he doesn’t believe me. Rather than stand ten feet away from him, I cross the cold tile and move to stand in front of him, lifting a hand to his cheek and turning his face to me.
Once I have his attention, I wrap my hand around his bicep. “Listen to me, Beau. This isn’t your fault. It isn’t Max’s or your parents’ or mine. What happened to Chris is devastating and awful. A ruptured brain aneurysm is too often fatal.”
“It shouldn’t have been this way. He died alone, Addy. Alone. Because I couldn’t pull myself out of my ass and support him the way he deserved.”
What is he talking about? Yeah, after Zoey was born, he was a little distant but Chris told me that was because Beau wanted to give us time. Besides, he didn’t even live in the same town as us. But that’s the only time I can remember him not one hundred percent supporting Chris. I mean, the last few years he hasn’t reached out quite as often as he once did but I can hardly blame him. He’s busy just as I am.
“What are you…”
His hazel eyes look nearly black in the barely lit room when he stares down at me. His chest heaves with a deep inhalation of breath and his eyes flutter closed for a brief second. Right now isn’t the time to think about how obscenely sexy he is, but I can’t help it.
With one hand on his chest, the other still on his arm, I watch as he struggles against the internal battle. Whatever is going on in his head, I want him to snap out of it.
“Hey. Listen to me, Beau. You were the best big brother Chris could ask for. He never felt like he was lacking from what you gave him. He loved you. Loved. You. Do you hear me? Whatever is going on in your head right now? Tune it out. It’s not truth and if you dig deep, you’d know it.”
“He loved you.”
I jerk back. “What? What does that have to do with anything?”
“He loved you, Addy. You know it as surely as I do and I was too stuck in my own misery, in my own head to let him have you.”
I stare at him, confused and lost in his admission. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”
“He was so in love with you.”
“No. He might have been at one point, but he’d moved on. He loved me because he was infatuated with his big brother’s best friend and then because I was his daughter’s mom. We talked about it, Beau. He realized that he wasn’t in love with me.”
I know what I’m telling him sounds ridiculous. For those years after he proposed, I tried so hard to convince not only me, but him, as well, that he wasn’t in love with me. To ease my own guilt for not returning that kind of love. He told me he no longer harbored those feelings and I believed him. Whether it was because I wanted to or because he made a compelling enough argument, I don’t know.
“He was,” Beau says simply. “And it’s because of me that he never got what his heart desired, isn’t it?” His voice is so quiet. Deep. Raspy. Vulnerable.
“Yes.” I don’t know what I’m admitting to in this moment. The fact that I never loved his brother because my heart has always been lost to him?
He nods sadly as if that simple answer is enough. “I can’t bury him today, Addy. I can’t do it.”
Rather than whisper useless words, I simply wrap my arms around him and cling tight. Much like Zoey’s been doing with him since he showed up on our door step just a few nights ago, I don’t let him go. I wonder if he’s getting tired of being touched. The way his arms bind around me, I’m assuming he doesn’t mind.
“I’m not ready,” he says, his shoulders shaking slightly, just like his voice.
“I know. We never would be, though.”
We stand together, grieving over the loss of a wonderful man, until the sun pushes the moon out of its place and begins its ascent into the sky. My body aches and my eyes feel swollen and puffy from crying while the rest of our world was asleep.
“We aren’t going anywhere, Beau. Zoey and me? We’re here for you. Just like you promised to be here for us.”
“Thank you,” he whispers. “I’m sorry for interrupting your sleep.”