Always Loving You (16 page)

Instead of answering her question, he asked one of his own. “Where did you get that?”

Ava felt as if steam were literally shooting from her ears. “That’s all you’ve got? Where did I get the letter that you never bothered to give me? Why would Mac have this and not me?” she snapped.

Brant was nothing if not a smart man, and she could see the exact moment that he decided to try to placate her. “Av, it’s not a big deal, really. I don’t know why Mac would give that to you now, but it’s been years since I received it.”

That was so the wrong answer, and she was seconds away from blowing up when Emma stepped between them, clearly confused as to what was playing out before her. “All right, everyone in their separate corners. I have no idea what’s going on here, but I think we need to talk about it somewhere else.” Before Ava could reply, Emma had pulled her farther into the entryway and motioned for Brant to shut the door behind him. Apparently, Brant had been too rattled to realize that the door was still standing open. Emma ushered her into the living room and Brant followed warily behind them. “Okay, so what’s in that letter you’re waving around?” Emma asked while looking back and forth between Ava and Brant.

Instead of answering, Ava simply handed the envelope to Emma and watched as the other woman extracted the paper and read it. When she was finished, she handed it back to Ava, again without saying a word. Finally, Brant, never being one to enjoy strife, spoke up. “Ava, I didn’t give you that letter because I didn’t want you to be hurt again. You had moved on with your life and were doing so well. I was afraid it
would bring back a lot of bad memories that you didn’t need.”

Ava stared at her normally intuitive brother, utterly amazed that he too had fallen for her smokescreen. Had he never once seen the cracks in her veneer? Dropping onto the leather chair behind her, Ava shook her head, trying to hold back tears. “But that’s just it, Brant. I wasn’t doing well. I haven’t even been in the same zip code as what you’d consider doing well.”

Brant looked alarmed by her statement, and he started to pace in his agitation. One of the things she loved about her brother was his desire to fix everything. If there was a problem, he didn’t rest until he found a solution. She could see him trying to work through her statement in his head and figure out what he could do to make it all better. The problem was that he didn’t fully comprehend what she was telling him. “But . . . you work, you date, you have friends. I don’t understand.”

Emma laid a hand on her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze as she said, “Tell him the truth, Ava. I think you both need it.” Emma released her and then stepped over to kiss Brant on the cheek before leaving the room.

Patting the chair next to hers, Ava said, “Sit down, Brant. I think we need to talk, and I’d rather do it without you pacing.”

Brant looked as though he wanted to argue but instead took the chair that she had indicated. “Tell me what I’ve missed with you, Ava,” he said quietly.

Ava took a deep breath, knowing that this was going to be hard on both of them. She and Brant didn’t really
have heart-to-heart conversations about their feelings or personal life, so this was awkward, but she needed him to know. “I’ve had a hard time living a normal life since my . . . rape.” She saw the flinch that Brant was unable to hide at her words, but he kept quiet, letting her continue. “At first, I just buried it all deep inside because that’s what I was ordered to do by Granddad. I was too scared and ashamed to talk to anyone about it anyway.

“Granddad made me feel like it was all my fault and that was why we couldn’t tell the police the truth. He made sure he let me know how humiliated I would be if our friends and family found out. I felt so dirty, like I was responsible for what happened to me.

“For years, I buried it away as best I could and learned to pretend that it never happened. As I started getting older, it became harder. I knew that people were beginning to wonder why I never dated or had a man in my life.” When Brant shifted uncomfortably, Ava realized that Brant had had similar thoughts. “So I went to a bar in hopes of meeting a man I felt safe enough around to spend time with. Without going into many details, I met a college student instead who was sweet and felt sorry for me. He was also broke and in need of spending money, as were his friends. Before long, I had a steady line of young men who were more than willing to spend a few hours with me when I needed them. They worked around my apartment, making repairs or if nothing needed fixing, we watched a movie or played a game. It worked out perfectly. Everyone, including Mac, thought I was functioning normally, and hey, I
even got my sink drains fixed anytime I needed it,” Ava joked weakly.

Running a hand through his hair, Brant said, “But . . . why? Ava, I’m missing something here. I was ready to kill that little fucker Kevin for what he did to you, but Grandfather told me to leave it alone. He said that you never wanted it mentioned again and if I insisted on having Kevin thrown in jail, it would ruin your life. He insisted that I honor your wishes and leave it alone. Ava, I was so sick over the whole thing, but I finally agreed to do what you wanted even though I damn well knew it wasn’t right. He said it was your idea to have Kevin and his family leave because you didn’t want to face any of it.”

Dropping her head into her hands, Ava simply shook her head. “It wasn’t, Brant. God, I was only a scared kid. I was too traumatized to know what to do. I sure wasn’t in any shape to broker a deal with Granddad to salvage my good name. He made me feel so guilty over being attacked that I couldn’t look at you or Declan. And as for Mac, it changed everything there. I had loved him for most of my life, but after that, I never considered myself good enough for him again. As I got older, I couldn’t resist the draw of being near him but only on my terms. I couldn’t let him see how broken I was. I didn’t want him remembering the way I looked that night when I crawled onto his porch and collapsed against his door.”

“But Mac has always loved you, Av,” Brant added. “There’s never been anyone else for him; he’s never made a secret of that.”

Smiling through her tears, Ava admitted, “I know that now. I think I always knew that he loved me, but I couldn’t accept it. I didn’t know how to be loved by him.”

“Oh, Ava,” Brant sighed, looking destroyed. “I never knew what you were going through. Sometimes you would say things or just have a certain look on your face and I would think to myself that I needed to see if you were okay. But then I would see you again and you would seem perfectly normal. My mind would always go back to what Grandfather told me. That you didn’t want to talk about what had happened and I had to respect your wishes. So I did . . . for years. Now I feel like an unfeeling, uncaring bastard.”

“Brant, don’t,” she began before he held up a hand to stop her.

“It’s true, Av. Maybe I just didn’t want to acknowledge what was right in front of me. Let’s face it, I’ve never been good at dealing with anyone’s feelings, and I certainly had no idea how to handle something like that happening to my baby sister. It’s no excuse at all, but I had no clue how to help you. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t a better brother and protector to you.”

Ava took her brother’s hand, squeezing it tightly. “Stop, Brant. I’m not telling you this to heap guilt on your head. I became such an expert at pretending to be okay that I can’t blame people for believing it. You and I both know that I’m a hell of a saleswoman, and I applied that same principle to my personal life. I sold everyone, even myself at times, on the illusion that I was fully recovered from what happened to me and that I
was living my life. The scary part is that I don’t know how long I would have continued to do that if not for Mac shaking me up. If he hadn’t decided to move on with his life, I might never have been brave enough to admit that I needed and loved him.”

“I should have seen through it, though,” Brant agonized. “You’re my sister, and damn it, deep down inside, I knew you weren’t okay!”

A part of her wanted to be mad at Brant for wanting to avoid talking with her all these years about her rape, but would it have changed anything really? Most likely she would have brushed him off completely had he tried or given him a bunch of false reassurances. If she harbored ill will toward anyone, it was their grandfather. He had been her authority figure back then and had been the one to make her feel as if she needed to pretend that nothing had ever happened. She, Brant, and Declan had just taken their cues from him. He wanted it all to go away, and that was what had happened, at least on the surface. No matter how hard it would have been for them to handle, she knew now that if she had told either of her brothers that she was drowning, barely keeping her head above water most days, they would have dropped everything to help her. But she hadn’t, and they had accepted her facade as truth.

“We did as we were told,” she whispered. “I just wish you had given me Kevin’s letter years ago when you received it.”

Brant jumped to his feet, a pulse ticking visibly in his jaw. “Why? His apology means nothing, Av. I didn’t
want to upset you over something that was completely inadequate. An apology doesn’t make what he did to you okay. The only reason I kept the damn thing and passed it along to Mac was that I was afraid he would try to contact you in another way when he didn’t receive a reply. I asked Mac to keep track of him, so I wanted him to be aware.”

Stung again by Brant’s decision to keep the letter from her, Ava took a deep breath, trying to remain calm. “No, the apology from Kevin wouldn’t have made what he did all right, but the rest of the letter would have helped me in a way.” Looking down at her hands, she admitted, “I’ve always wondered if it was my fault. You know, did I lead him on or give him the impression that I wanted what happened? I’ve run through that night in my head over and over. When Granddad refused to let the police handle it, I felt like I was guilty. It made me feel dirty, as if I had somehow done something to make Kevin believe that we would have sex. But in the letter, he said that he had been drinking and doing drugs. He said he was so out of it that he didn’t know what he was doing that night. He took the full blame for his actions instead of trying to put it back onto me.”

Brant wilted back into the chair next to hers looking spent. “I just . . . I never thought that maybe you needed to hear what he had to say. In my eyes, there was never a question that any woman would be to blame for something like that happening to her. But I should have thought, with the way things were handled, that you might need any type of closure that you
could get. Fuck, Av, I’m so sorry. You’re right; I should never have kept that from you. At the time, I thought I was protecting you, but now I see that I was just continuing to believe everything was just perfectly fine when the proof that it wasn’t was right under my nose.”

Ava stood, moving to Brant’s side. Then she did something that she didn’t do nearly enough; she wrapped her arms around her brother and held on tight. After a brief moment of hesitation, Brant pulled her into his arms, nearly squeezing the breath out of her. He murmured his apology against the top of her head before kissing her gently on the temple. “I love you, my overbearing brother,” she joked to lighten the mood.

His eyes looked suspiciously moist as he replied, “I love you too, sis.” When she pulled back and returned to her own chair, he gave her a crooked grin. “So, you and Mac . . . finally?”

The usual feelings of heat raced through her body as she thought of the man she loved and how she finally had a chance of a real future with him. Alongside those feelings was also anger that he too had kept Kevin’s letter from her. Even though he had to know from their recent conversations that the information it contained would have helped her to have at least a shred of resolution to the trauma. It also made her wonder if he had been keeping anything else from her for what he thought was her own good. Brant felt so guilty about the letter that he would have confessed already if he was aware of anything else concerning Kevin. She gave
Brant a rueful smile, admitting honestly, “Mac and I have some things to discuss. We do love each other, but it can only work if we’re equal partners in our relationship. I can’t be the woman who he’s always trying to save anymore.”

“Av, don’t be mad at him over this. Declan and I have depended on him for far too long to watch over you, something we should have been doing ourselves. He’s loved you since we were all kids, and in a way, what happened to you hit him hardest of all. I think he always felt like he let you down by not being there to prevent it.”

“That’s crazy.” Ava sighed. “There is no way he could have known. He told me, though, how hard it was for him afterward. I never thought about what it must have done to him, to find me that way.” Looking at her brother intently, she said, “So much has happened between Mac and me through the years, do you think we can ever have a normal relationship? I know he loves me, and I love him, but in the end, is it enough to overcome the baggage between us?”

Brant shifted in his chair, clearly uncomfortable. Ava hid a smile, knowing that her unflappable brother wasn’t one to normally discuss romantic relationships. Just when she thought he would try to change the subject, he ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stick up in all directions. “Av . . . we both know that I suck at this sort of thing, but I will tell you this. I almost lost that woman in the other room, who probably has her ear against the wall listening to us, by trying to deny what I felt for her. The Stones seem to have problems
expressing themselves and God forbid you throw in some crazy and unpredictable emotion like love. I let myself believe that I was confused over my feelings for Alexia because it gave me a reason to distance myself from Emma. I almost lost her before I finally accepted what was right in front of me. I know Declan was all over the place as well when he was falling in love with Ella. Maybe you and Mac have things that you need to settle between you, but don’t lose sight of how you feel about him. That’s the most important thing.”

Just as Ava was opening her mouth to reply, Emma came running into the room, waving her arms. Brant jumped to his feet, reaching her in a single long stride. “What’s wrong, baby?”