Page 66 of Thicker Than Water
“Why didn’t you tell me the doctors think Jason will wake up soon?”
I blink at the non-sequitur. “What?”
“I saw you only hours ago. You’d gotten this great news about your brother, and you just… didn’t think to share it with me. I heard it from Julia. But not you.”
“Because it’s not great news! I want him to get better, but the second he wakes up, they’re arresting him, and that terrifies me. Especially since I don’t have proof yet that someone else did it.”
“Then you should have told methat. Jesus, Si, I want to be more to you than just the guy you sleep with. I want you to tell me things, the same way you used to. Good things, bad things, everything you’re going through. I want us to be there for each other.”
“We’re not…” I start, unsure where the sentence will take me—only certain of where it can’t. “Wyatt, you know I can’t do that anymore.”
“Yeah, I know.” There’s an edge in his voice, jagged and hard. “But we’ve been doing this for months now, and I’ve held on to every scrap of you that you’ll give me, because I love you so much. Because I hurt you the worst way I could. But this”—he points back and forth between us—“hurtsmenow. Having you but not having you. Having you only on your terms, and only ever skin-deep. You were always so giving in our relationship, so thoughtful. You made me a proton pack, for Christ’s sake. But now? You’ve been selfish. And I get it, I’m not saying I don’t deserve it. But I can’t keep doing this, letting you punish me forever. Let’s just be together, Si. Let’s give it another shot, and I’ll be here for you, during everything with Jason. But if you can’t do that, then let’s end it completely. Because I can’t take the in-between anymore.”
I sit back, astonished. I’ve seen pain skate across his face, the way it did this morning when I told him it meant nothing, sleeping in his bed—but I’ve never heard him vocalize it, or give my actions a name:selfish.
The word rattles inside me, a vibration deep in my bones, because Wyatt’s right; I have been selfish. I’ve cashed in on his love for me again and again, without giving him anything in return. I know why I do it, too: for comfort, for distraction, for the sake of my disobedient heart—which, right now, feels sawed in half.
Part of me wants to take his hands in mine, lay down every heavy thing I’m feeling and let him hold it for a while. But the other part knows better. It would be wrong to get that close, to accept his love and love him back. It’s been wrong for months now, an entire year, because Wyatt wrongedme.
Jason wronged Julia, a hissing, slithering part of me says.He did something terrible, just like Wyatt, and you want Julia to stand by him anyway.
I try to dismiss the thought, but it lingers inside me, stoking someanger toward my brother. How could Jason have been so stupid, soweak, as to sleep with Maeve, to risk the amazing life he has with Jules? The amazing life the three of us have together? And on top of everything else, how could he put me in this position, where I have to make concessions for him, make myself a hypocrite?
I was blindsided today, when Julia lost faith in her cheating husband, even though, for so long, I’ve believed Wyatt should be punished for cheating on me. But that’s just who I am—I hold on to things; I expect retribution; I burn—and if I’m forced to allow an exception, there can only be one. Between these two men who did something terrible, I can forgive Wyatt, or I can forgive Jason, but it can’t be both, because then—where’s the line? Do I have to forgive Clive Clayton, too?
I stand up from the couch, towering above Wyatt in his chair. He lifts his eyes to look at me, but the rest of him stays still, his body steely with apprehension.
He knows I have to break his heart. And I hate to do it. I really do.
But he broke mine first.
“You did this,” I tell him, calling on every ember inside me, hoping to spark some flames, kindle some fire, because when I run that hot, I can’t be hurt.
“You brought us here,” I say. “I would have loved you forever, but now—” I stop for a moment, my voice threatening to tremble. “But you’re right. We can’t do this in-between. Because you don’t get to sleep with someone else and still be with me.”
“I don’t even remember it, Si. That night is a black hole in my brain.”
“You think that makes it better? That you basically ruined us in your sleep? And I know, you were wasted. But I’ve been drunk while you and I were dating, I’ve been to bachelorette parties, and I never so much as kissed someone on the cheek. Never would havedreamed of it. Being drunk doesn’t change who you are; if anything, it brings out what’s already there. And it shattered me, Wyatt, to find out that you were someone who could do something like that, when I thought you were—” I pull in a shaky breath. “I thought you weregood. So it doesn’t matter to me that you don’t remember. Because I can’t forget.”
Somewhere in my monologue, he stopped looking at me. His gaze is pinned to the middle of the room, his mouth a tight knot.
“So that’s it?” he asks.
“That’s it.”
Seconds pass, and he doesn’t respond. His silence mushrooms between us.
It’s fine, though. There’s nothing he can say to change the past. Nothing I can do but go.
I walk toward the door, and he doesn’t follow. As I step outside, the April night tries to chill me, but I focus on the heat I carry, the torch I’ve willed myself to be.
I head down the driveway, through the space where Julia was parked—and I focus on that, too: how she came without telling me; how she left with knowledge that should have been mine to keep or share; how her suspicion of Jason, however small, is still a betrayal, because no matter what weak, stupid, disappointing things my brother has done, murder wouldneverbe one of them.
But when I reach the rear of Wyatt’s Nissan, the sparks inside me sputter out.
There it is: the heart-shaped dent in his bumper, and it shoves me back to the first time he told me he loved me. He whispered it in the midst of a goodbye kiss at his door, and I was so dazed, so dazzled by his declaration that when I tried to leave, I forgot to put my car in reverse. Instead, I launched forward, and even as my bumper crushed his, I couldn’t stop smiling.I was like a deranged crash test dummy, Isaid to Julia later that day—telling her the truth, like I always,wealways, used to do.
But I explained the collision to Wyatt with a lie. I said that my hand had simply slipped while switching gears—because even back then, I didn’t want him to know the effect he had on me, the way he softened so many things inside me I was used to keeping hard.
