But he did. At least she ended up with Clark and Ellie ended up with a brother who will do anything for her. My dad was neglectfully affectionate with Ellie, nothing more. With me he put on the pressure. And I was an asshole kid who rebelled against following in daddy’s footsteps.” He huffed at himself, shaking his head. “If we could only go back and knock some sense into those kids we once were.”
If only.
“I started hanging around the wrong people, smoking pot, getting drunk, and getting into a lot of fights. I was angry. Angry at everything. And I liked to use my fists to get rid of that anger. I was nineteen and dating a girl from a rough area here. Her mum was in prison, her dad gone, and her brother was a junkie. Nice girl, bad home life. One night she turned up at my door and she was just a hysterical mess.” His eyes glazed over as he remembered, and I knew instinctively that what he was about to say next was going to be beyond awful. “She was crying, shaking, and she had vomit in her hair. She’d gotten home that night and her brother was so off his face on smack that he raped her.”
“Oh my God,” I breathed, feeling physical pain for the girl I had never met, and for Braden for having had that happen to someone he cared about.
“I lost it. I didn’t give myself time to think. I tore off, running the whole fucking way to his place on adrenaline alone.” He stopped, his jaw clenched tight. “Jocelyn, I beat him within an inch of his life.” He looked down at me, his expression remorseful. “I’m a big man,” he whispered. “I was, even as a teenager. I didn’t realize my own strength.”
I couldn’t believe he was telling me this. I couldn’t believe this had happened to him. Braden, who I thought lived in a world of elegant dinners and fancy apartments. Apparently, he’d been in another world for a little while. “What happened?”
“I left, made an anonymous call for an ambulance, and told her what I’d done. She didn’t blame me. In fact when the police found him, we covered for each other. Her brother was a well-known junkie, there were no witnesses, and they just assumed it was drug-related. He was in a coma for a few days. The worst bloody days of my life. When he woke up, he told the police he couldn’t remember who’d attacked him, but when I walked in with his sister she told him what he did.” Braden’s voice hitched a little. “He started to cry. It was probably the most pitiful sight I’ve ever seen, him crying and her just staring at him with hatred in her eyes. She left. He promised me he wouldn’t tell the truth about what had happened. He said he’d deserved it, that I should have killed him. There was nothing I could do for either of them. I never saw him again. My relationship with her fell apart when she turned to drugs to deal with what happened, refusing my help. Last word I heard a few years back was that she’d OD’d.”
I pulled myself up beside him, my whole body aching for him. “Braden… I’m sorry.”
He nodded and turned his head to gaze at me. “I’ve never been in a fight since. Lifted my hands to no one. My dad and I buried a lot of shit after that. He was the only other person who knew the truth, and he helped me turn everything around. I owe him.”
“I think we all do.” I smiled sadly, brushing my fingers along his jaw as it sunk in that he’d trusted me with this.
Me.
Oh God.
Did I owe him somehow? Or wasn’t it like that? He’d trusted me because he knew I wouldn’t tell anyone, he knew I wouldn’t judge him.
It occurred to me sitting beside him—feeling pain for him—that I knew he would never tell anyone anything I shared with him. He would never judge me. I heaved a sigh and dropped my hand, my stomach twisting as I fought with myself. “Dru,” her name just fell out of my lips before I could even think about it.
Braden’s body tensed with alertness. “Dru?”
I nodded, my eyes on his stomach rather than his face. Blood rushed in my ears and I clutched the sheets to stop my fingers from trembling. “She was my best friend.