Wherever It Leads(84)

The sky is dark outside my window and my clock tells me it’s already after eight. My body aches from being contorted in bed, my head feels like I’ve drunk a fifth of whiskey. I’d probably be better off if I had drunk a bottle of something.

I try to get my bearings, to figure out if the knock was real or not, when it sounds again.

“Come in,” I say, rolling over and flipping on a light. The brightness makes me squint, shielding my vision from the assault.

The door squeaks open and I feel the air vibrate with his presence immediately. My body goes on alert, like it always does, when Fenton’s near. I shuffle against the headboard, knowing I must look ridiculous and not sure if I can take seeing him again. Not when the wounds are so fresh. Not when I still haven’t made any sense out of this disaster.

Fenton looks awful. His face is lined, his clothes wrinkled. His hair is a mussed-up mess and I wonder how many times he’s had his hands in it.

He closes the door behind him, but doesn’t move towards me. I’m glad for that.

“Presley let me in,” he says. “She made me promise to not make you cry or she’d blast me with pepper spray on my way out.”

I crack a smile, but barely. My face hurts too much.

“Brynne, I’m so sorry.” His voice cracks with each syllable, each sound pregnant with so much emotion that it nearly drips from the words.

I shake my head, not wanting to hear it. Yet, I do. I want to believe him. I want to wipe this entire thing away. I want Brady home and to have had no links with Fenton at all. I want to be at Fenton’s house, on the deck, with him wearing nothing but his smirk.

The thought rips my heart, tears a part of my soul I didn’t know was reachable for another person. Fenton affects me in ways I didn’t know was possible, made me feel happier, more complete, more wanted than any man ever had before.

And probably more than any man after him could.

But that’s a double-sided coin because for all of the amazing things he can make me feel, he can also destroy me. And I’m afraid he has.

He takes a couple of steps towards me, but the look on my face stops him.

“I swear to you, I was going to tell you,” he says, his voice broken. “I tried to tell you a couple of times, but . . .”

“But you didn’t, Fenton. You just kept me in the dark.”

“Can you imagine what it was like for me for just a minute? I’ve fallen in love with this girl . . .”

I gasp, a shaky intake of air that does nothing to balance me. I watch his face, hoping for a smirk, one of his little chuckles, something to tell me that this declaration was a part of our ongoing joke. But I get nothing but a solemn stare that deepens the laceration in my heart.

He can’t say this now. He can’t go there. He can’t mean it.

My bottom lip quivers and he zeroes in on it immediately. A sharp breath falls from his lips and I can’t fight it anymore. A lone tear trickles down my face. With every centimeter it trails, so does his frown.

“Fenton, I can’t do this,” I whisper. “Will you please go?”

“Don’t ask me to leave, rudo. Please, don’t ask me to go.”

“I can’t do this,” I sniffle. “I don’t understand any of this and I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“Ask me questions. You’re always asking me shit. Do it now. Please,” he begs. “Do it now.”

The pain on his face is like salt in my wound because even though I’m hurting like hell, I hate that he’s hurting too. I can’t give in and hold him, try to make him smile until I’m sure I can smile too. And I know, in the pit in my stomach, that I may never smile again.

“What can I do? Please, baby. Tell me.”

“Don’t, Fenton.”

“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. It wasn’t. I was supposed to explain it to you, break it down so you see what position I was in. That I fell madly in love with you way before I ever knew who you were or that you even had a brother. And by the time I realized it, I knew you’d want me to let you go and that felt . . . impossible.”

My tears dredge down my swollen cheeks and I watch him through blurred lenses.

“That’s the thing—I don’t know what it was or wasn’t supposed to be. I’m completely gobsmacked over here and I just feel . . .” I can barely see his face through the blinding tears. “I just feel so f*cked over.”

“I didn’t f*ck you over. I’d say circumstances f*cked us over—both of us.”

“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

“What would you have done, Brynne? What if I would’ve told you that night in Vegas after your mom called and I started figuring it out what I suspected? What if I would’ve said, ‘Hey, Brynne. I think your brother worked for me. I think he’s the reason I haven’t slept all night in f*cking months. I think it’s your brother that I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on to get back to your family. I’m pretty certain it’s your brother’s disappearance that’s made me turn my company inside f*cking out to see what went wrong, what details we’ve missed, so I can do what’s right. What then, Brynne?”

“I would’ve called a cab.”

“Which is exactly why I couldn’t do that!” He paces a circle before standing to face me again. “I tried to walk away. I brought you home and told myself I was going to let you go and I’d come find you once we got Brady back.” He looks me straight in the eye. “Because we will get him back.”