Page 40 of Restored Dreams

My breath hitches. Twenty-two years come crashing back at me. We can’t do this again.

“You weren’t alone, and it wasn’t just anyone, Brut. You know that.” I shake my head, my lips quivering. Lauren’s name lingers between us as Brut stares daggers at me, and my heart breaks all over again.

“You said you forgave me.” His shoulders fall, his expression defeated as he shakes his head.

“I do,” I say, my voice lowering as it trembles.

“Just not enough.” He looks over me to the balcony. “I should help you clean up.” He’s gone monotone—empty—like I suddenly feel inside.

“Just leave it,” I say, refusing to look back at the love nest. “Just leave.”

His eyes snap back to mine, and he points between us. “We aren’t fucking over, Lily. Not this time.”

“Brut,” I hiss, giving him the side of my face. “You need to go.”

I don’t watch him leave, but I feel his absence. And I don’t move. Only when I hear the side door slam do I fold to the floor and dissolve into sobs.

23

Wilting at nineteen

[Lily]

Suddenly, I’m nineteen again…

Tears pour down my face, ugly and scalding.

“Is it true?” My voice chokes over the question. The man, not a boy, but a man of twenty-three, has ripped out my heart like none other.

He hangs his head in shame, aware of what I’m asking without my further clarifying. Is it shame? Am I correct that he feels embarrassed, remorseful, and apologetic, or am I projecting onto him?

“How could you?” The question is so filled with anguish, so anchored in pain, as I stare at the man I thought I loved. The man who touched me like no other, kissed me like no other, made me feel wanted, desired, and respected. Respect. A terrible word yet I understood what he meant when he denied having sex with me, telling me he didn’t want to ruin me. He’d already ruined me with his penetrating blue eyes and his soft sighs as he told me things, taught me things about touching, accepting, and feeling. But respect must mean something other than what I thought because of this, because of what he did to me…

“Say something.” I don’t even recognize my own voice. Medusa or Maleficent or something evil has possessed me suddenly as I demand he explain why, what, where, how.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he says, his voice cracking as his fingers squeeze at his eyes before pinching his nose. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Try to explain,” I demand, finding a voice in me I didn’t know I had. I need to understand how…how he could refuse to sleep with me, but he fucked her.

“I was drunk.” The gasp falling from my lips could have been heard in Texas. I can’t believe this is his excuse. “Look, you don’t understand. A lot has happened, sort of all at once, and I just…I had too much to drink.”

I want to understand, I scream inside, my brain hurting from the vibration. I want him to tell me all that happened. Instead, I only know surface things about him. He’s going to night school and wants to be more than a mechanic.

He clearly doesn’t want me.

“When?” I’m still flabbergasted at his explanation, but I need to know. Lauren already told me, the gleam in her eyes as she revealed what they did and where…

“Two weeks ago.” My heart. Just claw it from my chest and take it. Throw it on the ground and stomp on it. Watch the blood splatter as the pieces of the organ pumping life through my veins explodes, shrapnel over the floor of this garage. We haven’t entered the office, our usual place of indiscretion. Our hiding spot for the dirty little secret of our affair. That’s what Lauren called me. His dirty little secret.

“You think he wants you?” she hissed. “A kid. One where a train already barreled through the station and didn’t stop.” She knows I was never with her precious Rick, but she’s never believed me.

“Like you’re a virgin,” I argued childishly. I was, but I was ready to give myself to this man until she took him from me.

“Two weeks,” I repeat, astonished that he’d kept the secret, the lie, for fourteen days. Fourteen days when guilt never crossed his features, his beautiful features. Tan skin, blue as sky eyes, clean jaw, edgy and hard. Those lips, those lush lips that kissed mine, sucked my breast, and tasted me for the first time. I shiver, needing a shower, needing the hottest hot to remove my skin, knowing we shared him—my sister and me.

“I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know how.” He answers my next question before I ask, and suddenly, I’m bone tired, knowing all the answers in the world won’t erase what happened.

“Say it now,” I demand, wanting to hear it directly from him even though my sister gladly told me.