Page 38 of Legally Ours

"Okay. Well..." I paused, looking out the window at the sun cast over Boston. It was a legitimately beautiful day, just not in this apartment. "I'll look for a new apartment while you're gone, then. So that Bubbe and I can get out of your hair. We might be able to find something reasonable in Jamaica Plain. Maybe Roxbury."

If I'd felt like the room was frozen before, suddenly it turned into the damn tundra.

"What?"

Brandon was stone-still, eyes like ice.

"I just thought I'd look for an apartment so I can, you know..." I trailed off, frigid like a scared rabbit.

"No, I don't know."

I sighed. "Brandon, it's obviously time for me to leave."

"Says who?"

"Says me!" I replied, frustrated. "The doctors said I would be able to walk unassisted in two weeks, and I'm almost there now. My ankle is going to be fine, and so will my ribs. I'm going to be fine. And since you clearly don't want me here––"

"Who said I don't want you here?"

His expression was heated and his pectorals rippled, like I had insulted him in some way. He crossed his arms, and the movement made the muscles in his forearms stand out.

I looked at him like he was crazy. Maybe he was. "Um, you did."

"I never said anything like that."

"You didn't have to," I said, getting a little more than exasperated. Was he trying to humiliate me? "You treat me like I have leprosy. You barely talk to me. If I enter a room, you leave it. Aside from last night, which basically turned into a disaster, you've barely been here. I'm making you so angry that you're fighting other people. That, and the nightmares––Cory's right! I'm obviously making you miserable, and you'd probably be better off without me!"

The tears that had been threatening now fell freely down my cheeks, and I swiped at them angrily, trying to head them off as everything I'd been thinking spewed forth. I didn't want any of it to be true, but maybe it was. Maybe the best thing I could do for Brandon would be to let him go.

Brandon exhaled a long, low sigh, then threw a handful of socks into his suitcase.

"What do you mean, 'Cory's right'?" he asked as he came to sit next to me. The mattress dipped under his weight, and my shoulder leaned into his. He didn't move away.

"Just...something he said last night. He suggested that maybe...maybe I'm not good for you."

We sat there for a moment, shoulder to shoulder, while Brandon worried a T-shirt in his hands.

"Skylar, your dad is safe in rehab, and we've got a full security team basically living with your grandmother. But there is still an open case against Messina, who is on the lam. And until that fucker is locked up, I just..." Brandon trailed off as he thrust his hands into his hair and pulled. He set his jaw and looked at me. "You're staying here. That's it."

"I'll be fine––" I started to say.

"Look, I'll be nicer," he broke in.

He gave me a wide, fake grin that made him look like a drunk lion. It was a far sight from the thousand-watt smile that usually lit me up inside, but it still made me chuckle.

"If I'm nicer to you, you'll stay?" he asked, taking a demeanor that was once-again painfully business like.

It wasn't even just the indifference that was killing me, although it was terrible in its own way. It was the mood swings, the back and forth. As much as I wanted to stay and try to work things out with him, I wasn't so sure that was actually what he wanted.

"It's really not––" I started again, this time pushing myself up to standing.

"Skylar," Brandon interrupted. "Fuck!" He stood up and paced to his bedroom window.

I froze. "What?"

Brandon shoved his hands back through his damp hair and groaned.

"It's like I'm caught in a fucking time warp here," he stated. "I think about what happened, what you kept from me, all the time. When I'm around you, my heart feels like it's being trampled. But the thought of you gone fucking tears the whole thing out!"

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