Page 1 of Tangled Hearts
Chapter 1
Nic
It’s strange watching everything be stripped away from your childhood home. The couch you spent hours on while watching movies with your mom, the dining table you were sung happy birthday at, the pots and pans you used while learning to cook as a teenager because your mom was a firm believer that cooking was a life skill, and not a woman skill.
Even stranger is seeing photos disappear off the walls one by one. It’s almost like watching an entire life dissipate into nothing. Obviously, it’s not. My life was still mine. My childhood was still mine. The memories still live within me.
Everything else, though? It’s gone.
And maybe that’s for the best.
“I just need to finish clearing out the room,” Leo says, dragging me out of my thoughts.
I take in his features. The button nose I used to kiss, his blonde hair and bright blue eyes—his cheekbones, high and sharp but somehow still soft. The man I once loved is nowhere to be found in the linesof his face.Thisman is different somehow, indifference wrapped in casual loathing. A sore spot in my heart that I’m not sure will ever heal. “Thanks,” I mumble, turning my gaze away from him.
“I’m sorry it ended up like this.”
Before I can say anything, he’s leaving the room. Oddly enough, I believe he means that. In some ways. In his own way, maybe. His apologies mean nothing to me. Not really. There’s no coming back from what he did. Not that he wants to.
Fuck. Not thatIwant to. It’s just a lot of change all at once. Like anything, it’ll be an adjustment. But that’s alright. I’m nothing if not resilient.
I glance around the empty living room. The only reason I came back here today was for Leo to get the rest of his things. The new buyers of my late mother’s house will get the keys tomorrow. I probably could have trusted Leo here alone. Hell, he lived here with me for two years during Mom’s decline and then for the few short months after. Of course, that was before everything went to shit, and now it doesn’t feel right to have him without me.
Leo walks into the room, boxes stacked in his arms. “These are the last two.” Like before, he doesn’t wait for a response, simply walks past me, and goes out the front door.
There’s the slam of a car door, and then another. Confused, I sit up straighter and look out the window. Silas is here too. Perfect. Si’s car is parked behind Leo’s, and I barely resist the urge to roll my eyes. Si comes around the front of the car, not paying any attention to his surroundings as he wraps an arm around Leo’s waist and pulls him in for a lingering kiss.
My stomach sours as I force my gaze away. There has to be a rule about your ex-childhood best friendnotkissing your ex-fiancé in the driveway of your dead mom’s house, right?
Like, maybe not, but a little decorum would be nice. It’s not that I’m jealous. Not really, and if I’m being honest with myself, things with Leo hadn’t been good for a while. Partly because Mom was sick, but partly because we weren’t what the other needed. We hadn’t been for a while. Maybe it started that way, but at some point it shifted. Turned us into something ugly and hateful, turnedmeinto something ugly and hateful.
I think it’s probably telling that I was more upset about losing Silas than Leo. But I do have some level of self-respect. I couldn’t very well continue to be friends with the man after walking in on him fucking my fiancé. Not that I didn’t try. The first time. Apparently, some people—like me—have to walk in on it twice to really get the memo.
The front door swings open and my eyes fly up to Leo and Silas, standing side by side, their hands intertwined.
I climb to my feet. “You said everything was out?”
Leo nods. He’s safer to look at than Silas. Mostly because I don’t understand how Si could do what he did to me. After almost twenty years of friendship. Some things I’ll never get answers to, I’m sure. “It’s all gone. Are you going to be okay?”
I can’t stop the bitter laugh that spills from me. “Ironic coming from you, don’t you think?”
Leo’s face turns beet-red and Silas steps in front of him, leveling me with a glare. “You don’t have to be a dick, Nic.”
“Well, you didn’t have to stick your dick in the man I loved, either, so it looks like we’re both doing things we don’t have to do, eh?”
Guilt flashes in Si’s eyes, but he says nothing. Probably because he knows there’s nothing hecansay. Nothing he can do to right his wrong. I sigh heavily. I hate this. “I’m going to be fine,” I say softly. “I’m about to load down the Jeep and hit the road.”
“Where are you going?” Leo asks quietly, probably afraid I’m going to snap at him again. I won’t. There are a lot of things he did wrong. A lot I did wrong too. But I’m sick and fucking tired of letting him make me into someone I’m not.
“Across the country.”
It’s really none of their business, and when I don’t go into more details, Silas sighs. “I really am sorry.”
He’s only said it about twenty-five times. It didn’t matter the first time, and it doesn’t matter now. “I’m sure you are.”
This time there’s no glare. I wouldn’t care if there was. I just need to get out of this fucking house, to run from the memories. Both good and bad. Try to start something new for myself, and I’m really hoping my something new is located in a small town in Montana.
No one—not even Silas and Leo—knows I did an ancestry test that led me to find out I have an older brother. I know nothing about him. Well, I know his age, his hometown, and that his last name is not the same as mine. I don’t know what he’s like, or if he wants to see me, or if he has room for me in his life or his family. All I know is that I’m kept up every night with thoughts of what could be, and I’m ready to find out. Or at least try.
