Page 142 of Family Bonds: Alana & Brennan
“Soon,” Hudson said. “You shouldn’t be alone tonight. You’re going to be in some pain. We’ll get you some pain meds for a few days and instructions for ice care, but otherwise I think you’ll be okay.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“We’ll stay with her tonight,” Cindy said. “Brennan, we’ll drop you off at home if you want. Then you can fly over in the morning to get your car.”
He nodded. “Whatever works.”
He wanted to argue he’d stay with Alana. And take care of her.
But he had no hold on her and she lived at her parents’ house.
Maybe it was for the best with the way she was avoiding his gaze.
43
NOT HOLDING BACK
“Iknow you’re mad at me,” Alana said the next afternoon.
Her parents left this morning and picked up Brennan to bring him back to Boston so he could get his car and then take the ferry back. He was alone, so she was assuming Becca was still with his mother.
“I’m not mad,” he said.
“Disappointed then,” she said.
“I’m definitely that, but we don’t have to talk about it now either.”
She adjusted the pillow behind her on the couch and moved the ice pack back in place where it’d dropped, using another pillow to keep it there.
“I want to talk about it. Too many times in my life I put things off. I’m not doing that anymore.”
Just like she shouldn’t have avoided the texts from Jonathan.
If she’d just responded to him or called, she could have avoided all of this. Not even had to see him again.
“You don’t need to get worked up.”
“I’m not,” she said. “Or I won’t if you don’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell me Jonathan has been texting you?” He put his hand up when she opened her mouth. “First off, I’m not jealous. Nothing like that. I’m disappointed that you felt you couldn’t trust me with that information. I don’t know why and maybe that upsets me the most.”
She sighed. She shouldn’t have because her hand went to her side.
It hurt to take deep breaths, but Hudson told her it’d get better each day if she took it easy.
She was reminding herself it was a bruise, not a break.
“It’s not that I didn’t trust you,” she said. “Please don’t think that. He texted me about a month ago. Nothing more than asking how I was doing. I deleted it. I didn’t care. I heard nothing else for a bit, and then the day you got the call from Rene, I was talking to Kelsey, and he asked me to call him. I deleted it too. I had nothing to say to him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it was one-sided and, in my eyes, nothing major. I couldn’t imagine what he thought he had to say to me one year later. And anything it was I didn’t care about. What we had was over.”
“Then you could have told me,” he said.
“You have enough on your mind with Rene and Becca,” she said. “I honestly wasn’t purposely not telling you. He didn’t text me again after that day and I thought it was done. I’m assuming my father told you what it was about?”
Her parents didn’t want to get into it too much last night and wanted her to rest.
