Page 121 of When We Had Forever
“Because.” My voice cracks. “This whole time, there’s been another you, walking around out in the world somewhere? That’s so...wrong. I should’ve known.”
“He’s not another me. At all. He’s nothing like me.”
There’s a catch in his voice, a hint of some vastness buried beneath the measured words, and I latch on. “Oh, no? And what’s so unbelievably different? What’s made him not even worth talking about?”
Heavy seconds tick by. I hold my breath, knowing I’m skirting dangerously close to lines I agreed not to cross a decade ago. But I can’t seem to let this go.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” he says softly.
“You never do,” I snap. “You never want to talk about anything. Nothing real, anyway.”
His lashes flicker. Barely. “Angel. Why don’t you come here?”
“No,” I bite out, already knowing exactly what will happen if I cross this room. If he thinks he can just fuck me into submission, he...might actually be right. So I command my feet to meld with the floor. “Don’t do that. Don’t distract me that way.”
Michael waits, but when I don’t move, he heaves a breath and scrubs his palms on his slacks. “Okay, you really want to know what Grayson’s like? He’s...selfish. Impetuous. Violent. Not the kind of person you’d want around. There.”
“But he can’t be all bad. You cared about him, once.”
Michael makes an indecipherable sound. “Yeah, when I was a kid. Because I didn’t know any better.”
I hope for more, but my husband never elaborates if he doesn’t have to. He just turns impenetrable like this, locks me out of whatever inner turmoil he’s trying to hide. And yet, when I squint, I glimpse a sliver of that same depth I saw that day in Seattle—a world of pain piled up behind his eyes.
Not for the first time, or even the hundredth, I curse Grayson Drake to hell and back. If only Michael would let mein.
“I know I agreed not to talk about him,” I say, quieter this time. “But I think I need to understand what happened between you two.”
Another long pause. He props his hands on his knees. “Fine. I’ll tell you, thisonce. Never again. And promise me, Mina, you won’t go looking for him. He has no place in our lives. All he ever does is take, and he’s taken more than enough from me already.”
“Okay,” I say slowly.
“Promise me,”he repeats. “You won’t contact him, all right?”
I frown. That would never have crossed my mind. “I promise.”
Michael lets go of an exhale and scrubs at his forehead. “Okay. The thing is, my brother’s a bastard. He always has been. It just took me a long time to figure that out.”
I lower the magazine. Now that he’s agreed to talk, I almost want to stop him, because the effort involved alarms me. Sweat beads at his hairline while the apple of his throat scrapes up and down.
“When we were kids,” he forces out, “Grayson...took everything for himself. All the attention. All our parents’ time. Which was incredibly insulting, because he was always getting in trouble. Always breaking the rules. Meanwhile, I did exactly what I was supposed to and got ignored for it. Even in school, everyone liked him better. He was always the popular one, even though he spent half his time in detention.”
I swallow. The sound carries over the drumming rain.
“He was always hogging the spotlight.” Michael’s voice roughens. “Asking out the girls he knew I liked. Using up all the oxygen in the room. Taking my share ofeverything. But I loved him anyway. He was my brother. So I forgave him. Over and over.”
“That sounds hard,” I murmur.
“It was. And after that last time...” Michael stops, glances around. His tone hardens, businesslike. “Well, look what I have now. Money, success. Stability. You. In the end, I won.”
I frown. It’s not a competition, but he continues before I can say so.
“Seattle was just the day I’d had enough. I finally told him he couldn’t take from me anymore, that I was putting myself first. Which he couldn’t stand. And...” Michael glances away again as if searching the room for an escape route. “Well. That’s all there is.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
I waver. This vague attempt at an explanation does nothing to explain why Michael changed so drastically that day. It is, however, much more than I usually get, and judging by the way his chest heaves beneath his shirt, it’s cost him dearly to give it to me.
