Love Untouched (Unexpected) (26 page)

An hour after Brynn left, another knock pounded on my door. My mom had texted me that she and my dad were still with coach, trying to resolve the issue. I texted back to ask if I was needed and she responded with, “Just stay put.”

I opened the door, expecting my brothers but found the guy who was probably the last I would expect to come. Not because he wasn’t a friend, but because Ace would come see me before him, or they would be together.

Zander nodded his head. “Is it cool if we talk?”

Well, it would be rude to say ‘no’ so I replied, “Yeah.”

He answered before I could ask, “Sedona’s with Brynn. We were walking in here when we saw Brynn rush outside, crying, so we walked with her to her room, and Sedona’s still with her.”

Zander sat on the couch. I sat on the small chair to his left.

“So, you know then?” I asked, thinking that Brynn had spilled the beans about the shameless act that her brother had committed.

“Yeah,” he answered, as he took off his baseball cap and sat it on the table that Brynn had sat on an hour ago.

No one said a word for a few minutes. Finally, I stood up. “Listen Zander, I need to get started on packing so, while I’d love to chat, I don’t think it’s a good time right now.”

He processed my words, and nonchalantly asked, “Do you love her?”

I knew what he was asking. Was he trying to become Dr. Phil between Brynn and me?
Oh, come on
. He knew nothing about my feelings for Brynn.

“I don’t think it’s any of your business, man,” I answered curtly.

He ignored me, and asked again, “Do you love her?”

I assumed he was not going to leave until I answered. Ace married a stubborn guy. Who knew? I thought he was the most levelheaded person in the world, but I guess I was wrong.

In an exasperated voice, I replied, “I think I do.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “You either love someone or you don’t. You either hate them or you don’t.”

What a black and white way of thinking. Just like Ace.

He proceeded, “Do you know what it’s like to lose someone you love, Kieran? Not to another person or to another guy, but to something that you can’t control.”

He was talking about Ace’s car accident. “Yes, I have an idea.” I almost lost Ace to that car accident. That day was one of the most horrific times in my life. To hear her voice on the phone, the sounds of the car screeching and crashing, the silence that followed on Ace’s line. I barely recalled what I did after talking to a random person who had picked up Ace’s phone after she had dropped it on the pavement. My memory had blocked everything out. I just remembered feeling so scared, helpless, and rendered utterly powerless. How I gathered up the strength to contact Zander and Ace’s family would forever perplex me and something that I hoped to high heavens would never happen again.

Zander’s huge sigh invaded my unwanted flashback. His face was held so tight as if just the thought of the accident was painful enough. “When I thought I lost Sedona in New York, after her accident... I kneeled by her side and prayed to someone higher than myself, than anyone in this world. Someone who could listen to my prayers and answer them. I prayed for her and our baby’s lives.” His eyes shifted, his voice slightly breaking. “Kieran, when you are left with nothing—that’s how I felt when Sedona and Sofia’s lives were hanging in the balance. You appreciate every single fucking thing you have, and you become a different man.”

“What are you trying to get at?” I was exhausted from his analogy. I have already had a rough day. I had the swim of my life, and then got disqualified from it for having opiates in my system, and confronted Brynn because of her brother’s idiotic actions; so yes, I was exhausted. I didn’t have time to spare and think in circles. After all, this isn’t an episode of Batman, and I’m sure as hell am not the Riddler.

He calmly began, “When you love someone, Kieran, no matter what they do, you learn to forgive. I’m not saying that you’re going to forgive every single mistake they commit, especially if they’re cheating on you or if they’re plotting your murder. But, you learn to accept that being with that person matters most, and above anything else. When the time comes,” he almost choked his words out, “that Sedona and I are taken from each other by natural causes, she and I would know that every single day of our lives, we have shown each other just how much we meant to each one other. Like you, my football career is important to me. I work my ass off every fucking day to make sure I’m the best at what I do. But, if it was all taken away from me, the pain and suffering that I would feel would be negligible to the pain I felt when I thought Sedona was gone.”

I breathed out. Zander might be the sappiest guy in the whole universe, but he had good points.

“It wasn’t her fault, Kieran.” After a lengthy, winded explanation of his love for my best friend, he was now finally getting to the point of his ‘little visit’ with me. “It wasn’t Brynn’s fault that you got DQ’d. She made her brother go talk to the FINA officials, threatening him that she would forever cut him out of her life if he didn’t. She loves you, man. I don’t know much about her, but the woman I saw crying on my wife’s shoulders looks like a woman who has just lost someone who meant a lot to her. She didn’t say one bad thing about you. All she kept saying was that it was her fault that she let it get this far, that she forced you into hiding your relationship from Milo, that she regretted ever putting you in this position... And maybe, you would have been better off without her.”

Zander’s words stilled me, penetrated through the haze of my anger, and seared into my heart. My life would be better off without Brynn?
God no
.

Brynn brought color into my life. She made me feel loved when I didn’t think it was in the cards for me. She chose me every single time. She gave herself to me completely. She was the strongest woman I knew. She battled cancer, survived tragedy after tragedy, and had the battle scars to prove it. And from what Zander was telling me, she fought for me, made her own brother admit to his own fault, and was trying to give me back what I rightfully deserved. She was a good woman, a great woman, and I was a bastard for doing the things that I just did to her.

I flexed my neck, the tension ebbing away from my body, the realization coming to me as clear as the reflection of the ocean waters on a sunny day. I admitted to the guy to whom I had lost the woman I loved in my childhood, and the guy who made me see how much I loved the woman in my present, “Yes, I love Brynn. Completely. Irrevocably. I would be lost without her.”

When Kieran ordered me to leave, the pain in my chest went from a slow boil to a full-blown wildfire. The look in his eyes was filled with unforgiving anger. Those same eyes that looked at me with tenderness and love had morphed into something that I would rather forget.

Remembering last night when he told me loved me caused the ache in my heart to constrict even more. How did I let this get this far? I had forced my brother into acting like someone I didn’t even recognize anymore. One who compromised his own principles because he couldn’t bear to see me with Kieran.

When I had confronted Milo, he flinched when I voiced that I knew he had something to do with Kieran’s disqualification. He finally copped to it when I threatened him that I would move across the country, even across the globe, to be away from him, if he didn’t tell me what he did and how he did it. He confessed to pouring the granulated poppy seed extracts into my pancake mixes. When I asked him how come his own random urine testing didn’t show any traces of heroin or opiates, he said that if I remembered correctly, he stayed away from the pancakes that I made and only ate the omelets. His face was set in stone during his confession, it only cracked when I regained my composure and told him to man up and admit everything to the officials. “I’m sorry, Bee.” He looked morose, his eyes dark and beseeching.

I replied tightly, “I’m not the one whom you should be saying ‘sorry’ to. I’m not the one whose career you put on the line. Make this right, Milo. You owe it to Kieran, to me, to the swimming world, and to yourself. And, from now on, keep this in mind; you are not the brother I grew up with. You are a shell of a man I once knew as my brother. You’ve become so lost in your own selfish world that you can’t see what’s beyond you. Kieran makes me happy and I love him. Whatever he did with Dia was in the past. You low balled him and took away his glory. He rightfully earned that win, Milo, fair and square. It was a competition between athletes, between abilities. You never should have made this about me. At least, I can say, if actions speak louder than words, yours have proven more than enough for me.” He rubbed his right hand against his neck, tensing up, and the rise and fall of his chest became more evident, more rapid, as his mouth was held in a firm, straight line. Before the last of my resolve dissolved, I warned, “Until Kieran forgives you, don’t bother calling or texting me.”

He just nodded his head and hugged me. I stopped myself from hugging him back. He did Kieran wrong. No matter how much he justified it to himself, what he had done was contradictory to the morals and values that our parents and our aunt had instilled in us.

I left the room before I completely broke down in front of him. Vivid images of my childhood with Milo filled my head. The countless moments he held me when we lost our parents. The day he shaved his head because I lost my own hair from chemo. The nights he hugged me until I fell asleep because I was so scared that the nurses would come in and start poking my veins to draw blood. The many times when he fought with the doctors when they told me I had no hope, even when he was just a child like me. The joyous occasion when I got selected for a new drug research trial for osteosarcoma. And the unparalleled happiness that he shared with me when my doctor said that the cancer was in remission. Milo was there through all that. He was the man I once lived for, and I was running away from him because he hurt the man I would fight for.

Sedona and Zander saw me rushing out of Kieran’s suite and they followed me to my hotel room. Sedona just hugged me. She didn’t say a word, and Zander, he just stayed in the living room with us. I explained to them what happened and they both just listened.

Finally, I asked Sedona, “Can you please call Ava?” I had left Ava in a rush to talk to my brother. I had seen Ava’s texts and calls on my phone but I ignored them since I had the talk with Kieran. Sedona texted Ava on my phone and within fifteen minutes, Ava was there. Zander excused himself and said that he was going to fix something, and would come back when Sedona called him.

After Zander left, I cried to Ava and Sedona some more. My tears were non-stop. Who knew that a person could cry oceans of tears in a day and not have their tear ducts dry up? Perhaps, this is what it truly means when a soul bleeds?

The two girls stayed with me. For how long? I didn’t know. I must have passed out from crying because when I woke up, Ava was slumped beside me and Sedona was passed out on the small couch across from us.

I reached for my phone on top of the coffee table and glanced at the clock. 2:15 AM.

There were several texts from my brother. The last one caused me to gasp out loud. It said, “I’m banned from swimming. FINA’s still deciding how long. Talked to Kieran. Flying out of the country now and leaving town for a while. Love you, Bee.”

My gasp woke Ava up, her eyes groggy from sleep and her voice soft, she asked, “What’s going on?”

“Milo’s banned from swimming. He left already and didn’t say where he was going. I tried to text him back and call him, but his phone’s off.”

Ava’s eyes widened and she almost looked panicked. “What? Where is he going?”

I knew she was concerned for my brother, but she seemed overly bothered and looked like she was about to pass out.

“Ava, he’s going to call me when he’s ready. I know Milo... Oh, and he said he talked to Kieran already.” This was actually the first time my brother referred to Kieran as ‘Kieran.’

Sedona stirred slowly and her eyes opened. “How are you, Brynn?”

I gave her a small smile. “Milo talked to Kieran. Just got a text from him. Milo’s banned from swimming and he said he was going out of town for a while.”