Page 79 of The Pucking Grump

I don’t know if that’s worse or better.

“You guys interrupted my meeting with my team,” he says. “I’m going to go back to that. Make yourself at home. Or not. Just shut the door when you leave.”

He strides away as Brit turns to Alex. “Can you give us a moment, please? I want to talk to Blake in private.”

Alex does what she asks, and I’m left alone with my little sister. I feel ridiculously like the younger sibling as she directs me to take a seat and looks into my eyes.

“Can we talk about what’s happening, for real?” she says, her tone low. “What has been happening since that night when you gave Faye flowers at her show?”

I look up at her, weary with exhaustion. “What?”

“You’re in love with her.”

Even with how exhausted I feel, I can manage a bark of laughter. “You’re crazy.”

“I’m also right, Blake.” She doesn’t ease up from talking to me like a little kid. “Look at yourself. I’ve never seen you this way. You’re going mad because she’s not here. Volunteering to proclaim your love on social media, words you can never get back. Going all over the place. I mean, why do you want her back this badly? What are you going to say to her when you see her?”

I pause. I have been going crazy for the past few days, and I haven’t even thought of that once.

“I know I brought this up, and you laughed it off. But we really need to talk about something important—how Dad might have shaped your view of women.”

I open my mouth to argue, but then I realize I’m too tired to protest. So, I just let Brit’s words wash over me.

“Look at it this way. You spent years watching Dad be a misogynist. He treated us differently, let you do whatever you wanted while I was stuck at home having to be a doll to earn his love. I’ve broken free of that, but you haven’t. Somewhere in you, you’re worried that if you ever fall in love with a woman, you’re going to start treating her the way Dad treated me, and possibly Mom when she was alive. You don’t want that to ever happen to you, so you’d rather stay away from love altogether.”

Turns out Brit’s words aren’t that easy to ignore. They lay on me brick after brick, almost causing me to double over with their weight.

I think back to that moment at the cabin, hearing Faye say she loved me. I all but blocked those words out over the past few days of anguish, but they come back to me again. She meant it from the bottom of her heart. I could tell.

But I disregarded it like it meant nothing. I said a bunch of shit I didn’t even mean and walked off. But even as I said those words, I knew that I wasn’t telling the truth.

I bury my face in my palms as a shudder runs through me. I’ve spent all of my life believing I had things under control. That I had nothing to do with what our father did to Brit, and it had nothing to do with me.

But Brit is right. Nothing else could explain the paralyzing fear I felt when I imagined having a real relationship with Faye. I already wanted her more than life itself but making it official scared me to death. And not because I was shying away from commitment, like Reggie.

“I don’t want to hurt her.” I don’t mean to say those words out loud, but they come out of me anyway. And once I start, I can’t seem to stop. “She’s already so . . . different. Open. Loved by millions. Every time I think of another man touching her, I lose my damn mind. If she was mine, I’d want to control every ounce of her time.”

I look up at Brit, bracing myself to feel embarrassed. But the emotion that surges through me when I gaze at my sister’s open-hearted smile isn’t shame. It’s peace.

I’m finally letting go of the burden that has plagued me for months now. Maybe ever since Faye fell into my arms on her wedding day.

“Blake, the fact that you’re terrified of controlling her already shows you’re miles different from Dad. I mean, you just almost killed Faye’s father for trying to ruin her life. You’ve done nothing but help her make her own decisions ever since you met, even to your detriment. You’re not going to be Dad, I promise you that. Yeah, you’re going to make giant mistakes, like the one that set us off on this wild goose chase, but you’re going to keep working at it until you get better.”

The peace increases with Brit’s words, suffusing my entire being. I let out a breath, my shoulders crashing as tension recedes from my body.

I have no idea if Brit is right, but I decide to trust her.

“While you chew on that,” Brit says, “can you think about what Kevin said too? A small venue where she might be officially coming out to the world. We might be able to save her from doing that if we get there in time.”

“I don’t . . .” I start, but then I stop myself abruptly. The words replay themselves in my head, and a rock-solid conviction grows in my heart.

I stand up, feeling better than I have in a week. Maybe than I have in all my life.

“I know where she is.”

It’s time to reclaim the love of my life.

25

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