Page 75 of What We Brave
Neither of us answers.
"They all end badly." Her voice cracks slightly. "I can picture it so clearly. Me choosing one of you. The other one trying to be okay with it. Pretending everything's fine while resentment builds. Feelings turning into something ugly. All three of us ending up heartbroken and hating each other."
My jaw locks. I press my molars together until my teeth ache because she's not wrong. I've imagined it too — watching Blake fall apart while Laine and I build a life right in front of him. I ran that movie a hundred times. What I never did was flip the camera. Me on the outside. Watching her with Blake. Day after day after day.
It would take me apart. Slow and clean, like pulling stitches.
"So maybe..." She pauses, pressing her lips together. "Maybe the smartest thing I can do is walk away. From both of you. Give you two a chance to still have each other. To still be family."
"Laine—" I start.
"No, listen to me." Her eyes are wet now. "You and Blake have so much history. You're brothers in every way that matters. I've been in your lives for what, eight, nine months? If I'm the thing that destroys what you have..."
She doesn't finish the sentence. She doesn't have to.
I look at Blake. Actually look at him — first time since the market, maybe longer. He's watching Laine with that expression I know. Same one from the first night she cooked dinner here. Like she's something he's already afraid of losing, even though he never had her.
And I'm supposed to fight for this. For her. For all of it.
My jaw works. Nothing comes out.
"The thing is," I say, and my voice is slow, too even, not reflective of the chaos raging through my body, "what you're trying to save... I don't know if it still exists."
Blake's head snaps toward me. "What?"
"Us." I gesture between us. My hand feels heavy. "What we had. I don't know if we can get back there, man."
Silence. The kind that sits on your shoulders.
"We're trying," I continue. "We're eating dinner together and watching TV and pretending everything's normal. But it's not. Trust got broken. You disappeared for three months. I stalked my ex-girlfriend for a couple months. We're both pretty fucked up right now."
Blake's jaw tightens. "So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying..." I run a hand over my face. "I don't know what I'm saying. Just that Laine walking away to save our friendship might not save anything. Because I'm not sure there's that much left to save."
The fight drains out of all of us at once. Laine sinks onto the couch. Blake drops into the armchair by the window. I end up on the opposite end of the couch from Laine, the distance between us a fucking canyon.
Nobody speaks.
The house creaks around us — that old-bones sound it always makes, like the walls are breathing. I used to love that. Right now it just sounds like the place is holding its breath with the rest of us.
I stare at Blake.
Really stare at him, and I don't know how I missed it. The bruised hollows under his eyes. The way his shoulders curl in like he's waiting for a hit he knows is coming. Three months in a war zone and somehow he came back looking worse than when he left.
And I wanted him to stay. That was my big genius plan. Keep Blake here, in this house, watching me build a life with Laine. Watching us bump around the kitchen together. Hearing us through the walls at night.
My fingers dig into the edge of the table.
God, I'm such a fucking idiot.
"I kept asking you to stay," I say. The words come slow, dragged out of somewhere deep. "Every time you tried to leave, I guilted you into staying. I never once thought about what that was doing to you."
Blake won't look at me. "Reid?—"
"No, I mean it." My voice comes out scraped raw. "I was so focused on not losing you that I didn't care if staying was destroying you. That's not — that's not love. That's just selfishness."
The words hang there. Ugly and true.
