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Chapter thirty-one
Ben
“You really think so little of me?” My head is in my hands as Jamie paces back and forth across my living room. In the hour since we left Mik, his temper has settled and given way to pure, unadulterated panic. But mine? Mine has simmered and bubbled to boiling point.
“No.” He huffs as he pushes his hair back and glances back to the door. He’s tried to leave three times already, but I keep stopping him - if Mik wants to be alone, she needs it, and we will respect that. It’s the least we can do. “But I also don’t want you screwing my sister.”
When he looks at me there’s a shimmer of fear behind the honesty and it enrages me. When he says it like that it’s seedy and disgusting, and that isn’t what’s been happening.
“Jamie, what the fuck is your problem?” I shake my head as I suck in a deep breath. “Why do you insist on thinking so little of me? I’m not who I was in college - fucking different girls every other night and partying too hard and making shit choices. I haven’t been him in a long time, J, and you know that. So, what the hell are you so afraid of?”
He sinks to the seat beside me. “I can’t lose her again, Ben.”
“And what? You think I’ll drive her away?”
Jamie sighs, long and drawn out, and I stare at him.
“Honestly? Yeah. I do.” He swallows and I wait. “I think she’s been through more shit than you’re ready to deal with, Ben. I think you won’t mean to, but you’ll hurt her. And then she’ll run.”
“Tell me.” I say it simply, like my chest hasn’t been housing a lump of cement where my heart is for the last twenty seconds.
“What?”
“You’re so scared I’ll hurt her, that whatever she’s been through will be too much for me. Tell me what it is. Because I know it’s bad, J. I know whatever it is is why she’s got scars on her stomach and the back of her legs. And her shoulder, her neck, her scalp. I know it’s why she ended up living with you again. I know it’s Matthew. I know he was like my dad.Fuck, J. I know he was one hundred times worse than my dad. So tell me. Tell me everything, because I am telling you I can handle it. For her, I will handle it.”
“Ben.” Jamie’s hands run over his face as he groans and throws himself back on my couch. “I don’t even know where I’d start.”
“Try the beginning.”
Mikaela
“I’m glad you called.” Sephy drops a bag full of tissues and magazines and chocolate onto my coffee table as I sit and stare at the shoes by the door. “What can I do?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
“Okay.” She shrugs and sits next to me. She makes no effort to push me to talk. She doesn’t try to coax any more of an explanation than the weeping, heaving disaster of a phone call she received as soon as I was sure they were gone. She just lets me be. I’m glad I called her.
“Sephy?”Where is the life in my voice?“He lied. They both lied.”
“I’m assuming ‘he’ is this Baby Blue guy?”
My arms wrap tighter around myself, clinging to the t-shirt I pulled on almost as soon as he’d left, and inhale the smell of him. Why, when I am reeling, when my world is crumbling because of him, do I need him closer?
I nod.
“And who else?”
“Jamie, my brother.”
Sephy breathes in deeply. “And what was the lie?”
“The lie isn’t what’s important.” I choke on another sob as the image of Jamie’s face, rain soaked and broken, swirls behind my vision. “I can’t do lies again, Sephy. I won’t.”
She nods thoughtfully before turning to face me. When I look at her, her face is a mask of compassion and kindness, but she’s detached too. This is the mark of her profession; the shoulder to cry on who knows what questions to ask and what questions to avoid.
“The lie matters, Mik. Even if you don’t think it does. What was the lie?”
I take a steadying breath and close my eyes.
