Page 36 of Slow Burn
10
BRYNN
Levi gave me the keys to the castle. Asked me to move in. Movehere. To Chicago. Leave Boston. Leave my home. Just like that. Levi handed me keys and just like that, wanted me to give up my life. And, Jesus Christ, I wanted to.
Levi and I, we make sense. What we have together, it makes sense, it feels good. To have him come home to me and Amelia, and share our days and nights together. There's nothing else like this. He makes me believe this fairytale we're building can be real; thatwe can be real.
Levi is the best thing to ever happen to me and I want to give him everything. Want to give his daughter everything. I love them. I love them both more than I ever thought possible. My love for them is so big and sweeping. I don't know how to let it breathe without setting the world on fire.
I want that fairytale castle he wants to give us. We are trying, brick by brick, like he asked. But, he went and asked for the happily ever after.
“I thought that's what you wanted.” Levi looked crushed and my heart broke because I was the wrecking ball.
It is what I wanted. Living with him and Amelia, making a home and building a family. I wanted nothing else. Even if it meant never setting foot back in Boston again. There was nothing there for me, not really. Except the dues that I owed.
Dues Levi and Amelia could never know about.
“Tell me why you come into my life and change everything, make itourlife then you can't make it stick?” Levi sat on the bed, elbows bent at his knees and head in his hands. Defeated. Because I could not tell him the truth that might ruin the only good thing I had.
“You wanted me to take Isabel's place.... pretend like I don't feel her everywhere? In every single room in your house? In the bed we sleep in. The bed you fuck me in? Do you think about her when you come home to me? Is it me you’re fucking or do you see her face and big tits?” I was so scared of losing him, I lashed out.
We shared something real the night Lola had baby Ford. Sharing something so special with them, with him, it changed us. I told him about Abbi, about my choices. Just not how I'd paid for those choices. Because he might understand a teenager giving up a child. I doubted very much he might understand the darkness I drowned in afterwards.
Here I was, drowning again because I made terrible choices.
“You fucking kidding me? Tell me you know better. Tell me this is a fucking joke, Brynn. Nothing about us has a single thing to do with my wife.” Levi didn't mean it, and I knew he regretted it, but his word choice sliced me deep.
“No? Your entire house was stained by what you two were. The furniture you fucked her on. Photos you took together. Menus from the places you two ate at. Her fucking shampoo is still in your shower, Levi. And....your daughter is a part of her.” Levi shot to his feet, crossing towards me.
“Amelia is your daughter more than she ever was Iz. I had zero part in those photos or that fucking bed. They meant nothing to me. You do, Brynn. You and my daughter are my home. I am sorry photos on the wall or a fucking bed mattered to you. I'd burn them to the ground if I knew they hurt you. Can't you see? You two are all I have, all I could ever want. I thought you wanted to make a home with me, thought that's what this is about. You promised you knew what this meant.” Panic crawled through me as he walked away, his words growing icy.
“Levi...” He whirled to face me and my heart stopped.
My beautiful king. Levi might want everything, but hedeservedmy everything. Tears glittered in his eyes and his handsome face was laced with pain. He lifted my hand that still held his keys. Bringing my closed fist to his lips, he pressed his mouth to the inside of my wrist. As his tears fell, he whispered softly, offering me a choice.
“Make a choice. I choose you. I will always choose you for my queen. But....I willalwaysput my Princess first. Either be here,with us. Or don't be here with us.” I watched him walk out, taking my broken heart with him again.
Because I don't know how to make the right choice, I left.
Levi was right. I had to either be here with them, or leave. I'd been staying there almost exclusively for nearly a month. Little by little, I brought clothes, my laptop, a toothbrush, and he made room for me. We never talked about it. I just stopped going to Lola's.
A few days after Lola had the baby, I took a shower. I must have taken a dozen showers in Levi's bathroom; several of them with him. I'd just come from taking Amelia to visit the new mom and her bubbly, bright boy, Ford. I'd needed the break because my phone was full of missed calls and increasingly angry messages. To say I was sensitive might be undercutting it.
I fell apart in the shower after I grabbed the wrong body wash. Lilac scrub. Isabel's scent. It was on the sheets we slept in, the chair Levi favored and just about every breath of air I took in his home. I scrubbed it off until my skin was an angry red, sobbing because I knew I was nothing more than a stand in.
The rest of the day I spent tearing his home apart. Taking art and photos off the walls. Ripping up three carpets in the living room and bedrooms. Choosing new paint colors and even looking into new furniture pieces. Levi came home, asked no questions, and let me have my way.
“I thought this was you, making this our home.”Levi had said. And, he wasn't wrong.
But, really, I was erasing his wife from our home. A home that I had no right to. But was doing my damndest to wall myself inside of. It was safe and if I painted the walls and changed the furniture, and turned my head just right, I thought I could see a place we could call ours.
“Tell me why you are here and not there.” Lola asked me now, seven hours after I had walked out of Levi's house and ended up at the condo.
I had wandered the streets for a few hours. Passing by the bar Levi used to hang out in, where he met Isabel. The park we took Amelia to every single Friday. Our favorite pizza joint down the street from Cage and Charli's place. The fire station, where I could hear Finn's voice booming about the call they had just returned from.
“Chicago feels like home now.” I admitted as I took the tea she offered.
“Um, duh. I'm here. That's all it takes. Bonus—the perfectly adorable Holt family.Your family.” Lola said this with a stern, pointed look and my head hangs.
