“We need to talk.” I hear Brian’s voice from behind me and I jump.
“What are you doing in here? How did you get in here?” I stand up keeping the couch between us and not wanting to give him a chance to close the distance.
“I picked the lock, which I wouldn’t have had to do if you weren’t acting like such a damn brat.”
Is he serious? A brat? “I am not acting like a brat. I just don’t want to see you. I thought you might have caught onto that by now.”
“I caught onto the fact that you won’t even let me explain myself or talk to you. Which whether you want to hear it or not is pretty fucking bratty.” He takes a step toward me but I take the same step back and we being to circle the couch. “Will you just fucking stop for a minute?”
That’s just it. I can’t give him a minute. Brian has this way of making me forget why I’m mad at him and distracting me. I don’t want to be distracted. “Just say what you need to say.”
“I’m sorry.” I look up at him and he’s sitting down on the couch now. “I never wanted to hurt you, Jules. Everything I did, everything I have always done is to protect you. You are my whole fucking life—the only thing I think about day in and day out. You’re the only person who knows every inch of me. The only one I have ever let in and allowed myself to love. I know I’m far from perfect and I’m gonna fuck up a lot, but I want to be a better man for you. I want to be the kind of man that you deserve and the kind of man that you can love. I’m sorry I lied to you and I swear to God if you give me another chance I will never do it again. You are everything to me.”
A tear rolls down my cheek as I walk over to him. He is staring at the floor and completely still.
“Please don’t let this be the end. Don’t throw away everything that we could be. I know it might take time for you to get over everything and I told you before that I’m willing to wait. I just need to know that there is something to wait for. That at some point in the future you will be able to move past everything with me. That’s all I want. You.”
I don’t know how to respond to him. Everything is in shambles around me. Nothing makes sense. Nothing seems right, except when I’m near him. This week I have constantly felt unsure, unbalanced, and just unlike myself. When he is here though it’s like everything evens out. Like there is nothing that I can’t deal with as long as he is with me. “I’m not in any way ready to be with you again. Maybe later on down the road, but not now. There is just too much that we need to move past. Too much that is still unsaid and unaddressed.”
He looks over at me and the sadness in his eyes makes me want to cave. To tell him everything he wants to hear, but I can’t because that wouldn’t be fair to either of us. He nods as he seems to take in what I just told him. “As long as there’s hope that’s all I needed to hear.”
He stands up and leaves without another word, without a goodbye. Lacey walks in the door a few minutes later and I’m still in the same place on the couch trying to work through what just happened with Brian.
“So, you finally let him in?”
I look over at her realizing she must have seen him leaving. “Yea. I don’t know what to do, Lace. I still love him with every inch of my heart, but is love enough? I just don’t know if I can move past all the other stuff that has happened. Everything I found out, everything he hid from me, the things he has done.”
“To answer your question, love is only enough when it is strong. That isn’t something I can tell you, only you know how strong and resilient your feelings are. As for the other stuff I don’t know what to say. When you look at his intentions, they were obviously good he just wanted to protect you. I don’t even want to think about how that night would have ended if Brian hadn’t been there. You might not be here, Julia.” She sits down next to me. “None of us saw Dan for what he was and I know that is haunting you. You’re thinking that maybe there is a part of Brian that you can’t see, in my opinion there isn’t. He may not have told you what happened, and he should have, but I couldn’t ever imagine that man hurting you in any way. It’s easy for anyone around the two of you to see how much you love each other.”
“I’m scared.” I let my admission set in. “I’m scared that he is still hiding things from me, that I’ll always feel like this. I’m scared that he has such a huge power over me that, no matter what, I can’t resist him when he is around. I’m scared to commit myself to someone again after everything that happened with Dan. I’m scared that even after everything, even after trying to distance myself from him, that all I want to do is be in his arms.”
“Maybe you need to listen to your heart, girl. When he first came back I would have never said those words to you, but I think that you guys belong together. Just watching the two of you when he first came back into town, anyone could see your connection even though you were constantly fighting. Some things in life are just undeniable and no matter how much you fight them, it’s meant to be.”
I stand up and grab the keys to my car. “I’m going to go see him.”
Lacey stands up, walks over, and gives me a hug. “Good luck.”
The drive to Brian’s is short and I am completely overcome with nervousness the entire time. When I pull into the driveway, I can’t bring myself to open the door. Taking a deep breath, I try to calm the emotions raging through me and get out of the car. I knock on the door and when he answers I can tell I was the last person he expected to see.
Now that I’m here, standing in front of him, I have no idea what to say. Instead, I decide maybe it’s better to say nothing at all. I walk into the house and once he closes the door I wrap my arms around his waist. I just need to be close to him right now. To feel the comfort that only he has ever been able to really provide me. After a few seconds, his arms wrap around me and I get the feeling I had been searching for all week.
Peace.
Epilogue
Two months later
Julia
I follow my GPS to the address Brian texted me and end up in a residential neighborhood. I guess I assumed that it was a restaurant or something and that I was meeting him for lunch. He messaged me earlier and said that he wanted to meet me to celebrate last night.
After two months of this awkward, back and forth, half relationship, half friendship I told him I was ready. It’s been hard for me to get past everything. The fact that he killed Dan, no matter what his intentions were, still gets to me. I think it’s more the fact that he killed someone. I’m sure in the time that he and the guys served that there were numerous casualties but this isn’t war, and murder isn’t really something that is easily accepted.
I have been spending more time with him and the guys lately. Luckily, Ryan made a full recovery. I asked him once if he told his chief about what really happened that day and he just kind of brushed me off and changed the subject. I haven’t had any contact with those people since that day, and I hope it stays like that for the rest of my life.
I’ve been having nightmares of that day, of Brian’s dad shooting him instead of Ryan, of losing him. I haven’t told Brian about them because I knew he would insist on me staying with him. I have been sleeping at Lacey’s house because I didn’t want to jump into things too quick with Brian. As hard as it’s been I’ve been determined to take things slow. He fought me at first but after realizing it was that or nothing he came around.
Brian’s biggest supporter came from an unexpected source: Lacey. She is half of the reason that I took the leap that I did with Brian. Every night that I came home doubting him, doubting us, she was there. She has helped me work past my relationship with Dan, or what I thought was a relationship. In all reality it was just a huge web of lies.