Home For The Holidays - Jordan Silver Page 0,51

makes me weak in the knees, I was starting to daydream about what that would be like when there was another knock on the door. I forgot how this place could be like Grand Central Station. “Come in.”

I didn’t expect it to be my brother again and was about to send him packing until I saw the look of misery on his face. Years of ingrained behavior kicked in, and I recalled all the times he’d been there for his little sister, the way we two stuck together always regardless of the age difference. It was Tom who blew on my first skinned knee and held me until mom got there to take over.

He was with dad cheering me on when I learned to ride my first bike. And he was always first in line when someone needed dealing with. Now he looks like a shell of himself, so lost and broken, and I hated Tessa even more than I did ten seconds ago.

“May I come in?”

“Come on!” I patted the bed beside me and sat up against the pillows. He trudged across the room and plopped down on the bed the way he used to when we were younger, only this time there was a heaviness in the room that wasn’t there before.

TOM

What a mess; what an utter and absolute mess. But I’m stuck now. I’ve done and said too much to turn back, and only now that I’ve lost everything do I realize, now that it’s too late. I lost it all, destroyed my only chance at happiness with my own hands, and now I’m left with nothing but this constant knot in my gut

But the look in my little sister’s eyes out of everything else that’s happened so far is the one thing that shakes me to the core. We were once so close, as close as two siblings could be. And not only because of mom and dad’s coaching either, I genuinely love my sister and see her as one of my best friends, or I used to before everything went to hell.

It hurt me to the core and pissed me off to no end when she sided with Deidre in the divorce. That’s never happened before. We’ve always been on the same team, and she’s never sided with anyone against me. Now with time and a little more insight, I’m guessing I should’ve learned something from that.

But it’s too late now. Things done in anger cannot be undone no matter how I wish it were so. In the beginning, when I was presented with evidence of my ex’s affair, the betrayal had been so strong that her pleas of innocence fell on deaf ears time and again. I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as her. I didn’t want to hear her name mentioned.

It was easy to fall into bed with Tessa, get my revenge against Deidre that way for hurting me the way she did. But it didn’t take me long to regret that. Even if it was true that Deidre had cheated, even if we were meant to go our separate ways, Tessa is not the one for me. Too bad it had taken me this long to figure it out.

“Do you hate me?”

“Yes, not you per se, but your actions of late. You’re not the brother I know and love.” That’s something I miss in my life, her blunt honesty. So why is it that this last time I shut her out like I did with everyone else? Why was it so hard for me to hear their words of protest?

I now know that digital pictures can be doctored, something I knew, of course, but never assigned such a thing to the situation I was in. At the time, though, there was no reason for Tessa to lie about her best friend. And the way everything was presented to me, I just couldn’t see any ulterior motives behind her telling me the truth. Now I’m not so sure, not with my whole family against me like this and for so long.

I thought for sure as time went on that they’d come to see things my way, but that never happened, and now after what happened today, I feel even more like I’m losing myself. “I wouldn’t have hit you-you know.”

“I know, at least I think I know, but you’re not the same person anymore, so who knows what the hell you’d do.”

“You know the whole story, don’t you?”

“I do yes,