Page 76 of A Brother's Secret

“Stop.”

It came out harsher than I meant it to and she looked vulnerable, uncertain, and for the first time that I could ever remember she looked that way aboutme.

“Are you mad at me?” she asked and the hurt and uncertainty in her tone was so far off her baseline it scaredme.

“No, I’m scared for you, Mali.”

“Scared?” she echoed in disbelief.

“Yeah. You as good as told me you were trying to kill yourself. That you gave up. That’s not my Amalia Rose, baby. That’s some other girl. This,” I waved my hands in front of her, “constant melancholy. This isn’t you. You can’t let what happened to you break you like this. I need you. You mean everythingtome!”

Her eyes dropped to her lap, and her listless hand there. She lowered the other with the ice pack from the back of her head and rolled her lips together. She didn’t say anything. I mean, shit, this wasn’t the way I wanted to handle it. Fuck, did I just fuck up? Did I just chase her back down deep inside herself?

I fought the panic clawing its way out of my chest and up my throat as I worried, did I just turn into every other guy she’d ever been around or beenwith?

“I don’t know what to do with this…” she said and I blinked.

“The icepack?”

“No, this.” She waffled her hands back and forth. “I have all these damn feelings and for the first time ever, I don’t feel like I have to keep a lid on them and not all of them are good, you know? It’s like the dam has busted six ways to Sunday and the water’s out and I can’t get it back in…” She looked up at me, her eyes misting and asked, “What’s wrong with me? What do Ido?”

I grabbed her and pressed her into my bare chest, my arms going around her, her breath hissing out as I touched the back of her head to hold her close and comfort her. The enormity of the moment causing me to forget what’d started us down this damn road in the first place.

Fuck, U-turn. How do I get us back out of thismess?

“I need to know you aren’t going to try anything. That you aren’t going to hurt yourself.”

“Of course I’m not!” she warbled.

“Promise me, baby. I can’t face a fucking world without you in it. I’ve never had to before and I don’t fucking plan onit.”

She looked up at me sharply and sniffed, searching my face. “You really never gave up on me, did you? Notonce.”

“Not even for a minute, not for one second,” I affirmed.

“How did you know?” she asked, dubiously.

“I didn’t, I just never gaveup.”

“I’m sorry I did,” she said and sniffed.

“I get why you did, but you can’t ever again. You promise?”

“I promise.” She held up her pinky finger and I latched onto it withmine.

“Never let me go,” she said and cuddled close tome.

“Never gonna.”

“Good, because it’s all I ever wanted.”

“Me, too.”

“Glad we had this talk,” she snarked and I laughed. I couldn’t help it. That was Mali, that was my girl… she raged, cried, did whatever she had to in order to let it out, and bounced back at the speed of light stronger and better thanever.

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