Page 40 of Forever Finds Us
“I’m so sorry I haven’t been here,” I whispered. I grabbed the back of the chair in the corner and dragged it to her bedside, then sat and reached for her hands folded together over her stomach. I gripped them tightly. “I won’t do that to you again.”
“It’s okay, Brand. You needed space. I understood. I didn’t blame you.”
“But my absence hurt you. I’m sorry. I love you. I don’t know what I would’ve done if?—”
“I love you too, son.” She squeezed my hands in hers. “Thank you for savin’ my life.”
I didn’t know where else to go, but when I pulled up in front of 417 Tacoma Avenue after Merv had fallen asleep in her room at the hospital, I hadn’t even thought to call or text Roxanne to make sure she was home. Her truck sat parked in the driveway, though, and her living room light glowed behind the curtains hanging in her front windows.
As I opened my door and stumbled out of the SUV I’d bought for Merv, the curtains rustled, and three seconds later, her front door opened, and there she stood, Roxanne’s tall, steadfast frame and warm arms exactly the balm I needed.
“Brand? I heard about your mama. Is she okay? Are you okay?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t speak. The knot of fear still lodged in my chest had worked its way up to my throat and was choking me now too.
With feet covered in pink, furry slippers, she stepped down her cracked, poured-concrete porch stairs.
This goddess deserved better than cracked concrete.
I didn’t need to speak. She seemed to understand that I was not okay, and when I reached her, she held my face between her hands, warming away the chill I thought I’d feel for the rest of my life.
She looked into my eyes, conveying to me without a word that whatever I needed to say or do, I’d be safe with her, so I lifted her silently and carried her inside, and until well into the night, she let me release my fear inside her body.
Chapter Fifteen
Roxanne
“Why did you leave Wisper?” I asked, and Brand hid his face above the swell of my naked hip, dipping his head below my rumpled covers, rubbing his soft lips over the skin beneath my rib cage and soothing the fingerprints he’d left there.
“I’m not sure I know how to explain. My old man was a piece of work. The biggest asshole you’ve ever met, and I needed to get away from him. Bax wasn’t my dad’s biggest fan either, but he loved workin’ the land. He hated sheep.” Brand laughed, and his breath tickled over my skin. “But he always knew this was where he needed to be.
“Not me. I wanted out. I needed to be somewhere else, somewhere the smell of sheep shit and desperation didn’t cling to my clothes, somewhere I could breathe. If I had stayed, I’d be a different man now. Maybe not a good one.”
“Do you regret leavin’?”
He nodded. “I regret that I stayed away so long. My dad’s been dead nine years now. I knew things here weren’t great. Knew my brothers and sister were strugglin’, knew Merv was unhappy, but I was selfish, and I pushed it from my mind and focused on the things I needed.” He curled into a ball beside me, his arm draped over my stomach. “What if I hadn’t come home? What if Merv had been alone today?”
Stroking my hand lazily over his tanned shoulder, connecting the faint freckles there with a finger, I whispered, “But you did come home, and she wasn’t alone.”
“Thank God. I never would’ve forgiven myself if…”
“Hey.” I tugged a lock of his soft brown hair between my fingers, and he looked up my body. God, his eyes held so much pain. It wasn’t something he often let others see, of that I was sure. “Don’t go there. It doesn’t help you or your mama if you wallow in the what ifs. She’s in good hands up in Jackson. The doctors will come up with a plan to get her healthy again, and you and Abey and the family will be there to help her.”
He nodded. “I know you’re right, but there was an hour today when I didn’t know if she’d make it. I can’t describe the feelin’ inside my body while I raced her to Dr. Whitley and waited for him to tell me if she was dead or alive.”
His arm around my body tightened, and he slipped his other beneath my back and held onto me like a lifeline. Like I was the only port in his shitstorm. His grip was almost painful, the tips of his fingers burrowing into my skin, but I let him cling to me because I loved the violent way he needed me.
I had never felt more wanted or needed than the way Brand had made me feel over the last week.
Not within my family, not at work, not in any of the pitiful excuses of relationships I’d had. No one had ever held me the way Brand was, like he’d crawl inside me if he could.
He’d given me power over him. He’d opened up to me about things that weren’t easy to talk about, and knowing he trusted me enough to be vulnerable was just as tantalizing as it felt to be under his command and his body.
“There’s still so much left unsaid, you know?” he whispered. “Today, I could’ve lost my chance to tell her. To explain to her who I am and why I left. And I think that’s what scared me the most.”
“So, you’ll say it now.”
He nodded and asked, “What about you? You said before that your family has a lot of expectations.”
