word when I told the bastard we weren’t going.”
Brady’s gaze looked far away as he relived that day. “Not when he grabbed my sister and shoved her in the back seat. No way was I letting her go anywhere alone with him. That stupid, fucking bitch knew he was drunker than normal and she allowed her husband to drive to a lake with her two children in the car.
“But only one came home that day. The other lay dead in a morgue. Her piece-of-shit husband locked up. And her son forever broken after he tried but failed to save his baby sister from drowning.
“But do you think she offered a hug, a kiss, support, love, care, something, anything? Hell no. She hit the bottle. So she wouldn’t feel anything. But me? I felt it all. I still feel it all. I see it. I hear it. I taste the lake water as I swallowed gulps of it down. I see her limp dead body. I see that bastard uninjured and swaying as he was handcuffed. But you know what I’ll never see again?”
Brady’s face twisted in extreme agony and it hurt so bad to see it I wanted to beg him to stop talking. “That,” he grunted and jabbed his finger toward the picture. “I’ll never see her smile again. I’ll never hear her laugh, her voice, her singing. I’ll never hug her. I’ll never wish her another happy birthday. I’ll never get to see her grow up, escape the hell we grew up in, and finally be happy. Never. I’ll never get that. But Brett fucking Hewitt gets to live.”
I was speechless.
He was correct on all accounts, and the unfairness of it, crushing.
“Fuck!” he roared, and I felt a woosh of air as Brady lunged for me.
I braced as his arms went around me and he shoved his face in my neck. His arms were so tight the air was leaving my lungs. But I wrapped him up as tightly as I could and I held on.
That was all I could offer.
“I don’t want to be like him,” he mumbled against my throat.
Be like his father.
Was he crazy?
“Honey, you are nothing like him.”
“It’s inside of me. The anger. The bitterness. The poison waiting to come out, hurting the people I love. I’ve turned into the man I hate.”
What in the world?
“No, you have not.” I squeezed harder, which was to say, just a fraction more because I was already squeezing as tightly as I could.
“I get you need to believe that, Hadley, but, baby, I don’t know how you can say that after how I just treated you.”
“Let me go.”
His arms immediately dropped and he stepped back.
The quickness of his actions broke my damn heart.
“I see you need to believe that. I won’t lie and pretend that you kicking me out of your house didn’t sting.” Brady flinched and closed down. “But you have to know I’m smart. You’re not new, you’ve been around my family a long time, so it’s not lost on you that my family has seen its fair share of tragedy, and with that comes the unfortunate flare-up of tempers. Do you think I love my cousin Liberty any less because she snapped at me when she got home after being held as a POW? Do you think I love my sister Delaney any less after she lost the baby and was so filled with grief she kicked me out of her hospital room? Or when my sister-in-law Kayla passed away and my brother shut down for years and refused to hear reason? Do you not think that he didn’t say mean and hurtful shit to me? Of course, he did. He was hurting. He was grieving. He was in pain.”
I took a deep breath. “But I forgave him. Wanna know why? Because I’m smart enough to understand when something is wrong. When someone is emotionally crippled and needs to be loved through it, not berated and persecuted because they’re feeling pain so deep they can’t keep it in.
“But just to say. The next time that happens, I will not be leaving. I will be holding your ass to the fire and demanding you talk to me. You want this to work between me and you, everything is my business when it brings you pain. Every last goddamned thing, Brady. And do not mistake me for some weak woman who’d stand by and let you use her as a punching bag. I am far from