Pulled Within (32 page)

The last time I’d seen him, I was asking for a job. “I’ll go over
there soon. I don’t want him bugging you.”

“I don’t mind that part. I’m just thinking that when he lost Darren, he also lost you.” I had never even considered it that way. “Seeing what Brady’s going through, I can sympathize with the way he’s feeling. I
know he wasn’t your uncle’s son, but Darren meant something to him
and the loss had to devastate him.” His hand pressed down a bit
harder. “Remember that Irving is innocent in all of this.”

Shane was right. My uncle had no idea what Gerald’s involvement had been; he was guilty of nothing other than being related to
him
. But it was enough of a connection to have made me
uncomfortable for all
this time. And there was a good chance my uncle had stayed in contact with him. He might have been the one who’d given him my new number—innocently enough, but still.

I rolled my head toward him. “You’re right. It’s just hard. All of this is
so fucking hard.”

His hand dropped on top of mine, the warmth of it soothing me. “Every year since it happened, I’ve told you the same thing, and I mean it as much now as I did the first time I said it: we’ll get through
the next six days together.”

I was so lucky to have him.

SHANE AND I
met in Bangor at the rehab center for our visit with Brady. “Are you okay this morning?” he asked as we walked
through the parking lot. “I didn’t see you before I left the house.”

I purposely avoided mentioning Hart. I didn’t want to know if
he’d asked about me, or if he’d pressed Shane for information. I had already
put him in the middle, though I hadn’t wanted to. I also didn’t want him to feel like every conversation had to be about Hart. So I answered simply, “I am,” gave him a long, tight hug, and headed into the reception area.

It had been more than two weeks since we’d last seen Brady. So
much about him had changed in that time. The bruising on his face
was
completely gone; his skin had a warm, golden tone now. There was
confidence in his step as he made his way to our table. He stood
upright,
his shoulders level, and his smile reached all the way to his eyes.
When his arms wrapped around me, I could feel all of his strength.

“I’m glad you haven’t lost any more weight,” he said, noticing as much about me as I had about him. “I was worried you’d be even skinnier than the last time I saw you.”

“I’ve been eating a little more.” That was to say, I’d been eating
enough to maintain, such as the pizza Shane had fed me the night
before. I’d kept the two slices down, and a few beers. It was strange to not have it all come back up afterward.

“Hopefully when this is all over, you’ll gain it back like you
usually
do. You can’t let this shit with Hart and his mom screw that up for
you. You need to get healthy again…
five days.
”

“Five days,” I echoed, nodding against his chest, taking in the scent of his shirt. The smell I remembered was lingering there,
beneath the fabric softener and the subtleness of his cologne. The same pine-and-comfort scent of Shane’s house.

Brady broke free and hugged his dad, and the three of us sat down at the round table. Shane’s eyes never left his son. Neither did
mine. It
had been too long since we’d seen him so healthy, so alive. We wanted to know everything: how he was doing, how he’d been
feeling, what
he
was learning, and what kind of progress he was making. We didn’t have to ask much; Brady read the questions on our faces, and the answers began pouring out of him. He used real, raw words, not the
insincere anger we were used to hearing from him.

He had finally found a point of balance.

It allowed him to listen to his demon, to understand it and come to terms with it in a way that kept him in control as much as
possible. I couldn’t help but notice how the whites of his eyes gleamed, how his hands stayed still and folded in front of him.

“You seem comfortable,” I said. Not just in his skin, but in
accepting the depth of what he’d been dealing with, and what had happened as a result.

“I think I am,” he confirmed. “There’s a lot to it, and it’s
complicated.
I don’t want to spend our whole visit explaining it to you. I’m too
happy to see you to do that.”

“We have plenty of time, son,” Shane told him. “Whenever
you’re ready to share it with us, we’ll be ready to hear it.”

Maybe for the first time ever, Brady’s eyes told me he understood what that would mean from here forward. “Thank you.” He clamped onto my hand firmly, confidently, even as mine shook within his grasp. I noticed the contrast then, how he’d risen above while I’d been sinking
deeper.

I had twisted even further from the light, and he had spun right into it.

“Dad,” he said, “do you mind if I talk to Rae privately for a
minute?” I blinked and came back to the moment. “I don’t mean to shove you off like this, but I’d like to talk to her about some serious stuff.” He winked at me.

Shane paused and smiled warmly, like he was proudly watching
his son look after his daughter. “Of course. Whatever you want.” He took his phone out of his pocket and checked the screen. “Looks like things are getting a little hairy on the jobsite, anyway. Perfect
timing.” He gave
Brady a hug that lasted longer and meant more than any embrace
they’d probably ever shared. He looked at me. “Will I be seeing you at the house later?”

I nodded. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

He squinted. “Somehow, I don’t quite believe that. Drive safely
and
text me when you get to the house.” He rubbed Brady’s head. “I’ll
talk to you tomorrow, son.”

Then it was just Brady and me, sitting together by ourselves for the first time in what seemed like forever. I drank in those blue-ocean eyes I had so desperately missed—eyes that were so much
more clear and
knowing than I was used to. “I seriously doubt you want to hear
about my sex life with Hart, so what is it that you couldn’t say in front of your dad?”

His hand leapt to his chin, his nails scratching at the sand-colored stubble covering it. “Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve been breaking a lot of
things down in therapy. My feelings and shit. Things I’ve said and
done in the past. I’ve come to some conclusions, and I wanted to be honest with you about something.”

I didn’t like the feeling that rose in my stomach. It made my hands
shake and my knees bounce underneath the table. He had never
sounded
like this before
—
not when he was sober, and definitely not when he
was fucked-up.

Suddenly, he sounded like he’d grown up.

I clasped my hands together. “Okay.”

His eyes softened, though the intensity of his stare remained. “You’ve always been there for me, Rae. It didn’t matter how high or drunk I was, who I slept with, who I chased or fought. You never left
me. I can’t say
that about any of my boys. They may have been there, but they
weren’t
there
…not like you.” I watched his chest rise and fall, his vision
drifting
down toward the table. “There was this one time when I got really
drunk in front of Drew, and…” He hesitated.

Shit.

Just the sound of her name doubled the tremble in my stomach.

What the fuck else had she done?

“Whatever it is, you can tell me,” I assured him. “We’ll be fine on the other side of it.”

His eyes met mine again, and I could see his uncertainty. “I was telling her things I shouldn’t have even been talking about and…I told her Saint had grabbed you before I’d gotten the chance.” His
confession
stunned me. “My feelings were confused then
—
they had been for a
while.
There are different kinds of love, and I was mistaking one for
another. I learned that in here.”

I tried to smile, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even fake it. “What are you trying to say?”

“You’ve been my constant for all these years, like a shadow, only
you never stood behind me. You stood beside me, always, never
ashamed
or embarrassed of the things I did or the shitty decisions I made.
You’ve been amazingly loyal to me.”

There was a knot in my throat and no matter how hard I
swallowed it wouldn’t go away.

“You’ve done the same for me,” I whispered.

“I realize now that Saint never took you away from me. I was worried for a while that Hart would, but I know you’d never let that happen. We’re deeper than that, you and me. I mean, yeah, you’ll
end
up spending more time with him, and you’ll continue to live at his
house
instead of mine. But we’re
us
no matter what. I used to think
whoever
you were dating was going to get all your love, and you wouldn’t
have enough left over for me. I know now how wrong I was.”

My eyes were wet, and my lips had begun to shake. “You’re right, Brady. It never happened, and I would never,
ever
let it. You
and Shane are my family. I would never leave you and never stop loving you.”
I reached across the table and squeezed his hands with all the
strength I had. “
Never
.”

He lowered his face and pressed his forehead against the back of
my palm. I could almost feel the emotion flowing from his skin. “I have so much regret, Rae, about so many things.” His lips brushed
the tips of my fingers.

“You know I do, too.”

I didn’t have to go into detail; Brady knew exactly what I was talking about. There was one thing in my life that I wanted to take
back.
The night I had gotten my scar, the night I had left the house and
returned too late. If I had only come back several minutes sooner or had never left at all, the last five years would have been completely different.

He lifted his head, and I saw how red the whites of his eyes had gone. I was sure mine looked the same. “I’m not going to tell you that none of it is your fault,” he said. “I’ve been saying that since the
day
you moved in with me, and you’ve been repeating those exact
words,
and our stubborn minds are going to believe what they want. I’m
going
to make you a promise instead: I’m not looking back anymore. I
can’t afford to. There’s too much shit behind me, shit that can easily drag
my sorry ass straight to Caleb’s and put four pills up my nose.
Ahead is the only direction there is for me. And I hope you understand it’s the only direction for you, too.”

I respected that. I would have done
anything
to be able to move forward like he planned to do. But I didn’t know how to stop looking over my shoulder, especially when Gerald was leaving
messages on
my phone, or while I still cringed every time I thought about Hart’s
hands coming anywhere near my face, or while the thought of going inside my mom’s house made me want to tuck into a corner and rock back and forth, and never stop.

He squeezed my hand until I met his eyes again. “Can you
promise me the same thing?”

I wouldn’t lie to Brady; I wouldn’t even attempt it. He’d be able to see through my lie, anyway. I understood completely where he was
coming from, but we weren’t in the same situation. His trouble had arrived in the form of a demon he’d fought long and hard to gain control
of. Mine had come in the shape of ghosts that I had no chance of
exorcising from my life.

The scars ran too deep for that.

“No,” I told him. “I can’t.”

“You haven’t hit rock bottom.” He didn’t phrase it as a question. He was right not to.

I shook my head. “I think I can see it from here, though.”

He fixed my gaze and held my hands firm. “Do you know where
I was when I called you to come and get me?” I didn’t know if I was ready to hear this. “I woke up in the basement of some house in Bangor. I still don’t know how I got there…the last thing I remember
was being
in Boston. I couldn’t open my left eye; blood was running into the other. Every muscle in my body had either been kicked or punched. I
have no
idea what happened to me
.
” His voice caught. He closed his eyes
and shook his head. I knew whatever had happened to him was bad, but
I hadn’t really expected this. “I was naked, tied to a chair with my hands behind my back. My legs were wet because I’d pissed myself.
In the
back of my mouth, I could still taste the bitterness of the last pill I’d snorted. And it was all I could think about—not that my entire body ached, or might have been broken beyond repair, or that some
stranger was standing in front of me with a bat in his hand or that I was bare-ass naked and covered in my own urine. All I wanted was more of what I tasted.”

“Brady…” I whispered. It hurt to speak that word. Everything
hurt. I was aching for my best friend.

 “I was there because I owed money—a shit-ton of fucking drug money. Turned out I knew a few of the guys in that house and they said I was good for it, so they let me go under two conditions: I have
to give
them my truck, and I have to pay back what I owe them within two
months. Once I do, I’m starting over.” His eyes were filling. “That
was my rock bottom, Rae…I don’t have another one in me.”