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When she was gone, I was miserable, and the drinking started. I lost my chance to play football, my father had died, best friend was gone, and I lost the best thing in my life. Taking over the dealerships was the last thing I wanted to do but I felt obligated. With all my own dreams dashed, what else could I do but look after my family? I felt as if it was the one good thing I was able to do.
Before long, I was drinking after work until I passed out for the night. Then I started my mornings with a cocktail before I headed to work. And the weekends, watching my best friend play ball while I sat at home selling Fords to the folks of Harmony Hollow, I became a full-fledged alcoholic. I pinned all my misery on that dealership, and I am surprised I did not tear the place apart because of that misery.
That night after the birthday party where I truly wrecked things, I was so distraught I got wasted and wound up in having that accident. It was bad and I was banged up pretty good. Connor came home and told me to get my shit together or I couldn’t be near his family. I could not lose another thing in my life. Not when Connor and Hails were the last thing I had left, and the last ties I had to Paisley.
When I got out of the hospital, I took a drive and wound up out here. Once I saw this place, I knew I had no choice. It was just the sort of place my Paisley would love. A place where we could build a family if we ever got another chance. Another chance that I was determined we would someday get to have.
“I am going to get Pais back,” I told Connor a few weeks before we heard she was coming back, “I can’t keep going on without her. I can’t keep pretending I am not miserable without her. I am sober, I can walk away from the dealership now, and I am just...if I have to go after her or go across the world with her, then I will.”
Not sure if he believed me, but at that point I did not care who believed me. The two men I am so jealous of tonight—Gabe and Brady—have wanted my land for a long time. They want to build out some exciting things there but I was not ready to let go. Now I am ready to let all of it go. My mother and my brothers never wanted me to make the sacrifices I did, and I was tired of using my so-called obligations as excuses.
Peering up at the house, I close my eyes and imagine if I had never felt the doubts that plagued me, what our life might look like now. I can see a big fluffy dog running in the huge backyard while I cook at the grill. Paisley plays with our kids just the way I watch her play with Hails little ones. They are covered in paint or markers, and she has scribbles written down her thigh or up her forearm. I have some too, because I always let her draw on me.
Our kids would be happy messes, loud and brave just like their mother. My little boy would play football but just for fun—he would not hang his hopes on it the way I had. He would never doubt he was worthy of great things, unlike me. Our little girl would have Paisley’s wild hair and my sense of humor, and we would all dote on her because of it.
“Doesn’t matter how much I want that life. I don’t know how to live it,” I say out loud to myself as that tidal wave of emotions finally crashes down on me.
When I head inside, I already know I have let her down. I know I will find her curled up and closed off. Words and patterns drawn on her skin. And I know that it will crush me to see her hurt but I will hurt her more because I am hurting. I tell myself as I head down the hall to the bedroom—to our bedroom—that I can’t tell her how insecure I feel and how jealous I am.
Stepping into the bedroom, I sigh when I see her on the bed, her dress and heels gone. Wrapped in my robe just the way I found her this morning, she looks so soft and so small. So goddamn vulnerable. I take off my clothes and climb into the bed behind her, wrapping her up in my arms. I burrow into the back of her neck and tell her I am sorry. That I love her. That I will always love her.
“Not enough. You just cannot love me enough,” her voice is raw and I feel as if a shotgun blast has gone off, hitting me in the chest. Those are the very words she said the day we broke up five years ago.
“I am trying, Pais. I love you more than anything. I just want you to have everything and I can’t...I know I cannot give you everything. It fucking guts me and I am sorry I always let you down,” I whisper brokenly against her bare shoulder.
“Who says you can’t give me everything? What if everything I want is just you?” she cries, trembling in my arms as she twists to glare back at me.
“You have me. You have always had me and always will, Pais. That won’t ever change. You want more than me and more than Harmony Hollow. You always have and you deserve everything you want. If this...if this gallery is what you want, you should go do it. I can’t...I could never ask you to stay here with me. How could I ask that—and how could I make your dream mine? I wish I had never given up on us, but I did and I can’t take that back.”
“You can,” she turns more as she speaks softly, facing me and cupping my jaw, “stop doing the same things we did before. Stop doubting what we have, and what we are. Stop doubting me, Bran. You are the only person who doubts that we belong together,” she whispers, her eyes searching my face.
“Oh, baby, I don’t doubt that we belong together. I never doubted that I belong with you. What I doubt is that I can ever be enough for you. That I can ever give you enough. You deserve everything, things I cannot give you,” I sigh sadly, bowing my head as a tumult of emotions churns inside of me.
“I don’t want everything, Bran. I just want you,” she swears.
“Not true. You want that gallery and I want you to have it. I am so excited for you, and I can’t ask you to take time from it to waste time with me. I can’t.... I won’t do that, Pais. I won’t get in the way of you chasing that dream, of you getting what you deserve. How could I do that?”
“Let me have both. That is giving me everything. I can do it right here or I can do it in New York or Los Angeles. The where should not matter, Bran. If I had to go to Paris or to Prague, you could go with me. Why can’t you give us what we both want?”
Pushing away from her, I swing to sit at the edge of the bed, my chest pumping as I struggle to breathe. I can’t lose her so why can’t I just tell her she is right? The where does not matter—as long as we are together. But that voice in my head, the same one that talked me into sleeping with someone else to try to be good enough for her, that told me I could never please Paisley and give her what she wants, it is louder than her sweet voice telling me I can.
“If the where does not matter, why did you stay away from me for five years? Why did you let one stupid mistake—one you should have seen through—wreck us? Because it does matter to you. This place, me included, we were never going to be enough for you. I knew that, Pais. I always did. You say you want just me and Christ, I want you. I love you. Loved you more than half of my life and that won’t change, it won’t stop, and it won’t end. If you mean it when you say I was enough, you would have never let me fool you that night at the party or the five years we were apart.”
Pushing to my feet, I angrily pace the bedroom, knowing this storm is just picking up momentum. We love to fight. Sometimes it is fun and frivolous, arguing about football stats or who makes the best hot chocolate. Newsflash, I do.
Other times, it’s brutal and raw and we go at each other until we break. I do not want to do that. I do not want to break her the way I always thought I had to before—it was like competition and if I hurt her the most, that meant I mattered to her. It meant she truly loved me if I could get her to fall apart for me. I know better than that now, so I don’t want to argue.
“That is a fucked up thing to say, to accuse me of. Of just...you think I just gave up on us? You think I just took the easy path you moved out of the way of? Is that what you fucking think, Bran North?” her voice bounces off the walls and I have to ignore how hot it makes me when she gets so loud and aggressive. Sitting there in my bed, in my robe, half of it falling off her shoulders, she is so sexy I can barely stand it. But we are going to hurt each other, and I don’t know how to stop it. This is just what we do.
“Yeah, yeah, I do,” I shoot back as I stare down at her, noting how I can just see her pebbled nipple. Fighting may not be healthy for us but it turns both of us on. We always make up after—well, sometimes its days or weeks, and this time years—and it’s always so good when we make up. “I do think that even if I don’t want to. It tore me up to send you off thinking I wanted anything but to be with you. You just went and never looked back,” I shout.
“Never looked back? When I came back for Milo’s first birthday...why do you think it upset me so badly to see you with someone else?”
“Why do you think I was with someone else? Maybe I was fucking terrified of you coming back with someone else? Even if you didn’t, I fucked up, babe and I knew it. Why do you think I was wasted that night and almost wound up dead?”
Paisley gasps and shoots to her feet, the robe slipping down off her shoulder until she clutches it to her chest. She advances on me fast, staring up at me with tears in her pretty eyes. I wish I could take those words back, I never wanted her to know. I never wanted her to have any idea I had struggled with addiction.
“What...Bran, w-what do you mean? You were drinking?” her eyes go big, and she presses against me, both of us breathing too fast, our hands shaking when they meet at my chest. My father was a heavy drinker and when he came home—when he bothered to make time to come home from the dealership—he was a hard man to live with. Another reason I never wanted to be anything like him.
