“I’m sorry,” I whispered, not sure what else to say.
Jack and I had tiptoed around our unhappiness for so long, it dismantled our relationship. My therapist once told me it was important to take out the trash in a relationship, to not push down the unsaid words and feelings to the point it breached the top and overflowed. Like it was now.
I fought the heat stinging my eyes. Jack wasn’t a bad man; he just wasn’t who I needed. I was doing the right thing, but breaking his heart made me sick to my stomach.
“You don’t get to play the victim here, Brenna.” Jack’s tone was colder than I’d ever heard. “I’ve been more than understanding about your… issues. I was so careful about what I said so I wouldn’t strike a nerve. I can’t even talk to you like an adult without you breaking down. Grow up.”
My teeth pressed painfully into my bottom lip, and I willed myself not to cry.
“Nothing to say?” Jack prodded.
I shook my head, needing this conversation to end before I broke down and proved his point.
His head bobbed once, his lip curled in distaste. “Seems about right. I’ll take my ring now.”
“I don’t have it with me. I didn’t want to damage it playing baseball.”
He laughed hollowly. “Of course.” He held out his arm to the sidewalk leading to the parking lot. “Well, let’s go. I’m not leaving without it.”
Every ounce of my energy was focused on not crying as Jack drove us back to the house in the most painful car ride of my life. I retrieved my ring and brought it to him while he sat in the car. He didn’t say a single word before driving out of my life.
Tears overwhelmed me as I crawled into bed. Hours later, my body jerked awake, my mouth parched, in desperate need of water. Nathan stood in the upstairs hallway when I came back from the kitchen. I stumbled the moment I saw him, water sloshing my hand as I grasped the banister to stay upright.
The misstep didn’t happen because he startled me. My temporary loss to gravity rested squarely on Nathan being shirtless.
Did it make me a terrible person, being so affected by him only hours after breaking up with my fiancé? Probably. Go ahead and reserve a spot for me in hell, because I had zero control over my reaction to Nathan Sharpe.
His brow furrowed. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes.” I didn’t trust myself to look at him, so I fixed my gaze on the stairs as I ascended. I forced a yawn, not able to carry on a conversation with him right now. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
I closed the door behind me, heaving a sigh of relief to shut out the world.
Minutes after settling into bed, though, I saw a shadow beneath the door.Nathan.I held my breath while he debated whether to knock.
I wanted him to knock.
But the shadow soundlessly retreated.
Keeping my distance from Nathan was for the best, but disappointment washed over me all the same.
24
BRENNA
Seven years ago
The crying started again,loud wails that ripped me from sleep.
I held a pillow tight to my head to drown out the noise. Even with earplugs and a closed door, some nights I could hear her screams from down the hall.
Noise could send my head careening into blackness, unable to think until the volume came down. My complaints were ignored. Mom said we all had to make sacrifices. In other words,suck it up. I’d heard some version of the phrase so many times, she didn’t have to say it anymore.
Over time, I developed ways of coping when overwhelmed. Retreating into a quiet dark room. Slipping beneath a weighted blanket, letting its heaviness calm my overstimulated body. I carefully chose the situations and environments I put myself in, learning when I could push and when to hold back.
Like tonight, when Molly’s piercing screams wouldn’t stop, my mom’s and Gordon’s voices layered on top, lashing out at each other due to sleep deprivation. I wouldn’t get any sleep here.
I rolled out of bed, opened my window, and climbed onto a ladder propped against the side of the house. Once on the ground, I moved the ladder to the Sharpe’s house and climbed to Nathan’s old, perpetually unlatched, bedroom window.
