Page 79 of Bliss: Part 1
“I don’t know,” he finally said, and his voice had changed again. “I really don’t. But I know we can’t come at them angry. That’s what our father did. That’s how he handled things. We can’t be that.”
He was right. I knew it. But it didn’t make the knot in my chest any looser. My mind was still running. I could hear my father’s voice in my head, clear as day, and it made my stomach twist. I could hear the way he used to scream when he was drunk, the way he’d fly off the handle for the smallest thing. If he’d ever found out about what Odin and I had done when we were younger, he would’ve killed us. No hesitation. He would’ve dragged us outside and put us in the ground.
I wasn’t him. We weren’t him.
Still, that didn’t make this any easier.
“We’ll talk to them,” I said, quieter now. I sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed my hands over my face, dragging them down, feeling the roughness of my beard and the scar along my temple. That old scar always pulled a little when I was tense. A reminder of the night we got free. The night everything changed.
I remembered that night in brutal detail. Odin bleeding from the nose. Me barely standing after taking a bottle to the side of the head. The hospital. The motel. The news that cops actually did their job for once. Taking the bastard away in cuffs. No one looked back. We didn’t cry. We didn’t flinch. We just let him go.
It was the best night of our lives.
“You think we should keep it private?” I asked, my voice rough. “Handle it ourselves?”
“I think,” Odin said, stepping closer, “that if we can handle it without causing them more shame or fear, then yes. But if either of them looks like they’re drowning in this, we ask for help. We don’t want to punish them, but to help them. Just like we would if they broke a bone.”
He was right.
We needed to understand them before we reacted. Understand what caused this. If there was something bothering them that led to their intimacy.
“Come here,” he said gently, placing a hand on my shoulder.
I looked up at him and hesitated. But then I stood and let him pull me in, and for a moment, I just stood there with my arms around my brother, feeling how tightly he held me. It had been a long time since we’d hugged like this.
We’d grown apart over the years. Only physically. Nothing could break that part of us that had survived hell together.
After our wives died, I don’t think we could’ve made it without one another. We’d leaned on each other more than we ever admitted.
That bond hadn’t disappeared. It had just changed.
The intimacy we once shared...it faded over time. Because it had to. Because the reason for it—the abuse, the fear, the constant survival mode—it stopped. And when that went away, we finally had space to justbebrothers.
But now, watching history threaten to repeat itself, I wasn’t sure what to think anymore.
“We’ll figure it out,” Odin said into my shoulder. His voice was steady again. Full of quiet confidence.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “We have to.”
And we would.
Because no matter what mistakes we’d made, or what had been passed down without us realizing, one thing was certain—we would never become our father.
Twenty-Four
Owen
The last thing I wanted was to make any of them feel uncomfortable.
But this conversation needed to happen.
Odin and I had agreed to give them space first. A full day. We left the house that morning and didn’t come back until late. Just left a short note on the kitchen counter that said we’d be back around eight, and we wanted to talk when we got home. No pressure. No big speech. Just a calm, simple request.
We had no idea how they’d react. Or if they’d come down at all.
At that point, it was just me and Odin in the living room, sitting in silence. He sat on the couch next to me, tapping his thumb against the armrest like he always did when he was restless but trying not to show it. I sat forward on the couch, elbows on my knees, staring at the clock. The hands moved too slow. I was trying to stay calm, trying to not overthink, but my stomach had been tight all day.
I wasn’t angry. Not even close. And I hoped to God they knew that. It would make this so much easier if they understood that from the start.
