There was just something about the man—the way he filled a room the moment he entered, commanding attention. It was like trying not to look directly at the sun when someone says, “Look how beautiful that sunset is!” It’s damn near impossible. Not only had I looked at the sun, but I’d reached for it, trying to hold the whole damn thing in my arms before it slipped away.
I tucked the last napkin under the place setting and stood back. “I think so. I just have a few more pieces to unload and a mirror to hang in the living room that I couldn’t do alone. Do you have a minute to help?”
“Sure,” he said, wiping his forehead with his mint-green T-shirt.
I snuck a quick glance, longing for a part of him I had no business having anymore. But you can hardly share every part of your body, heart, and soul with another human being and just expect it to go away overnight. No more could I purge Brighton from my system than the babies I’d miscarried. I felt lost and hollow without each of them.
I focused on the task at hand, holding the ladder as Brighton checked the markings with his level, then screwed the anchors into the wall. I remembered the feel of every hard plane of his body, and my insides reacted when his calf flexed from the strain of standing on the ladder and positioning the heavy mirror into place. Brighton was raw, sexual power built from hard work on a jobsite every day—and my body still responded every time we were close.
But it was more than that.
I missed everything about him. Our soul-baring, late-night talks in the yard. The fun evenings we shared with Ryan by the firepit. Watching the easy way they played basketball, more like best friends in a bromance than two men craving the same woman. How easily he’d fallen into step with our lives this past summer—bringing out the playful side we’d somehow lost over the past few years.
But every day since the lie, Ryan found excuses to distance himself from the jobsite and from his friend. Then it turned into longer days at the university once he’d gone back, finding every reason under the sun not to be home alone with me.
Maybe he did know. My stomach revolted at the thought of telling Ryan later.
“Excuse me,” I said, grateful that Brighton was done and off the ladder already. I ran to the downstairs bathroom and threw up my lunch.
Brighton knocked at the door not even two minutes later. I was too weak to answer. I knew I wasn’t taking good enough care of myself. My stress was causing me to lose weight I couldn’t spare to part with.
“Liv?” His voice was laced with compassion I didn’t deserve. When I didn’t answer, he opened the door. “What happened?”
I moaned as I rested my cheek against the cool porcelain. “I can’t,” I said before tears started pooling.
“Are you going to get sick again? Do I need to call Ryan?”
“No!” I said a little too forcefully. I didn’t even know if he was home from work yet.
“What’s going on?” He bent over and scooped me into his arms as if I weighed nothing. He carried me to the conversation nook off the kitchen and set me down gently onto the large, L-shaped couch. Then he went into the kitchen, where I could hear him rummaging around in the refrigerator. A few minutes later, he sat down next to me, casually wrapping his arm across the back of the sofa as he handed me a bottle of water.
“Are you sick?”
I shook my head. “It’s stress. The same thing used to happen to me in high school. Dr. Paul thinks it’s because I need to tell Ryan about—well, you know.”
“You’re ready to do that?” He looked relieved. I hated that I’d ever asked him to hold the lie with me.
“I’ll never be ready.”
He hugged me closer with the arm that was on the back of the couch. “Ryan loves you more than anything. There’s no way he won’t forgive you. It was one time.”
“It’s not the sex that’s going to destroy him.”
“Right. The truth pact.”
“He will never trust me again,” I sobbed. I couldn’t even blame him because I’d done the one thing we vowed never to do. My body shook against Brighton’s, and shame heated my cheeks. Because, even while grieving my epic betrayal, I still wanted nothing more than to curl into this man. Have him love away my pain again.
“Then he’d be a fool,” Brighton said. “You guys have been through so much together. You’ve been tested more than a couple should be. I was worried that throwing me into the mix was just going to make things harder. He was so sure it would be what you needed.”
“And it was,” I said, sitting up and looking into his pale green eyes. “It was exactly what I needed to start feeling alive again. You have no idea how empty I felt before I met you.”
I finally took a sip from the water bottle, the cold liquid burning my raw throat. “I feel so selfish for saying that, especially because of what it cost you. And Ryan.”
“I’m glad I could be there for you, Olivia. But we always knew there was going to be an expiration date on what we had. The open house is Friday. Ryan’s made it clear that the three of us are over. And I need to get back to my life in Watertown. There’s no room left for me here.”
That only made me cry harder. I’d gotten so spoiled over the summer, getting to see him and Ryan nearly every day. To have him just disappear—I wasn’t sure my heart could handle the absolute grief his absence would bring. Not on top of everything else.
“What if it didn’t have to end? What if you didn’t have to walk away from this?”
“Liv—there’s no way Ryan would ever consider something like that. I can’t let my heart go there. Besides, you need to focus on making things right with him now that you’re in therapy. Just promise me something?”
“Anything,” I said quietly. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Talk to him before the house sells. I’ll stay until it does. If you need me for anything after you talk to him, I’m just a yard away. I mean it,” he said, his eyes darkening. It was because of the fight that’d happened with Ryan the afternoon I made love to Brighton alone. Here in this house. It was Brighton who listened to me that day. Comforted me. Then he’d loved away any doubts I had left about whether I could really let him go. And yet, I wasn’t brave enough to do anything about it.
I nodded. I didn’t want Brighton to worry about me. I didn’t have a right to that part of his heart. But I had no clue how to say goodbye to the man who had changed our lives and opened my heart after feeling dead inside for so long.
“Promise me something, too?”
“Anything. It’s the least I can do.”
I ached to reach out and touch those dimples. Run my hand through his thick, blond hair. Feel his full lips on mine one last time. But that isn’t what I asked from him. “Promise you won’t leave without saying goodbye?”
This time, he gathered me into both arms and held on tight. I sank against him, drowning under his scent and the comfort of being close to him again after so many weeks.
“I had a feeling this is where I’d find you,” I heard from the kitchen entrance.
My body stiffened as I pulled away from Brighton and turned. I met my husband’s accusing eyes. “We were finishing the staging today, Ryan. This isn’t what you think it is.”