Page 25 of What We Broke

“You probably left it in the break room, again,” Deacon informs me. “I don’t know why you bother having one when you never remember where you last left it. What if––”

“You’re not my mother,” I say, cutting him off. “I don’t need that lecture today.”

He shrugs. “Whatever. I told her you’d call her back.”

Picking up a nearby rag, I wipe my hands down, despite them being permanently stained with oil and grease, and head out of the garage to retrieve my phone.

Walking into the break room, my palms start to feel clammy and my pulse quickens. It’s an irrational response, one that I refuse to tell anyone about, but one I can’t seem to control as I acknowledge the whereabouts of my phone and pick it up off the counter.

Notifications fill up my screen, and despiteknowingthat they’re from Zara and Raine, I can’t seem to get my breathing under control.

It’s been a whole year, and every time someone calls or texts me, it immobilizes me. Both physically and mentally, I’m back at my house in my kitchen answering the worst phone call of my life.

Now I want nothing to do with the damn thing.

Hence the “accidental” subconscious slip.

“Are they okay?”

Looking over my shoulder, I find Deacon in the doorway. “Are you stalking me?”

“I’m just checking you found your phone and spoke to Zara.”

This man is a mother hen, and I’m certain he has no idea that’s how he comes across. I don’t mind it… when it isn’t directed at me, but lately we don’t go a whole day at work without him doing a—what he thinks is a subtle—mental health check in.

It’s thoughtful, but I don’t need them.

“I’m about to call her,” I lie. “But I can’t do that if you’re talking to me.”

He rolls his eyes at me. “If you’re home alone tonight, you can come to dinner at our place.”

“And be the third wheel to you and your husband?” I scoff. “No, thanks.”

“Christy’s out of town. I can get Wade to come.”

I guess having Wade there without his wife, Christy, makes me less of an extra. I consider it for a second, because going home to an empty house, night after night, is taking a toll on me.

Somedays I do a really good job of hiding it.

Today clearly isn’t one of them.

“Come on,” Deacon coaxes. “Check in with Zara and get back to me.”

I’ve been working at Duquette’s for about two and a half years, after Deacon and Wade had turned their one-stop shop into a state-wide franchise. Hired to run their original workshop, while they continued to focus on their expansion, they both placed a lot of trust and faith in my abilities.

This, in turn, allowed us to become close, and these men are more than just the two people I work for. In the last twelve months, they stood by my side in more ways than I would have ever expected them to.

Along with their invitations to dinner, or Christy sending food with Wade to give to me, they gave me all the time I needed to process the things going on at home. I later learned that a few years back, after a back-and-forth battle with cancer, Deacon’s younger brother had died.

Death doesn’t discriminate, and grief is the roller coaster ride that everybody wants to get off.

It also unites strangers like nothing else.

There is some kind of solidarity to be found in the whole experience, in how a complete stranger can understand one of the most intimate heartaches of your life, without you even having to say a thing.

I couldn’t imagine what it was like to lose a brother any more than he could imagine what it was like to lose a child, but a loss of someone you love, is a loss all the same.

I wave the phone in the air. “Let me get to this and then I’ll get back out there and let you know.”

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