Page 6 of Better as It

“Keep tellin’ yourself you don’t care. Maybe one day you can believe your own lies, but I don’t and I know my sister still matters to you the way you matter to her. I’m not saying you come home to step in for Clutch. He’s got his own piece of her, but what I am saying is my sister hurts and she needs her best friend. The one person who has never put some label or expectation on her. That’s you.”

“Tripp come with you?”

He shakes his head. “In the landing. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

I take a deep breath. “Fuck.”

BW finishes his drink. “I didn’t come here to twist your arm. I came here for my sister. She doesn’t know I’m here either.”

I sit back down rubbing my face with both hands. “I can’t go back there, BW. You know things will get blurry. I can’t go back there and not be in love with her. She doesn’t need that.”

“I know what going back means for you. I know it means pain. I can’t say what the future is for you or my sister. All I can say is my sister needs her best friend.” His eyes grow dark, edgy, “And fuck it all, your pain doesn’t matter to me. She’s worth it.”

And she is.

Always has been and always will be.

Except he’s wrong. I’m not the man she needs. Not then and not now.

Inside of me though, something stirs. The piece of me that still belongs to her. The part of me that can’t ever healed. The regret I carry because I said words I can’t take back.

“She’s going to have the same pain you got right now, brother. Except she doesn’t get to have another chance to ever hold him again. There is no comin’ back from death and that’s what Clutch has and Dia is stuck on the ride.”

Fuck!

“No one rides alone,” I mutter the words I believe to my core. “But especially not her.”

He gives my shoulder a squeeze as I feel my world explode inside.

This will either fix what I broke in her or kill me in a way I won’t ever recover from. Either way, Haywood’s Landing, I am coming home.

TWO

DIA

"A bear remains a bear - even when most of him has fallen off or worn away." — Charlotte Gray

I pacethe small space of my townhouse. It’s like if I keep moving, I can outrun what happened. My feet drag across the living room rug, down my hallway, into my bedroom, and then back in a weird loop. I stop in the kitchen staring at a cracked tile by the cabinet. I wonder when it cracked. Possibly when I dropped the plate last night. I thought I could maybe eat, then I realized every meal I will forever have will be without him and I let go.

Not just the plate, my heart.

I let go of my hope. Of the illusion I can have it all.

I let all the pent up emotions explode around me. My world shatters just like the plate each and every day without him.

I should get it fixed. Maybe one day.

My eyes drift to the door, to the coat hooks beside it where his cut still hangs. He never really wore it right. Like it never gotten really broken in good. He was new—green, learning theropes—but he was so proud of it. Even if the leather looked out of place on him, like it hadn’t yet molded to who he was, it was part of him, part of us. His scent is still on my sheets, still in my clothes. His presence is in every inch of my world.

The first tear falls, “God, this hurts,” I whisper, sinking to the floor as if I have been folded in half. Skye, my rescue Dogo Argentino comes over lying beside me, dropping her head into my lap. I squeeze her head in my hands lifting her eyes to look at me like she’s my only lifeline.

“I’m okay,” I lie. She doesn’t believe me.

Neither do I. I will never be okay again.

It isn’t supposed to be like this. I was supposed to fall in love with someone normal. I gave up on the illusion of a brother. I had a taste of that heartache and didn’t want to feel it ever again.It was supposed to be safe.

I tried.

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