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“Talk to me, honey,” she whispered. It was the same kind of whisper Cal had when he was pleading with me last night to go with him. The tone in her voice struck something deep that made me angry. Not at her, but at Cal. At Jack. At this whole mess.
“I’m mad,” I said honestly. “And I’m trying to be strong, but it hurts. Hurts worse than I ever thought I could hurt. I keep thinking this pain will somehow kill me in my sleep. Like, I’ll stop breathing and suffocate from it, but I don’t. I keep waking up to the truth…”
“What truth is that?” Bea urged.
“They lied to me,” I said. “Both of them. They set me up…took everything I am.” I gave a not so humorous laugh. “And I let them. I gave it up willingly. So, what does that make me?”
“It makes you human, honey,” Bea said. Small scattered snowflakes hit the windshield, as we wove down Sycamore Street and continued our slow pace on the back roads toward town. “And I agree with you,” she said.
Surprise hit my skin like a blast of hot air. “You do?”
“Hell yeah, I do,” she said with some sauce in her voice. “Those boys messed up big time. You have every right to feel the way you do. I think it’s good for them to be paying the price it cost of hurting you.”
Great, now I wanted to cry for a whole other reason. Bea wasn’t even my family and she was supporting me. Letting me feel how I needed to. Telling me it was okay.
“You have to know something, though,” she went on. “Those boys have always had each other. It’s been them against the world from the start. Nothing has ever come between them.”
“I didn’t mean to come between them.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” Bea pulled to the side of the road, parked, and faced me. She grabbed my hand, and there was a desperation in her eyes. “Lana, you are their world.”
They way her blue eyes searched mine, like I had an answer, made bile rise in my throat. Because I didn’t. I had no answer and even less of a clue of how to tackle my life. But she was looking at me like I held some kind of power.
“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted. Loving and losing Jack had been hell. Now there was baggage between us, the truth between us. And it surrounded me like thick smoke. He’d left to give Cal time with me. And I’d fallen in love with Cal, while never letting go of Jack completely. In the end, they both deceived me. “Love should be about trust and isn’t supposed to hurt,” I whispered.
Bea frowned and blinked several times. “Oh, honey, I’m with you on the trust part, but you’re kidding yourself if you think love doesn’t hurt. Love is the worst kind of pain, and I’m sorry to see you go through it, but it means something real is there.”
“Was,” I corrected.
“Oh?” she challenged in her sweet voice. “You don’t love Cal? Jack?”
That was something I wouldn’t acknowledge out loud.
“You’re in love with two men,” Bea answered for me. “That’s going to hurt.” She gave my hand a squeeze and finished with, “But that doesn’t mean you give up on it. You fight for it. Through the pain. Through the hard times. Because if it’s real, it’s worth holding on to.”
For the briefest moment, her words sank in, and I wanted so badly to believe them. To take her advice and run to Cal and get wrapped in those big arms that warmed me instantly. To look at Jack and shiver with anticipation right before his touch landed on my skin.
But it wasn’t that simple.
“Do you think this was all a game?” I asked.
She sighed and glanced out the window with a shrug. “Honestly? No, I don’t. They never would play a game with your feelings. But I’m not surprised how they went about you.”
“What do you mean? They took turns like I was a Monopoly board.”
“I know it looks that way. But that would make them malicious. Which they aren’t.”
I tossed my hands in the air, then slapped them on my lap. “I know they aren’t. Which is why I’m so mad at them.”
She nodded. “In the past, when they both wanted something, they figured out a way for both of them to be happy.”
“Like sharing a toy,” I whispered.
“You’re not a toy, and that wasn’t their intent. I think they were both taken by you and didn’t know how to react, so they went with logic.” When Bea spelled it out like that, I heard pieces of Jack in her tone. How simple everything could be explained, like it had nothing to do with emotion. It’s just a matter of logic, is all. Try telling that to my throbbing chest and that big empty place where my heart used to be.
“Somewhere along the way, they fell in love with you,” Bea said. “So, it doesn’t matter how it started. They aren’t vicious men. They care. But my guess is they had no idea how to handle what they fell into with you.”
Breath refused to leave my lungs as I looked at Bea while her words settled over my skin like hot wax. They didn’t know how to handle me?
