Woodenly, my legs took me across the room, stopped a few paces away, and stared down at him.
“Brady?”
“I fucked up.”
Strangled. Tortured. Terror-filled.
“I thought…you weren’t answering your phone…the storm.”
I bit my lip and didn’t tell him I’d forgotten my phone on my desk at work.
It was a stupid thing to do, but in my haste to get to Brady, I hadn’t picked it up and didn’t realize it until after I’d left his place, pulled off the road into a shopping center, and parked. I also refrained from pointing out I wasn’t a complete moron and I’d lived in Georgia my whole life, so it wasn’t the first time I’d had to pull over and wait until a storm blew past. Thankfully, being the bookworm I was, my tablet was always in my purse, therefore I didn’t mind sitting in my car because I had hundreds of books to read.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he rasped. “It’s eating me up.”
I took a deep breath and looked at Brady. Not at the wrongness of a strong man brought low, a man who should never be on his knees, but as a man who was in tremendous pain.
Hours ago, he’d cut me deep.
He’d refused to talk, he’d kicked me out, he’d been a total jackass. None of those things were okay, none of those would I put up with. But I knew down to my soul, that man back at his house was not my Brady.
I had to hold it together and deal with that later.
Now, it was time to get to the bottom of the issue.
“Why today?” I asked.
Silence.
“What triggered it?” I tried a different question.
Silence.
“Tell me.”
My demand was met with a pain-filled hitch—the sound akin to the noise a wounded animal would make—but Brady spoke no words.
“Who’s Nicole?”
Brady shot to his feet with shocking speed. I stepped back. He advanced. One hand went behind his back, then he shoved whatever he was holding at me. Waved it in my direction like it was on fire and he didn’t want to hold it while it went up in flames.
I took it and looked down. Then I squinted at the photograph.
The boy in the picture looked like a mini version of Brady. No, a younger Brady with a mop of dark blond hair that was in serious need of a haircut. Not because it was curling around his ears but because it looked shaggy and unkempt. But that wasn’t what had me holding my breath, it was the little boy’s smile. Big, wide, genuine. He was looking at a little girl, and whoever she was, he loved her. It shone so brightly, so openly, it was so beautiful that it hurt to see.
“Is this you?” I whispered.
“Me and Nicole,” he choked.
Nicole.
He still loved her now. Clear as day.
My heart started to ache, not because Brady openly loved someone else, but because he no longer smiled like that. Not even in the last week, and he’d smiled a lot. He’d laughed, he’d teased, he’d looked happy, but he did not look like he did in that picture. Not even a tenth as happy.
There had to be a reason he no longer smiled like that and I was afraid to hear that reason. I was scared that whatever had killed his happy meant something bad had happened to a beautiful little girl with a bright smile and gorgeous cascading blonde hair which needed to be cut and styled as well.
“Who’s Nicole, honey?”
“My sister.” Two words wrenched from his soul. Guttural. Emotional. Sad.
Sister?
Brady had never mentioned a sister. No one had ever mentioned he had a sister. My stomach bound into knots and the photograph started to shake in my hands.
With a heavy heart, I asked, “Where’s your sister?”
“He killed her.”
Oh, fuck.
Oh, no.
I had a bad, bad feeling I knew who ‘he’ was.
My dad’s been in prison for twenty years.
Seven years after my dad went down, she successfully drank herself to death.
Brady had said they were alcoholics. No, he’d said they were mean, nasty drunks.
Oh, shit.
“Brady,” I whispered, not knowing what else to say.
“Twenty years ago today, he killed her. And now he’s getting out. He gets to breathe after he killed her. The only good thing I had in my life. His drunk ass killed her, stole her life, and that bitch knew he was drunk and shouldn’t have been driving. Shouldn’t have been allowed to take two children out on his boat. But she said nothing. Not a goddamned