“I’m not going anywhere, baby,” Taryn coos, rocking her to stop the tears.
Elena peers up at her, her blue eyes puffy and red in the yellow glow of the lanterns hanging from the ceiling.
“Promise?” Elena sniffs, holding up her pinkie finger.
Taryn smiles, holding out hers as their fingers intertwine. “I promise…at least until you don’t need me anymore.”
Until you don’t need me anymore.
Those words echo in my eardrums. Because there will come a day when we don’t need her anymore, and she will walk away.
My heart plunges into my stomach, the vessel churning with the acid. The reality is we can’t keep her forever. Eventually, Elena and Tristan will be old enough to take care of themselves, and she’ll have no use here.
She’s here now, and she’s not leaving. She promised she wasn’t.
Elena twirls a brown lock of Taryn’s hair around her finger. “I think I’ll always need you,” she says so softly that I barely hear it over the hammering in my chest.
Elena is attached. Cameron and Brennan are getting attached. So, I shove my emotions further into the bottomless depths of my soul, telling myself I won’t get attached too. I need to tread lightly with her. Around her.
I push open the door farther and peek my head in, clearing my throat. “Dinner is ready.”
Their heads whip toward me simultaneously from being startled. Taryn’s eyes search mine, and she nods.
“Why don’t you go wash up, and I’ll meet you downstairs?” she says, lightly tapping Elena’s back with her palm.
Elena gets up and walks toward me, her glassy eyes looking me over.
My apologetic tone is strained. “I’m sorry, Elena.”
She wraps her arms around my legs, pressing her flushed face into my dirty jeans. “It’s okay.”
She escapes the room, leaving Taryn and me.
Taryn walks toward me; each step she takes is loud and thunderous, though she’s creeping toward me at the pace of the pet turtle my brothers and I had when I was ten.
My arm is still propped on the door, the heat between us sizzling and crackling the closer she gets. A bolt of lightning flashes when she peers into my eyes with those big brown ones.
“You do terrify me,” she chokes out, her gaze not straying from mine. “But my weakness is feeling responsible for caring for kids like that.” Her eyes glisten with unshed tears. “It’s one of the reasons I became a teacher. But you already knew that because you asked me about my weakness in that first interview. And you’re using it, usingmeto your full advantage, because you knew the moment I met them that I would care too much to walk away. And I think that’s why you chose me.”
The only thing I can manage to do is nod. She’s right. She was the perfect choice. Yet her words don’t make me feel remorse for my actions.
If I die a greedy man who made choices for his benefit, then my soul deserves to rot in hell. But if I die a selfless brother because I put my family first, then I can burn in hell knowing I gave my soul so I could protect theirs.
That’s why I continue to let them write letters—why my siblings are oblivious to what happened that night after we all heard the glass shatter. Their hearts don’t deserve to be plagued like mine.
I’ve kept the truth from them so they would never carry the pain of knowing their father stood before the woman he was supposed to love, clutching a bloody shard of glass in one hand and gripping the neck of a bottle in the other.
So, I am a selfish man.
Taryn is here because I’m a selfish brother.
My siblings heard the fights. They witnessed the screaming and the decay of their marriage. But the weight of the truth about how our parents’ marriage ended is mine to bear alone.
They deserve to grow up in a world where love is worthy and isn’t destined to fail.
Taryn points out the door, her lecture muted in my ears. The hollow feeling in my chest intensifies. I always feel nothing for anyone unless it’s the five people downstairs I’d give my life for.
She glares at me. “But I’m staying for Elena and Tristan. Only. For. Them.”
