AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Their words echo in my brain. The reminder of the connection they share with Ryan is so hard to ignore. It burns, and it hurts. My stomach is in knots, and I can’t bear to look at them.
The palms of my hands sting from the way my nails are cutting so deep into the soft pad of skin, but my body won’t obey my commands to relax.
The three men share a tense look, and I don’t know if they’re using their silent communication to talk about me. Doubt fills me as I peek at them under my eyelashes.
“I don’t know where to begin,” I say quietly. My words only increase the uncomfortable vibes in the room. A silent argument breaks out between the three of them.
I bring my knees up to my chest and let it play out. Alex is arguing on one side, Topher on another. Ben seems content to side with Topher.
I wish I could hear their silent words. I wish I could be included in the decisions.
But once more, I’m excluded, even from something like this.
Topher snarls, the sound causing goosebumps to raise over my skin, and Alex clenches his jaw but gives a curt nod. Ben seems relieved, and I don’t know why that rubs me the wrong way.
“It was my decision for none of us to tell you that we knew who Ryan was,” Topher says, leaning back in his seat. He acts so nonchalant, swinging his ankle up over his knee as he stretches out and makes himself a bigger target for me to focus on.
But I’m not an idiot. Their argument makes sense now, and I frown over at both Alex and Ben. One of them gets a full glower at how easy he was willing to throw Topher under the bus.
No matter how annoyed I am over these lies… it’s their fault as a group.
“And did you force your brothers in the same way that you forced me to move in?” I ask, giving Ben a piercing look before turning back around to Topher. The eldest’s eyes flash gold.
Topher opens his mouth, closes it, and then sighs. “No.”
I appreciate that he told me the truth, although I won’t voice that. I shouldn’t feel grateful for these little scraps of truth that they bestow upon me. That should be a given.
“So, your brothers had the choice you took from me,” I say, sitting back and looking towards Alex and Ben, who both lower their eyes, “but were willing to let you take the full weight of this punishment alone anyway.”
“And how are you going to be punishing us?” Alex asks. There’s frustration in his eyes, but more than that, there’s a heavy weight on his shoulders. He’s hunched over, despite trying to remain confident.
“Of course, I was,” Ben says, talking over Alex with an eager and rushed tone. He’s desperate. “Fuck that shit. I’ve been saying for two weeks that we should tell you. Topher was the holdout. I’m not going down with his sinking ship.”
“Well, that’s just as cowardly as the way you’ve all been lying to me.” I sneer at him, and Ben frowns, genuine confusion filling his face. “And, by that timeline, it still took you a week to decide I was worthy of hearing the truth about my child. That doesn’t get you off the hook, Ben, not even a little bit.”
Ben grunts, ducking his head, and hopefully, he regrets speaking up.
Topher loses the fake nonchalance and leans forward onto his knees. “I did what I thought was best, Maia.”
“But that’s the thing,” I say, meeting his actions head on, mirroring the exact pose. He doesn’t intimidate me. “You made a unilateral decision about my daughter. You sit here claiming you’ve got some mythical connection to my child and then decided to lie to me about information that endangers her. How is that for the best?”
I hate that my voice broke. I hate that tears are dripping down my cheeks.
I wish I wasn’t an angry crier.
It makes me look pathetic.
“Mate sad,” Max whispers, reaching for me, but I bat his hand away. It wasn’t a hard hit, but the sparks didn’t appear with that one smack, and I know that’s because I shouldn’t have done it.
“Control yourself, Alexander,” Topher snarls, but he’s looking at his brother and not me. He rubs his eyes and turns to me. “Ryan is a bad man, Maia, and acknowledging who he was… it makes it even more real.”
“He loved me.” My words are a whisper, and as much as I want to, I don’t follow it up with sharing how much he would’ve loved Phoebe. I don’t want to hurt them, I really don’t, even if they’ve hurt me.
But I still see the flash of pain that Topher quickly covers, and it causes bile to rise up in my throat.
They’re hurting me with their actions and their words. They’re judging the man I loved—the man I love?—from their interactions with him and think that they’ve got the ultimate authority on his character.
They saw him as a child. How can they form opinions over someone who had barely even lived? Even now, at only twenty-four, my life is not even halfway over, so when Ryan died at only twenty-five, what could he have achieved? What could he have done to deserve so much hate?
