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39
AVERY
I'm preparinglesson plans for next week when Bryn arrives home from his overnight visit to Wales. The door closes in Bryn's usual loud fashion and his large frame fills the room as he dumps his rucksack on the floor.
I watch warily from where I sit at the table, hoping he left the new Bryn who doesn't talk to me behind. His face is dark, lined by tiredness and my heart hurts, for both of us and a future slipping between my fingers.
“Hey,” I say and stand. “Good trip?”
Bryn crosses the room, seizes my head, and closes his mouth over mine. I open my mouth in surprise and welcome his tongue with the relief he wants me. I’m unable to move away from the breath-snatching kiss firing the desire for Bryn that I’ve fought in case I lose him.
As quickly as he starts, Bryn stops and grips my face, studying me intently. “I missed you.”
Something remains in his eyes, as if he's trying to figure me out the way I'm second-guessing him. Bryn gently rubs my cheek with the back of his hand then wanders to the kitchen.
Confused, I sit back down and attempt to focus on the plan I'm writing. A few moments later, I look up to see Bryn leaning against the kitchen doorframe with a bottle of beer in his hand, the same look on his face.
“I have to tell you something,” he says.
Finally, but his expression fills my stomach with acid fear over what the ‘something’ is.
“You can tell me anything, Bryn.” I will him to sit with me, to prove he wants the closeness and that the kiss wasn't a one off.
“I don’t know how to say this but I have to. If I don't tell you, you'll find out from somebody else and I don’t want that.”
“Oh.”
He drinks slowly, and averts his eyes. “So, the other day, I saw Hannah.”
And with that, my fears push out the hope that I'd imagined all this. The niggling ache following me around the last few days coils around my heart, tightening by the second. “Right.”
“No. Not in that way, Avery. She told me something important.” He rubs his face. “Fuck. I need to go to Australia. With Hannah.”
I dig my nails into my palms beneath the table, eyes stinging. Unable to face breaking down in front of him, I stand and ready myself to walk away. “Okay.”
“But I'll come back.”
I meet his eyes. “Will you, Bryn? Why would you? You have what you wanted.”
“I will. I'm not going because of her.” He looks away as he says the words and I doubt them.
“Why are you going then? What's happening?”
Bryn laughs softly to himself. “Yeah, guess what? I have an eight-year-old son.”
I reel. “What?”
He shakes his head and looks at the floor. “With Hannah. She told me the other day.”
Time freeze frames. Hannah. Son. What the hell do I say to that? Words scramble around my head but won’t find their way out of my mouth. “Bryn…”
I approach him and reach out, but the man looking back at me is the same lost, confused person from the night-time drinking.
“Gets worse,” he says flatly. “Connor, my kid, has cancer. That's why Hannah told me. Needs a bone marrow transplant and wanted my family to get tested.”
If I'm stunned by this news, no wonder Bryn has retreated from the world as he carries the weight of what Hannah told him. Tears spring to my eyes, for Bryn and the little boy.
“I'm sorry,” is the best I can do.
