holds true for me.”
With that, she slid into Meredith’s bed. Her first thought was that she needed to find out where Meredith had gotten the sheets because they were divine. Her last conscious thought was that she should be afraid—someone had tried to kill her today, after all. But she wasn’t.
She was . . . almost . . . maybe . . . happy.
She woke to silence. No. Not silence. There was a sound. What was it? It took her still sleepy brain a moment to make the connection.
A computer. Someone was typing on a computer. Another sound. Someone—no, not someone. Mo. Mo was typing on a computer while she slept the day away!
She bolted out of the bed and down the stairs, thankful that the comfy pajamas she’d thrown into her bag before she left home yesterday could pass for leisurewear.
Mo sat on the sofa in Meredith’s living room. His laptop was on his lap. One leg was elevated on an ottoman. He looked up as she descended the stairs, and his smile froze her on the spot.
“What happened to your face?” She blurted out the question before she could think it through.
His smile turned into a laugh. “Good morning to you, Nurse Bronwyn. You might want to work on your bedside manner. A guy could get a complex from a question like that.”
She ignored him and walked closer. “Seriously, Mo.” She reached out to touch his face before she got ahold of herself and jerked her hand back.
“Those weren’t there yesterday.” His cheek and jaw sported a purple-and-black bruise under his scruff.
And he had the makings of a doozy of a shiner around his right eye.
“They were there. They hadn’t developed yet. Bruises don’t appear instantaneously.”
“When did y—?”
“I don’t remember the specifics. I think I ducked at one point when we were on the ground and hit my face on the pavement.” He shrugged it off. “Aunt Carol has already texted.” He looked at his watch. “We’ll see her in about an hour. I’ll have her take a look.”