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Now that he was here, though, right in front of me… all my carefully constructed walls, the armor I’d built up over the years against my true feelings, againsthim, cracked open, and everything came surging into the light. Every moment between us. Every breath I’d taken on this Earth since Brody Mason sauntered into mylife.
And it was in those deep blue eyes, that he remembered,too.
He rememberedeverything.
“Get in,” he repeated, and started up thetruck.
I gotin.
As we pulled out into traffic he was silent, and I tried to think of something to say to fill the void. It was the perfect time, really, to tell him. The perfect opportunity to explain why I’d left, all those yearsago.
I could tell him everything. Just come clean, like I’d told myself I should do… could do. Might do, while I was in town for my brother’swedding.
Instead, I stared at his handsome profile, afraid to speak. The arch of his brow, his high cheekbone. The strong line of his nose. His square jaw, clean-shaven but slightly shadowed. His stylishly unkempt brown hair. The battered leather of hisjacket.
I hadn’t laid eyes on him in years. Not until my brother’s well-meaning fiancée started texting me photos of her and Jesse, and Brody happened to be in some of them. I should’ve deleted those photos, but I didn’t. Instead, I’d gazed at them a thousand times. And now he washere.
So close tome.
I watched his throat move as he swallowed. I watched his knuckles turn white on the steering wheel as the wiper blades beat an angry rhythm against therain.
I stared at the familiar tattoo on the back of his right hand, a mess of entangled vines that wound around his thumb and wrist and belonged to a small, black rose on his palm. So familiar, like we’d never been apart. How many times had I traced the pattern of those vines with mygaze?
A million, atleast.
That tattoo, just one of the many things about Brody—the many small details that made himhim—that I’d tried to forget over the years. But I hadn’t forgotten. I knew I hadn’t. And despite all my preparation for this moment, I wasn’t prepared atall.
I wasn’tready.
Would I ever really have been ready forthis?
Maybe I was totally kidding myself to think I’d ever be able to face him, those blue eyes staring me down, and comeclean.
Maybe I’d just always be dirty and there was nothing I could do aboutit.
I looked out the window. “It’s raining,” I said. Yeah. Brilliant. But since I was a total chickenshit, I was going withit.
“Seven years,” he said. I looked over at him, but he didn’t look at me. “Seven fucking years, and all the times I’ve tried to talk to you and you shut me out, and now that’s all you’ve got to say? It’s fuckingraining? It’s January. It’s Vancouver. Where you were fucking born. So yes, it’s raining, like it always does in January. What the fuck else do you want me to say aboutit?”
Okay…
So much for my Canadians-love-talking-about-the-weathertheory.
I was judging by the number of F-bombs in that little tirade that he was pissed. Atme.
Not that I hadn’t expected him to be a little mad. Among otherthings.
But the fact that he obviouslywasmad just proved that he still cared,right?
“Six-and-a-half years,” Isaid.
“What?”
“It’s been… six-and-a-half years,” I repeated, my voice fading, “since we… saw eachother.”
He saidnothing.
It’s just because he cares,I told myself.And he probably won’t be the only one who gives you attitude this weekend, so get used toit.
