Only When It's Us (Bergman Brothers #1)(73)

I only nod, because I’m struggling for the right words. Joy releases my hand and lifts her pinkie. “I mean it, Bergman, or I’ll haunt you.”

I laugh through the thickness in my voice, blinking away tears as I lock fingers with her. “Deal.”

“Now.” Joy drops my finger and sits back, hands folded primly in her lap as her eyes drift shut. “Where were we?”





23





Willa





Playlist: “This Must Be The Place,” The Lumineers





With one ear pressed to a crack in the door, my eyes scrunched shut in concentration. That’s the first time I hear the words spoken out loud. My mother is dying. I’ve refused to acknowledge it, but I’ve known. Subliminally, I knew why she was leaving the hospital, but hearing it, thinking it is so much more painful.

I must be in shock because I’m not crying. I’m not even breathing unsteadily. My heartbreak is a white-hot knife, slicing down my sternum. It rips open my chest, and I feel as if I’m watching my heart tilt, then flop out of my chest, where it lands with a splat on the hardwood floor. Next, it’s as if my intestines unravel slowly, a steady, nonstop unwinding. There’s a sad, sick parallel to how I spun that scarf off my neck and unveiled my body to torture Ryder.

Ryder.

I hear his voice on the other side of the door.

My body is distant from my consciousness. I’m floating away, staring down at myself, slumped to the floor in a fragmented pool of parts. My lungs are the next victim. They collapse in on themselves. They tighten and shrivel as I gasp for air.

I see myself, balled up on the floor.

My sobs are silent. I’m airless, carved out, breaking, until—

Laughter. Mama’s belly laugh yanks me down to my body, jamming everything inside again, knitting me together. My lungs fill. My heart pounds safely inside my chest. My stomach tightens. Everything is where it should be, as I listen. The mood shifts in the room.

“Reread the first proposal, please,” Mama says.

“In vain I have struggled.” Ryder’s voice is deep and ragged. He reads Darcy’s voice with suffering that’s as believable as it is expressive.

He’s her gentleman reader.

Oh, fuck.

Hot, fat, tears slide down my cheeks. That asshole. That infuriating asshole lumberjack is reading to my sick mom and putting Colin Firth to shame.

“It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you…”

I listen, rapt, my ear pressed tight to the door. The famous heated exchange as Darcy stupidly degrades Elizabeth’s family, points out their every flaw. When he finishes I hear Mama sigh heavily.

“I always wish Austen wouldn’t have tortured us,” she says before a wet cough stops her. Finally, she catches her breath. “All that longing at Pemberley, the misunderstandings over Jane and then Wickham. I wish Lizzie and Darcy told each other what was going on. Then they could have gone straight to happily ever after.”

“I mean, in real life, I’m one hundred percent with you,” Ryder says. “I see no point in anything but direct communication.”

Mama coughs. “Amen. If everybody spoke their damn truth, we’d all avoid a hell of a lot of drama.”

“Agreed. But, it seems like it’s not that straightforward for most people. Saying hard truths takes time and courage, whereas for blunt, analytical people like you and me, it’s our hardwiring. It’s not a virtue, it’s just our nature.

“And of course, in the case of Lizzie and Darcy, this is literature. It’s meant to torture us, for lack of a better word, in a pleasurable kind of way. That dragged-out tension, it’s the best part.”

Ryder’s voice is low and extra rough. He sounds like he got maybe a cup of coffee in him before Mama was blowing up his phone to read to her. “You have to slog through their stilted ability to be vulnerable, their dogged fear of opening up which causes all those misunderstandings, before their reconciliation. That’s what makes it feel so gratifying and meaningful,” he says. “The sweetness of them admitting their feelings is only powerful because they’ve gone through so much to arrive at that understanding. They have to work past their insecurities and assumptions, to fight their way to uncover the truth. Then and only then do they realize what they mean to each other.”

Mama laughs quietly. “You talk like you have some insight into this, young man.”

I hear Ryder’s body shift in the chair. His throat clears. “It’s…it’s a good story. I’ve read it before, had to study it for a class last year. Anyone would tell you what I’m saying.”

“But perhaps not everyone would have felt it.”

There’s a long silence until Ryder’s voice finally ruptures it. “Perhaps.”

“All right. I’ll stop making you use your feeling words. Thank you for rereading that. Now let’s pick up at the good part.”

“Right.” Ryder clears his throat.

I sit there longer than I should, listening to Darcy and Lizzie clear up the confusion, to Darcy’s second proposal. I eavesdrop, committing the very transgression I ripped Ryder a new asshole for, but I’m neck-deep in my hypocrisy, rooted to the spot. Ryder reads on, pausing for what sounds like a drink of water before he clears his throat. He reads through the Bennet family’s surprise at their engagement and my thoughts drift with the story. I’m lulled, content with this happy ending, until their dialogue, beginning with Lizzie’s words to Darcy, sends a cold sweat trickling down my spine.