Page 109 of Beautiful Broken Love

I closed the fridge and cracked the bottle open, keeping my back to her. When I didn’t answer, Whitney met me in the kitchen and grabbed my arm, twisting me around gently to face her. She studied my face for so long I had to back up.

She was reading me. She and Camille were good at that. My mom too.

“You messed things up with her, didn’t you?” she asked in a low voice. There was no judgment in her tone. In fact, she asked the question as more of a statement, like she already knew the answer.

“Not now, Whitney.” I stepped around her to sit on the couch and turn the TV on. I tapped the Netflix button, but Whitney stepped right in front of the TV and blocked my view. “Whitney!”

“Deke, I told you not to do it!”

“It’s whatever,” I muttered.

“Look at you, bro. You’re hurting. I can see it all over your face! I told you not to get involved with her, but you never listen! I’m not trying to make this anI told you somoment, but, Deke, even I could’ve seen this coming from a mile away. Is that why you asked me to take the lake house off the books? ’Cause Camille said the day after that is when you stopped answering the phone.”

I looked away.

Zeke trotted my way, whining as he rested his head on top of my thigh. With a heavy sigh, Whitney moved from in front of the TV to sit on the couch too.

We sat this way for a few seconds, quiet and still, until Whitney spoke again.

“I never thought I’d see you fall in love,” she murmured, and my eyes flickered to hers quickly before dropping to Zeke’s head. “I saw it the night of her rebranding party. I saw the way you looked at her, the way you spoke to her. I saw you searching for her when she disappeared after your speech. I’ve never seen you care aboutanywoman like that other than your family.”

My throat thickened when I met her eyes again. I expected her to be staring at me with pity but there was only sympathy.

I closed my eyes, letting them cool before I opened them again and clicked on my Netflix profile.

“Yeah, you’re right. You warned me, but I pushed for it anyway. It is what it is.”

“What even happened?” she asked.

I gave that question some thought. I’d wondered the same thing for a while. I thought I did everything right, treated her well, took care of her, showed her new things ... but she still left.

The truth hit me on my drive home from the lake, and I realized her departure hadnothingto do with me. This was a war Davina had going on within herself, and it was clear she wasn’t winning it. Knowing that still didn’t make it hurt any less.

“She was too afraid to let me in,” I finally answered, meeting my sister’s eyes. “She wasn’t ready.”

FIFTY-EIGHT

DAVINA

“What’s the matter, Vina?” My brother, Abe, pulled out of my arms and focused on my ear.

I smiled as I capped his shoulders in the parking lot. I’d decided to pick my sixteen-year-old brother up myself while Mama ran to the store to get a few groceries and Octavia showered.

“Why would something be wrong, Abraham?”

He squinted like the sun was directly in his eyes, then cut a glance at me before looking elsewhere. “Your face is puffy, and your eyes are red like you’ve been crying.”

“I might’ve been,” I told him, releasing his shoulders and walking to my car. He followed along, tucking a thumb beneath the strap of his backpack.

“You cry a lot,” he said when we were seated on the leather. “But Lewis died and you loved him, so I get it.”

“Yep.” I started the car with a reluctant nod. “That’s right. He died.” No one could be as blunt as my baby brother, and I mean that literally. If he had a thought, he said it. He’d been diagnosed with Asperger’s when he was six.

We always knew he was different from the other kids. He didn’t learn to speak in clear sentences until he was seven, he hated going outin public because it was often too loud for him, and he didn’t like being touched a certain way.

He would cry a lot when he was a toddler. He’d outgrown the crying but was still sensitive to a lot of noise. Mama had him going to classes with a woman in town named Patricia, who homeschooled him in her house. It worked for him, plus he got along great with Patricia’s teenage son. He was also in therapy, which helped a lot.

“You still hate donuts?” I asked, reaching between his feet for the pink bakery box.

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