Page 49 of The Secret of Emerald Cottage

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Molly’s gasp broke his painful reverie, producing a physical pain in Brec’s chest. He quickly squeezed her hand, wishing he hadn’t been so blunt. “All right, maybe not directly, but he put the gun to her head as surely as she popped the pills.”

She stared at him in horror, hand to her mouth and eyes suddenly glossy, mirroring the same pain he’d carried inside all of these years. “Oh, Brec … I am so very sorry!”

“Yeah, me too.” Head bowed, he gouged the socket of his eye with his thumb, rubbing at the sudden throb that signaled the onset of a headache as always when he was forced to face his past. “I knew Mom was prone to depression—she’d experienced down spells most of my life—so I would come home from college as many weekends as I could. But with Dad traveling most weekdays and an occasional weekend out of the month, she was alone a lot. Didn’t sleep well, so she took sleeping pills as far back as I can remember, groggy as all get out in the mornings.”

“Maybe it was an accidental overdose,” Molly whispered.

“No.” His temple throbbed at the memory of the letter she’d left for him, saying she was tired of being alone, tired of fighting the depression, and tired of fighting with Dad. He thought of all the times his parents fought over the years, deepening a depression that would one day take his mother’s life. A history of depression that had first begun one awful day at Lake Loon when he was just a teen.

His gaze trailed into a cold stare. “I drove home from college many a weekend because it tore me up to see her so down, almost like she wanted to die, so when she … did”—his throat convulsed several times—“I blamed him.”

“Were you the one who found—”

“Yes.” It was a pained whisper as he stared like a zombie, jaw compressed while a nerve throbbed hard in his cheek. “I had finals and told her I couldn’t make it home, but at the last minute, I changed my mind because Dad was away on one of his ‘business trip’s’”—his tone turned acidic—“as always. I knew she didn’t like being alone on weekends, so I decided to surprise her.”

His eyelids flickered closed as the image of that awful day came raging back. “I …”—tears stung at the back of his lids—“found her in their bedroom of our house near Savannah, just lying peacefully on the bed.” His voice broke as he swiped at the moisture in his eyes, his gaze veering into an aimless stare all over again. “Dressed in her wedding gown and veil, no less, as if heralding the death of her marriage as well as her life.”

He heard Molly’s sharp intake of breath and realized all over again just how tragic it was. A family torn asunder. Tears swelled when Molly rose to hug him, and with a violent cramp of his heart, he clung to her with all of his might, head buried in the curve of her neck while he silently wept for all he had lost.

“I’m so sorry, Brec,” she whispered. “No one should have to go through something like that—ever!”

Nodding, he pulled away to clear the moisture from his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket. “I seldom came back to Savannah after that, and when I graduated, I left the States altogether. Until I came home after my father’s funeral a few years ago.”

“After …?” Her hand clinging to his, she paused for several seconds, as if at a loss for words, but that was okay, because so was he. “So you … you never reconciled?”

He shook his head, a hollow feeling inside despite the bitterness that still weighted his chest. “I was on a road trip with the team, so I didn’t get Aunt Lilly’s letter or messages until after he died. He wrote me letters over the years, of course, but I just kept sending them back unopened. Never took his phone calls. Refused to see him. Even had my agent turn him away once when he flew to Ireland to see me, telling him I didn’t want him to know where I was under any circumstances. I couldn’t get past blaming him, you know? As far as I was concerned, he was as dead to me as my mother. Didn’t want anything to do with him or that house ever again, so I stayed far away.” He battled the burn of more tears as he stared off into space. “And yet, I could never bring myself to sell it either,” he whispered, his voice barely audible, “so I rented it out instead via a rental management agency, furniture and all.”

“And you haven’t been back since?”

“Nope. The management company handles everything—rental, repairs, taxes, you name it”—he pulled his gaze from the past to look at her with a twist of his lips—“and there it remains to this day. A house of horrors on five lonely acres on the outskirts of Savannah in Eden, Georgia, which had been anything but an Eden. More like a mausoleum to a family destroyed.”

Silence filled the space between them until he felt the gentleness of her palm rubbing his back. “I understand now why you never came back to Savannah, Brec, after all the tragedy you experienced there.” She paused. “But why Miss Lilly?” she asked quietly. “Why stay away from her?”

A sad smile lined his lips as he stared out at the falls, remembering with brutal clarity the day his parents’ lives—and his—had changed forever. The beginning of the end to his young and impressionable mind. “Because all the summers I spent on Lake Loon were wonderful except the very last one.”

He turned to look at her, not sure if it was reason enough to stay away from the aunt he loved, but it was all he had. “I was seventeen and out fishing with Uncle Hal and Aunt Lilly, when I ran inside to get something.” He barely breathed as he braced himself for a fresh onslaught of pain. “I overheard Mom and Dad arguing in their room at Aunt Lilly’s, and it paralyzed me halfway up the stairs when I learned my father was having an affair. And it wasn’t the first time either apparently, from what I heard, but a ‘long line of knife nicks to their marriage,’ my mother said.”

Closing his eyes, his mind traveled back to that pivotal day, the day his family—and his life—ended as he’d known it. More moisture burned beneath his lids, telling him the pain was as potent as ever. “I just stood there like a statue rooted to the floor because I never knew about the affairs. Sure, I knew they fought a lot and suspected their marriage wasn’t as close as it could have been, but I was a kid. All I cared about was my friends and summers at Lake Loon. I never thought much about the strain between them because frankly, I just thought that’s how marriage was supposed to be. And Mom never let on either, too intent on maintaining a picture-perfect family, I guess. My heart broke for her that day—and for me—as she sobbed uncontrollably and my father pleaded. Because after that, nothing was ever the same. Not our home in Savannah, not Lake Loon, and not my family.” He blinked hard to deflect more moisture that threatened. “So when she breathed her last, I never wanted to see any of it again.”

“Did she … ever forgive him, do you know?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know and I don’t care. I just know that I sure haven’t.”

“So, you never came back …” she said quietly, the gloom of regret in her voice as heavy as the hurt in his heart.

“Just twice to Lake Loon when Uncle Hal died, and then my father a few years later, but never to the house in Savannah because I just …”—he paused to regain control—“couldn’t, you know?”

“Yes, I know,” she said softly, shocking him when she wove her fingers through his and held on, a tenderness in her eyes that thickened the emotion in his throat. “But I’m praying things have changed for you at Lake Loon, Brec. That maybe Miss Lilly and I have made a difference for you, I hope?”

Clutching her hand, he slowly lifted his other to skim the side of her face, his gaze following the glide of his fingers until his thumb rested against her lips, caressing the shape of her mouth. His eyes rose to meet hers, and his pulse jumped at the desire he saw, the same helpless longing that now pulsed through his own veins. He could hear her shallow breathing as she stared wide-eyed, like a doe stilled in the sights of a hunter, and it took everything in him not to lean right in and taste those lips that haunted his dreams. But deep down, she didn’t want that, she’d made that perfectly clear.

“Friends without benefits.” That’s what she’d said, and despite the almost unbearable magnetic pull between them, he cared far too much to defy her wishes. Cared too much to ruin the bond of friendship he’d worked so hard to attain, convincing her that deep down he wasn’t what everybody said that he was.

Some hotshot womanizer too full of himself to care about anybody else.

Releasing a gruff clear of his throat, he gave her hand a quick press and let go, reaching for the cobbler and flipping the lid off with a wry smile. “I think we need to assuage our hunger, Princess, with something that won’t get us in trouble, aye?”