Help Me Remember (Rose Canyon, #1)(79)

“Is that what she was upset about?”

“Yeah, after I sent you that text, she remembered everything. I love her, Emmett. You know that proposing to her, giving her my entire fucking heart when I am the way I am, wasn’t easy. I can’t lose her. I can’t live my life without her, and . . . she knows in her soul that I love her. Once the wait time is up, I’m going to go over there and beg her to let me explain.”

“You can’t.”

“What do you mean, I can’t?”

He gets to his feet and lifts his hands before dropping them. “You can’t go talk to her.”

“I abided by their rules, I waited twenty-four hours.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

I stare at my best friend, feeling a sense of dread. “Explain.”

I can only get one word out because I already know what’s coming. I don’t have to see the facts laid out to understand the outcome here. But then, this stupid fucking part of me, this hopeful sliver in my shredded heart, wants to believe otherwise.

Brielle wouldn’t do this.

She wouldn’t walk away.

She wouldn’t leave me. Not me. Not us.

Not on purpose or by choice.

Brielle is nothing like her. She is not like my mother. She’s not selfish and searching for something she’ll never have. She’s not looking for someone better. Someone who doesn’t drown her.

Emmett looks at me with empathy in his eyes and says two words that shatter me. “She left.”





Chapter Twenty-Nine





BRIELLE





“Brie, honey.” Mom knocks on the door again. “Please come out and talk to me.”

She lasted far longer than I would’ve expected. For three hours, she let me have some time alone to sort out my thoughts. She still paced outside the door, but she didn’t knock until now.

Then again, I can’t blame her. I just showed up on her doorstep with Quinn and Jackson. After she—reluctantly—let them look around, I came inside and have stayed here, numb.

The tears dried up once we crossed into California. The hours of driving in silence drained the fight out of me.

Still, I needed to decompress.

I open the door, and she sighs. “Oh, thank God. I was debating getting one of the boys to come kick the door in.”

“It wasn’t locked.”

“Well, I didn’t know that.”

I sigh. “I’m assuming you want answers.”

“That would be a good start.”

“Inside or out?” I ask, and she smiles. Dad would always ask that when he had something important to tell us. We always picked outside. There is something about the fresh air that makes bad news feel a little less—bad.

“Outside.” We walk out to her back deck. It’s a small space, but she did a great job utilizing the space to make it inviting. We each take a seat, and she reaches out, holding my hand. “Now, talk to me, Brie.”

I let it out. I tell her about everything from the beach to the kiss to the awards to having sex with him. I pretty much forget that she’s my mother and Spencer is like a son to her, but I came here for the truth and she deserves no less from me.

Mom, who I didn’t think knew what silence was, sits there in it.

I continue, telling her about the memories and the lies. I tell her about my theories regarding Isaac’s killer and how it links back to me. All of it.

After I finally get to the part about what forced me to get in a car and drive ten hours to her, she stops me.

“This is a lot to unpack, sweet girl.”

That’s an understatement. I haven’t even gotten to the part where I went crazy and pressed my panic button.

“There’s more,” I tell her.

She sits back again. “Okay. Let’s have it all so we can try to make some sense of this.”

I fill in the rest. The fight. The fact that I don’t believe my own mind or heart. I tell her about Spencer’s face when I pushed the button and how broken he was. All of it pours from me, and it’s far more cathartic than I thought it would be.

My mother, as crazy as she is, loves me and will not hold back. She’ll be the one person who will help me understand.

“Wow,” she finally says.

“Yeah.”

Her brown eyes are swimming in unshed tears. “You are engaged to Spencer?”

“I was. I guess.”

“I’m both happy and sad.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because, for a very long time, your father and I would talk about what we would do when you and Spencer finally saw each other. He knew that boy was made for you. It drove your father crazy, and I remember a time when your father wanted to stop letting Spencer stay at the house because of it.”

I never knew that.

She smiles sadly. “We could never have abandoned that boy, though. Not only because his mother did that enough but also because we loved him. Isaac loved him and so did you. He was a part of our family. He would bounce between our house, Emmett’s, and Holden’s, but we all tried to love him fiercely since he was always experiencing the opposite end of it.”

“I figured all of that. I remember the birthday party that we threw him because his mother didn’t show up to pick him up. He was so mad that day.”