Page 184 of Bad Reputation

“Marriage first,” he says into a nod. “Then a baby, maybe.”

“A baby,” I repeat his emphasis.

“One,” he says, definitive. “Siblings are…” His Adam’s apple bobs, swallowing hard.

His brothers.

He’s cut all three of them completely out of his life. He never talks to them. Rarely talks about them. They’re just gone, erased from his world. For good reason. But so much pain remains. Scars on bone buried under muscle and skin.

He lost his brothers.

I found mine.

But I did lose someone, too. “My sister,” I say softly, remembering. “I tried calling her this morning.” Back in Maine, my family still has a landline home phone.

Garrison frowns. “I thought you were done trying.”

I squeeze the textbook harder to my chest. “I guess, now I am,” I mutter. “She picked up and told me not to call. She said the holidays are for family and I’m not a part of hers. That if I wanted to talk to our mom, I should call her directly.”

But I wanted to talk to Ellie.

My ten-year-old sister.

I’ve invited her to the lake house for holidays. Lo is her half-brother, but she has no interest in ever knowing him or accepting the olive branches I’ve held out. Ellie blocked me on social media, and every time I dial my mom, she’s short with me. After I say I love you at the end of the call, I wait with bated breath just to hear my mom say it back. Sometimes she does.

So there’s that.

“Damn,” Garrison breathes out, gaze flashing hot. He strokes the side of his foot against mine in comfort. “Your sister still sounds like a brat.”

I shake my head. “I deserve it.”

“You don’t,” he says, no hesitation.

I force down the giant lump in my throat, eyes burning. “From Ellie’s vantage, I chose a famous brother over her.” I blink back raw sentiments. “From anyone’s vantage, I chose Lo.”

“That’s straight bullshit, Willow,” Garrison refutes, his heated gaze sinking into mine. He wears his conviction like another tattoo, ink seeping indelibly. “You chose answers that your mom wasn’t giving you. You chose to reconnect with a brother she kept from you.” He leans forward, forearms on his bent knees. “You weren’t making a choice between Ellie and Lo. And your mom should be explaining that to your little sister—who’s eleven-years younger than you. But she won’t, and that’s fucked up.”

I bite my bottom lip, thinking this over. I’m not sure I can release the guilt I feel. I’m not sure I ever will.

Is my mom painting me as a villain to my little sister, so Ellie won’t follow after me and leave her all alone in Caribou? Or is my mom just taking a backseat and not helping mend the burnt bridges between her daughters?

It’s not my mom’s job to heal the pain I’ve caused by leaving, is it?

That’s my burden and my remorse to bear.

Garrison studies my face. “I get it,” he says. “There are times during the day that I think maybe it’s my fault I didn’t try harder for a better relationship with my brothers. Because it’s easier thinking you had some control in the situation. When in reality, there’s nothing you or I could do to repair what was already fucking gone. They’re gone, Willow. And we have to be okay with that.”

My eyes redden, emotions battling to surface.

Garrison places his computer on the floorboards, and I set the textbook behind me. We scoot closer, my left leg dangling off the nook’s seat. His right leg does the same, and we bend our other knees. Squeezing close. Only a sliver of space between us.

I rest my chin on my knee, and I whisper, “She’s alive, but sometimes it feels like I’m mourning someone who died.”

He presses a kiss to the top of my head and murmurs, “I know.”

“No siblings,” I say, agreeing with him from before.

His aquamarine eyes fill me up and he nods silently. “But our kid will have plenty of cousins.”

Our kid. Hearing him say that pulls a smile out of me. “And they’ll be her or his best friends.”

“For sure,” Garrison nods.

We look around the lake house and listen to the softened baby cries. Those children will be the cousins to our faraway future child.

As our gazes meet, his fingers dip under my soft sweater. His hands slowly skim the bare flesh of my hips. I tingle and light up from the affectionate touch, but this conversation races my pulse.

Wading into new waters with Garrison is like taking a broken flashlight into a cave. It’s terrifying, but I trust in both of us to walk in the right direction.

“If you want a baby in your future,” Garrison says, “does that mean you want to get married…eventually?”

Marriage…

I elbow up my glasses and hold onto my bent leg, my pulse hammering. I’m afraid we won’t be on the same page for this.

---