“Okay,” I said.
“Everything will go back to the way it was,” he murmured, as his eyes drifted shut. “It’ll be like it never happened.”
God, how I wished that were true.
Chapter 30
TRISTAN
I’m fine.
That became Brennan’s mantra in the days following Drake’s vicious attack and after a while I learned to stop asking the question.
But he was anything but fine.
None of us were.
The events of that terrible night haunted my every waking moment. From the fear I’d felt as we’d been abducted, to trying to keep my little brother calm as he’d been pressed against me telling me he wanted to go home, to the sight of Brennan sacrificing himself to save me, to the sounds of the man I loved being brutalized just feet behind me as I’d sung a stupid song about how perfect the world was if you just believed in love.
Brennan hadn’t made a sound that night after the single, soft cry of pain that he’d let out followed by Drake’s grunt of satisfaction. The entire attack had lasted less than a minute before Memphis had kicked the door down, but it may as well have been hours because the impact it had had on all of us was life-changing.
We put on a good act for each other, but we’d become strangers. There were no more affectionate touches, no more sweet kisses, no suggestive texts or words…all we did was hide.
From each other.
From ourselves.
And we did it in plain sight.
For his part, Brennan tried too hard at everything. He cracked jokes that we all knew were forced, he spoke excitedly about things none of us cared about and every time someone even got close to asking how he was, he’d smile and say he was fine.
Memphis went the other way and withdrew from us and himself. He stopped sleeping in the same bed with us, disappeared at all hours to “work” and never pressed Brennan to admit that he was anything but fine. But I knew it wasn’t because Memphis didn’t care. Far from it.
Because Memphis and I were suffering from the same affliction.
Guilt.
Crippling guilt.
Soul-sucking, change-your-life-forever kind of guilt.
And fear. We had that in spades too. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of making things worse by admitting Drake had done exactly what he’d intended and destroyed us. Fear that despite our efforts to cling to the relationship we’d worked so hard to build before Drake’s arrival, it was quite possibly beyond saving.
I cried.
A lot.
In the shower.
In my car.
In my fathers’ arms whenever I needed the safety and security I could no longer find in Memphis’s arms…or Brennan’s.
Memphis had no such refuge.
Brennan had it, but chose to pretend he didn’t need it.
Simply put, we’d stopped talking, laughing, loving…we’d become shells of ourselves and I’d been at a loss to figure out how to change it. Although I slept next to Brennan every night and he held me in his arms, he wasn’t there. I wasn’t either. We were both back in Drake’s hell hole waiting for Memphis to come save us.
