Page 108 of His Heart

Brooke

Even though Iwas vaguely aware of what was happening, I felt powerless to stop it. I’d called in sick to work again—the second time this week. Told myself I was just tired. Fighting off a cold. But the heaviness in my limbs and the deepening sense of lethargy that plagued me wasn’t because I’d caught something at the bookstore.

I hated that I’d started to fall apart in Phoenix so badly. Before I’d come to Iowa, I’d kept myself numb. I’d swung from being too depressed to get out of bed, to staying too drunk to care. I’d found ways to bury my grief. Whether it had been drinking myself senseless, or taking stupid risks for the rush, I’d self-medicated. Kept myself from feeling things too much.

Now I didn’t have that protection. I’d opened myself up again, but that meant being vulnerable. I’d gone to Phoenix without any way of defending my emotions from the onslaught of memories. Liam’s house. My mother. It had all flooded in, overwhelming me.

There was an inevitability to all of it. A pattern I was locked into repeating. I had read that the human body strives for homeostasis—a state of balance it’s always trying to maintain. Perhaps the same could be said for a whole person. I had a norm, a default setting, and I was always going to return to it.

Just like her. Just like my mother.

Was it because of losing Liam? Had his death torn me apart so thoroughly that I was unable to recover? Or was it because of my childhood? I’d spent my life being shuffled from place to place. Hurt and neglected. Exposed to things no child should ever see.

Or was this just the way I was made?

My experiences had shaped me, but at the end of the day, I was my mother’s daughter. She’d lived in a loop of chaos. For brief periods—usually measured in weeks or months—things had been good. She’d been happy. Sober. A mother to her daughter, a good friend to the people in her life. But those times had always been temporary. Even with a man in her life who had tried, who had seemed to truly love her, she’d failed. Returned to the person she really was inside. And it had killed her.

I couldn’t get Mack’s face out of my mind. He’d looked so sad. So devastated. He’d sacrificed for her, thinking he could do enough. Thinking he could save her. And in the end, all he’d been left with was the pain of loving someone who was too broken to love him back. And the grief of losing her, even though he’d tried.

I couldn’t escape the feeling—the fear—that I was exactly the same.

Olivia opened the door, letting in a blast of cold air. I pulled my blanket tighter around me.

“Still sick?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “How’s the shop?”

She didn’t answer right away—kept her back to me and took off her coat. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and anxiety tingled my belly. Olivia was pissed.

“The shop?” She turned and put her hands on her hips. “Well, it’s fine, I guess. We have an author signing coming up and I don’t know what the fuck is happening with it, since you decided you needed to stay home and hold the couch down or something.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I haven’t been feeling well.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“Don’t even get me started.” She walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge.

“No, really,” I said. “You’re obviously mad. I’m sorry I’ve missed work. I’ll be in tomorrow. Or we can go over the event stuff now, if you want.”

“I wouldn’t want to interrupt your sulking time,” she said.

“I’m not sulking,” I said. “What the hell?”

“Whatever it is you’re doing, I’m getting tired of it.” She slammed the fridge closed.

“I’m just not feeling well,” I said.

“Will you stop? You might have everyone else fooled with that act, but I don’t buy it. I never did.”

“I’m not acting,” I said.

“No?” She came out of the kitchen and folded her arms. “I call bullshit. You’re very good at getting attention when you want it.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ll just sink into your little pity hole and wait for everyone to come dig you out. Then bask in their adoration.”

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