Beard Necessities (Winston Brothers, #7)(26)

She was quiet for a few seconds and I felt her attention on me. “I know you think talking about things won’t help, but sometimes it does. Sometimes, you just need a person who you can trust to listen, who you can be open with and not have to worry about their feelings, or whether they’re judging you.”

I nodded, pressing my lips together. Talking to someone like that actually sounded nice. It sounded so nice, it seemed like a fairy tale. Pretend. Make believe.

“I worry about you,” she went on. “Jethro worries about you. He said Ben used to be that person for you, but now he’s—”

“Ben was never that person for me,” I blurted, and then drew in a deep breath, feeling . . . fine.

Eh, let me clarify that. By fine, I mean, not worse.

Sienna was quiet again, but this time the silence felt different. “Claire—”

“It’s the truth. Ben loved me, took care of me, kept me safe. I owed him a debt I could never repay. But I was never honest with him about how I felt, what I wanted, or who I was. And when I tried to be honest, I just hurt him. I hurt him so bad. He didn’t want honesty, he wanted me to love him, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t.”

Aaaaaand, now I was crying.

Damn tears. Stupid sobbing, messy, waterworks. Man, I hated crying. I hated it, and if there’d been a way to surgically modify my tear ducts from activating when sad, I would’ve had that surgery.

I sensed Sienna’s hesitation—probably due to astonishment—before she reached out, turned me toward her, and pulled me into her arms. Curling into her warm body, I cried.

“Oh, Claire. Honey. Are you okay? What can I do?”

I shrugged. “Just trying to sort through things, things from my past, things I’m not proud of.”

“You’re an angel.”

I swiped at my dumb tears. “No. I’m no angel,” I said, and then I hiccupped.

She ignored the hiccup. “It’s complicated when people die, it’s easy to feel guilty for imaginary transgressions. I’m sure—”

“I cheated on him,” I blurted, and then felt like a dummy, because cheating wasn’t precisely what Billy and I had done.

Her hand rubbing circles on my back paused. “Uh, say what?”

“In my heart, I cheated,” I tried to clarify.

“Did you say . . . you cheated at hearts? Like the card game?”

“No, not cards. I mean—” No longer feeling the need to cry, I skootched back. I was slurring my words, and having my face pressed against her neck likely made me hard to hear. “Here’s what happened, okay? I was in love with this man the whoooooole time”—I flung my arm through the air—“I was married to Ben. But it’s complicated because Ben married me at fifteen, saying it was—”

“Fifteen?!”

“Wait, lemme finish. He did it to help keep me safe from my father, okay? And we weren’t married married. Whatever, it’s a long story. But the important part, while I was secretly married to Ben, but everyone thought we were just engaged, this man I loved—let’s call him B—Barney—and I met at a hotel and talked, and kissed, and—just the one time, but that wasn’t at the hotel—we made out.”

“Holy macaroni!”

“I know! And so Barney wanted me to leave Ben. But then I wouldn’t—I was scared, my father is one scary sonofabitch and if I didn’t have the protection of Ben’s family, well, badness. And I owed Ben. I owed him, I owed him, I owed him and I was going to what? And plus, in a way, did I love Ben? So stable, saying I could be better despite him also just doing whatever he wanted without regard to my feelings”—I flung my hand in the air again—“just assuming and feeling entitled all the time. What an ass, right? I was confused and dumb and nineteen. Nineteen!”

“Uh—”

“And Barney, the man I met in secret, he got really angry and gave me the cold shoulder treatment and now it turns out he had a goat on that shoulder. And did I blame him? I wasn’t angry at him. I knew I was to blame. I was the problem. I’m always the problem!”

“Claire, are you sure you want to talk about this? This seems very personal. Are you sure you don’t want to wait until you’re sober?”

“If I wait until I’m sober, then I’ll be too chickenshit—not wanting to be a burden—to say anything, and now you know, so please ask me about it when I’m sober so I’ll be forced to tell a coherent version of the story.”

“I’m having trouble following the story.”

I barely heard her. “Plus, I haven’t even gotten to the worst parts yet, which is his momma found out and asked me to stay away, and she was right. She was so right. I’d made her sad, disappointed her. I stayed away. And then Billy—wait, I mean Barney—shows up at my house the night before my ‘official’ wedding to Ben and—after kissing the hell outta me—demands I leave with him, totally caveman style, which caused our first big blowout, rip-roaring fight, which we’ve been having basically every single time we see each other since. The end.”

“Uh, I—”

“Wait, no. That’s not the end. I forgot to say, Ben died and I felt so guilty and ashamed—like, legit hated myself, deep, unhealthy, illogical, brainwashed BS—that I avoided Billy for years.” I pointed at the sky and had no idea why I pointed at the sky. “But then he got engaged and I avoided him because of that too. And then it turns out he’s not really engaged, but he is, or he sorta is, but it’s fake—or is it? And he still wants to be with me as of Christmas, except he lied to me about Duane and Beau being my brothers—he knew the whole damn time!—and I don’t know if I can trust him. And the only person I’ve slept with in my entire life is my husband who I have very conflicted feelings about because I wasn’t ready to have sex but I felt obligated, and that’s a giant mess. Now, this is the end. The end.”