Unexpected Gift(70)

Actually, maybe the better word is infected. He is infected with copious amounts of pain right now. I skim his chest and arms with my hands, trying to comfort him the best way I can—with my own jagged edges. I understand his pain because I'm feeling it, too. “It’s going to be okay.”

His arms tighten around me, and one of his hands holds the back of my head. “I never expected the day to end like this,” he whispers, hiding his face in my nest of blonde hair.

“I never expected my life to be like this,” I say, thinking about how the hell I got to where I am. It’s all such a blur. I don’t even remember. I never thought I’d be wrapped in his arms, laying on the couch and feeling the song of his heartbeat against my face.

He sighs. “Me either, sunshine.” His voice still slurs, but it isn’t as bad as it was half an hour ago.

“Are you okay?”

“I will be.”

We lay in silence, just enjoying each other. I swirl my fingers between two buttons on his shirt, twirling his chest hair. “How was it?”

He grunts as he gets more comfortable on the couch, and I settle between his legs more naturally. “How was what?”

“Seeing their grave. I haven’t gone yet.”

He lets out a heavy sigh and runs his fingers through my hair. “Well, considering I’m a bit drunk... That should tell you.”

“Well, besides the phone call. How was it?”

“Peaceful. I felt close to him. They would have loved that spot you picked out for them under the oak tree.”

“He told me so many years ago that if he ever died, he wanted to be buried in a place that defined his entire life. Something that made him happy. And then he proposed under an oak tree and he told me that night if he ever died, he wanted to be buried underneath an oak tree—” my voice catches with emotion. I try to cover it up, but the pain can’t be hidden “—because he found forever underneath the branches, and when life took him, he wanted forever in the roots because that was what Amelia was to him. His roots. His home. I wanted to make sure I made that happen for him.”

“He was always a deep son of a bitch, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, he was always more in tune with his emotions than me. He always tried to get me to accept things and stop fighting them, but I never figured out how to, until—” I stop myself from saying too much, not wanting to give my secret away.

“Until?” he says as he lifts my head, making me meet his gaze.

“Until you. Until now.” I flatten my hand over the middle of his heart. “Until this.”

A part of me hopes that in the morning, he won't remember any of this, but I know that probably won’t be the case.

He looks at me like I hung his moon and stars. “Why did we fight each other for so long?”

“I don’t have a good reason, Caden. All those years weren’t wasted, though. We weren’t meant to be together then. We had to fight to get to where we are.”

“Do you think we would be together today if they were still alive?”

Ah, the question that has been rolling around in my head for weeks now. I think about our dynamic before and after my brother’s death. I think of all the fights and all the low blows. All the times I spent watching him hit on women at bars and at weddings. I think about how I felt when I danced with him at Brandon’s wedding. He has always made my heart race and my palms sweat, and it caused me to put up defenses because I didn’t like feeling out of control like that. And he loved to say things that got under my skin, and I fought things like that.

“Honestly?”

“Yeah.” He tickles his fingers down my arm, stops at my wrist, and lazily works it up my arm again.

“No. I don’t.”

“Ouch. Tell me how you really feel.”

I prop myself up on my elbows and stare down at his handsome face. Even with the bags under his eyes and the few days' worth of stubble he has been sporting lately, he is the most attractive man I have ever met. I poke his ribs with my finger. “It isn’t the answer we want to hear, but let’s be honest. We probably would have fought each other until the end of time. I know, for me, every time I had to be around you, I felt like ants were crawling all over my skin—but in a good way. Like you drove me insane, and I always felt like I had to push you away because feeling anything for my brother’s best friend was just too taboo. I didn’t want to like you. I thought you were a player. And I thought you were disgusting and infested with diseases.”

He laughs, holding his head with his hands as he winces—probably getting a headache. “Jeez. I’ll admit I had my moments, but I had no idea a virgin goddess was waiting for me on the other side, okay?”

“Shut up,” I giggle, playfully punching him in his side.

“Really. I wasn’t as bad as you made me out to be, but I could have been better. Plus, any time I saw you, I always decided to make myself look worse just to piss you off.”

“So, you didn’t sleep with that bridesmaid at Brandon’s wedding?”

“Are you kidding? No. I had to get up too early the next morning to take a tumor out of my patient's left temporal lobe. I know it doesn’t seem like it right now because of the almost-empty bottle of scotch and messy clothes, but I’m more responsible than you think.”