Page 56 of Brutal for It
He’s the reason I’m still breathing, still here. And because of that, the guilt clings to me like smoke.
I apologize for everything.
All the time.
At first, Tommy just nods, listening, his thumb drawing slow circles over my palm. Then, as the days stack up, he starts to shake his head, gently but firmly.
“You already said it,” he tells me this morning as I stand in the kitchen, twisting the dish towel in my hands. “You don’t have to keep saying it.”
“I do,” I insist, staring at the floor. “You need to know I’m sorry. For leaving. For lying. For everything.”
He leans against the counter, arms crossed, watching me like I’m a wildfire he doesn’t want to smother but also can’t walk away from. His voice drops low and steady. “I know you’re sorry, Jami. But guilt isn’t living. It’s just dying slower. It’s giving power to the past.”
That hits somewhere deep and sore. “I don’t know how to stop,” I whisper.
“Then let me help.”
He disappears for an hour. I hear the familiar rumble outside, the sound of his bike idling before cutting off.
When he comes back inside, he tosses me a helmet.
“Get dressed,” he says.
I blink at him. “For what?”
“A ride.”
My pulse trips. “Tommy?—”
“No thinking,” he interrupts, eyes soft but firm. “No worrying. No guilt. Just feel, baby. You trust me?”
He knows what that question means to someone like me.
And I hate that I hesitate, even for a second, because I do trust him — more than I trust air some days — but fear is still a stubborn ghost.
He doesn’t rush me. He just stands there, waiting.
I nod finally. “Yeah. I trust you.”
The wind is medicine.
The second we pull onto the open road, everything I’ve been clutching inside starts to unravel — the shame, the nightmares, the what-ifs. My arms wrap tight around his waist, my cheek pressed to the patch of leather across his back. The hum of the engine fills every empty space inside me.
The world blurs into fields, trees, stop lights and other vehicles. I don’t have to think here. I just have to hold on.
He doesn’t speak until we stop. When I pick up my head to look around, I realize where we are.
Home.
Our home.
The little white house on the edge of the woods that separate this parcel of land from his brother Crunch and my sister Jenni. The home with the porch swing that still leans to one side so we don’t ever actually sit in it because we’re afraid it will fall, the wind chimes that sound like laughter, and the familiar of life before. I haven’t been here since the day I packed my things and left him standing in the doorway.
My throat tightens after we climb off the bike. “Tommy…”
He turns to me. “Come inside.”
“I—” My voice breaks. “I can’t.”
