Page 70 of Waiting for Her

Jack means the world to me.

“Yeah. He had a long weekend break and came over to surprise me.”

“Let me get this straight. My cousin left culinary school and decided to surpriseyou?”

“Sort of, yes. Turns out the families were in cahoots to get me back home. They thought maybe if that happened, you and I would somehow get back together,” I say, nervous laughter bubbling up from my chest. I wave my hand in front of my face because I’m anxious and awkward and don’t know what else to do with my hands at the moment. “It was part of the plan I found out much later. He was the carrot they were going to dangle in front of the race horse, so to speak.”

“They sent the nice one in first,” he says in understanding.

“Yes, and no. Jack offered. Carly was going to come but Jack insisted.” His expression gives nothing away and since he’s not saying anything, I take that as my cue to continue. “The last time I’d been home or saw the family was Christmas and it was easy to hide my body under baggy clothes.”

“When was it when Jack came to your place?”

“June,” I admit.

“Wait. It’d beensix monthssince anyone had seen you? How did that happen?”

“I was pretty good at making excuses. And still very ashamed. Maybe more so then. I knew how I looked. Not only was I losing too much weight, but I was ugly, too.”

“I doubt that,” he mutters under his breath, but I hear it. And damn it all if those silly words don’t blossom a full-blown hope tree in my chest.

“He saved my life,” I whisper, knowing the worst is yet to come of my confessions.

His eyes widen. “Explain.”

I fiddle with the hem of my shirt, avoidance at its best.

“Bri,” he says quietly. “I need to know what caused you to think it was okay to spend six years avoiding me and making sure everyone we love didn’t tell me a single thing about you.”

Lips pressed together again, my head bobs up and down. “This is really hard for me to admit, but you need to understand something before I tell you the rest. I was sick, Grady. I was clinically depressed and anorexic. When I first started losing weight, it was because I was depressed, disappointed in myself for the decisions I’d made. Then it blossomed into this feeling of control. My weight was the only thing I could get a handle on, even though it was out of hand. It probably doesn’t make any sense to you, but in my mind, I wouldn’t have lost you to someone completely opposite of me if I was thin.” He opens his mouth and points, surely about to accuse me of that being total bullshit, but I hold up a hand and forge on. I can continue to say I get it, I was the one who left him, and he can say the same, but we’ve already done that dance. It’s time to move on. “My self-esteem was basically gone. I thought so little of myself,” I whisper.

I’m lucky Jack showed up on my doorstep that day.

Humiliation had filled me for abandoning my family. My mom was, and still is, my best friend. Andy, the boys, my baby sister, they didn’t deserve the way I turned my back on them. Not when they did nothing but love me and show me they would be there for me. Grady’s family, too.

The disease itself is what pulled me under, allowed the shame to feed off the lies my own body was telling me that I wasn’t worthy of a love I had once had. I believed the lieshetold me.

“Bri,” he murmurs. “This is what kept you from me for six years? From your family? Your friends?”

“You won’t understand.”

“I’d like to try. You didn’t give me a choice before. I would like the chance now.”

“Jack, he uh, came at the right time. He didn’t bother knocking, either.”

“Why?”

“Because the noises he heard on the other side of the door made him make the decision to come in.”

His eyes are stormy and voice low when he says, “And what, exactly, was happening on the other side of the door to make him come in without knocking?”

“He heard something break followed immediately by pretty harsh male shouting. Instinct told him something wasn’t right. He saved my life,” I say again.

Grady

Istand up, pace around the room. Someone was hurting her. I want to yank my own hair out. I want to punch something. A wall, maybe this fuckwad’s face in, for not getting out of my own prideful state and kicking down her door years ago. For helping her to realize that there is no one better than her. There never has been. Never will be.

I stop, turn and face her. “How long?”

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