15 - Tobias
Bitter Revelations
~
Tobias
I followed Lexi back into the house with a lot less enthusiasm.
While she was excited about the snow, I worried about the roof.
I wondered if the preparations we had made were enough.
I needed to know just how long the snow would fall, and whether we’d make it to the other side of winter in one piece.
“Brie! Where are you?” Lexi shouted ahead of me. “You have to see this.”
Moments later, she emerged at the top of the stairs.
Her hair was tousled, her face flushed, and she wiped her hands nervously on her pants.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on even before Gunner emerged, smirking like the cat that had gotten the cream.
I wasn’t the only one who was quietly piecing together the story of what happened while we were outside.
Gideon stood wordlessly behind me for a while before heading upstairs without a word to anyone and went to his room.
If I didn’t care about Brie, it wouldn’t have mattered. But even though I denied it, even to myself, I did. I wanted her all to myself. I wanted her to want only me, and I had not felt that way about a woman in a long time.
Lexi’s mother had been the love of my life for so long that these feelings felt like a betrayal of everything we had together. But I could only lie to myself so much.
There was no going back to that. Even the memories had stopped haunting me. And being confronted with Brie in this way shook something loose. I was terrified I was losing her somehow and knew what this feeling was.
How could I tell her without ripping open the wounds I had come here to bind? How could I trust someone like her with the most tender parts of myself?
Brie pursed her lips and walked past me toward the kitchen without a word to acknowledge any of it.
“I’ll get started on dinner,” she said to no one in particular.
I couldn’t help myself and followed her. I clenched my fists, struggling to hold myself together. How did a man even handle something like this? How was I supposed to care about someone who let three men have their turn with her all under one roof?
“What the fuck, Brie?” I hissed.
It wasn’t what I wanted to say, but when I saw her face—unashamed and just getting on with dinner preparations—the question burst out of me.
“What?” Brie asked, grabbing the chopping board from the top shelf.
I worked on my breathing. I took slow, steady breaths, pressing my hand against the countertop in case my knees buckled from the rage whirling inside me.
“Gunner?” I asked, shaking in the parts she couldn’t see.
Brie walked around me, setting out her ingredients on the kitchen island without a care in the world. She looked relaxed, satisfied, and it pissed me off.
“What about him?” she asked casually.
She was deliberately stoking the fires of my anger. She didn’t care about me, or anyone. The only thing that seemed to matter to her was her insatiable sexual appetite.
“You fucked him.” I scanned the room for signs of Lexi, but we were in the clear.
Brie shrugged her shoulders casually. “Yes. I did.”
She might as well have punched me in the gut.
If I had tried to move, I would have staggered.
So I stood there, still and sturdy, supported by the cold, hard granite of the countertop.
I had expected a lie, or at least for her to struggle with the gravity of what she had done, but she didn’t.
She said it casually, as if she were admitting to drinking the last of the milk.
“And you aren’t even a little ashamed of how you’ve hopped from one man to another since you came here? Without a word of it to me.” I was exasperated.
My anger hit a solid wall with her. She refused to budge. The cabin was quiet; only the wind whirred outside, pushing against the windows. I wanted to explode and bring the entire cabin down around us.
She sighed and stood with her back against the island, close enough for me to touch her if I wanted to. I hated that with all of this, I still wanted to. God dammit, I wanted to touch her.
“No. I’m not ashamed, Tobias. I have nothing to be ashamed of,” she said, looking me square in the eye.
“Are you ashamed of what we did? You asked me not to tell anyone, and you wouldn’t even talk to me about it. It meant nothing to you. Is it because you’re ashamed?”
Brie refused to defend herself. Instead, she attacked me. I had stolen out of her room like a thief in the night. We hadn’t spoken about it. I didn’t think there was a need, but maybe if we had, I wouldn’t be in this position. She was just doing what I had done, only she had the balls to own it.
“Well, I’m not ashamed of that either. We both needed it. A release, some pleasure. In a way, it was a kindness for both of us,” she said, summing up our encounter.
Her eyes were bright and open. It was the beginning of an honest conversation, the first we’d ever had, and it was under these strange and strained circumstances.
“I don’t belong to anyone but myself, and for the first time in my life I’m living like I know it.” Her voice was calm and measured. She had thought about this answer. She’d had this conversation with herself before she had it with me.
“Why should I be ashamed of wanting what I want and actually having the guts to get it? I’ve lived my life constantly worrying about what people would think of me.” She shook her head, dismissing the memory. “I finally feel like I’m actually living.”
A mix of emotions rushed through me. I was angry at myself for feeling something for her, for any woman, when I had already decided not to.
I was angry at Brie because she wasn’t what or who I had imagined she’d be.
She wasn’t mine. And I still felt tenderness toward her.
The thought of Gunner and Gideon touching her couldn’t erase the hurt. I felt a crushing pain in my chest.
“What about Lexi?” I asked desperately. It was a low blow, and I knew it even before I’d said it. Brie’s actions didn’t change how she felt about Lexi, not even when she slept with me.
My daughter had grown to love her so quickly.
She wanted to show off everything they had done together.
Brie taught her how to make her bed; nothing ever tasted as good as Brie’s cooking.
In a matter of weeks, Brie had become the chief point of Lexi’s world.
Taking that away from my little girl was unconscionable.
Taking the nanny away from any of us would hurt more than sharing her.
“This has nothing to do with Lexi,” Brie snapped angrily. “She’s a smart, beautiful little girl, and I love spending time with her. But her nanny isn’t all I am.”
I couldn’t deny that she loved Lexi. She was patient and kind to her, she swallowed down her fears of the animals outside, the possibly poisonous mushrooms, and poured so much into tutoring her. She went beyond my expectations of her when it came to caring for my daughter.
“Look, if you want me to leave, I can accept that. This is your home, you’re still the boss, but I refuse to be controlled by other people’s opinions anymore. I’m not hurting anyone,” Brie said.
She was right in many ways, but wrong about one thing: this was her home now, too.
No one wore their work boots into the living room anymore; none of us dared to eat food straight out of the can no matter how rushed we were…
and it hurt. Even though what she said made sense, I struggled to accept that the only way I would have her was to turn a blind eye to Gideon and Gunner having her too.
Everything I had known about love and relationships said sharing was wrong.
It was cheating, unfaithful. But no one was watching. No one was judging. Except me.
I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.
Hell, I didn’t know what the words even were.
I understood what she was saying; she wanted to be free and never agreed to any type of exclusivity.
This had nothing to do with her work with Lexi and I had no right to be angry.
Still, I was, and even worse, I still wanted her.
“I… I just thought it would be different,” I said weakly.
“Me too.”
And when our eyes met, it was with a silent understanding. One that didn’t need further back and forth on the topic.
I helped Brie make dinner quietly. We didn’t speak beyond her asking me to pass her the ladle, and me asking her which of the spices was the stock.
The kitchen grew warm with the smell of butternut soup bubbling on the stove, and slowly I started to feel more settled, resigned to what was, instead of what I had secretly hoped would be.
There was no need to call Lexi down for dinner. She just smelled the food and knew when it was ready, bounding out of her room shouting for Gideon and Gunner to come down for dinner.
“I really worked up an appetite,” Lexi said, holding her hands up for Brie to inspect.
She had taken a bath and scrubbed her hands clean without anyone telling her to. I had Brie to thank for that. We stood in the kitchen watching as Lexi set the table, humming a tune I had heard Brie hum over the pots a few times before. It was a life. Just not the one I thought I wanted.
Gunner bounded down the stairs, skipping a few with a jump that shook the floor.
“I’m famished!” he said, stretching his arms over his head with a smirk.
Gideon followed with a lot less joy. He was still sulking, still felt betrayed by both Gunner and Brie, and refused to look fully at either of them.
The awkward silences around the table were filled with Lexi’s chattering. She told everyone she had heard on the radio that it would snow sooner this year.
“And then we can build a snowman with a carrot nose and a scarf,” she said, clapping her hands together. Maybe it will keep the creatures away, Brie, and you can relax.”
Brie smiled at Lexi. “We’ll have to negotiate the carrot part with your dad,” she said, winking at me.
Lexi giggled. She really was happy. Much happier than she had been in a long time.
Even though she wasn’t exactly sad, she had fallen into our routine: chopping wood, selling wood, fixing things, sitting around the fire.
It was no life for a little girl. After Brie arrived, she had her own routine and had grown into her own person somehow.
Lexi had opinions that were not mine, she made jokes that Gunner hadn’t told her first, and she knew Gideon wasn’t the only person who could protect her.
She said ‘excuse me’ when she burped. She chose her clothes with more consideration, and started talking about a life she could have all grown up outside of our little cabin.
Brie had been good for her. She had been good for all of us. Before, we worked like a well-oiled, well-serviced machine, constantly pushing each other to do more. Something changed, and we became more human, each of us still pulling our weight, but all of us a little more than we were before.
I weighed the conversation I’d had with Brie earlier, eating the soup without tasting it, letting it warm me from the inside without appreciating any of the care Brie had tossed into the pot.
As soon as the last bit of soup was scraped out of Lexi’s bowl, Gideon stood up and quietly stacked our dirty bowls, then headed to the sink to wash the dishes.
Gunner stretched again and developed an interest in one of the books on the bookshelf.
He had never sat down to read before, but the tension at the table was enough to drive him to literature.
“I’ll help Gideon in the kitchen. Thank you, Brie. That was delicious,” Lexi smiled, hugging Brie on her way to the kitchen.
Brie and I were left alone at the table, and it became like a game of chicken that I didn’t know how to win.
“Well, I’m turning in for the night,” Brie spoke first.
I stood up with her and followed her. She stopped right outside her door and turned to me expectantly for a moment. I stared back, taking her in.
“Do you want me to go?” she asked. Her voice was laced with sadness. She didn’t want to go, but she would if I enforced my conditions on her stay here.
I didn’t have an answer for her. What I did have was a jumble of feelings I needed time to process and compartmentalize. She looked up at me, her brown eyes sparkling in the dark.
I reached for her chin and held her face in my hands, then kissed her. A soft, gentle kiss as the first snowflakes fell into her dark hair.