Page 93 of Bad Boys After Dark - Brett
His father strode across the room again and pushed the door closed, turning the eyes of a tortured man on Brett. “Do you know what it’s like to tell your little girl that everything’s going to be okay when you know damn well it’s not? Nothing you could have said or done could have made mine or your mother’s lives harder than they were back then. You were an arrogant kid, but damn it, Brett, you kids fed off my emotions. You and your brothers hid out in that goddamn fort in the woods at a time when you should have been taken care of. But what did I know about grief? I had no clue. All I knew was that I needed to stay away from everyone for fear of dragging you all down with me.”
“But you did drag us down.” The words flew from Brett’s lips with such venom, they propelled him to his feet.
“No shit,” his father spat. “I get it. I’m not denying it. I made your lives harder, and I will regret that until the day I die. I’m sorry. I wish I could go back and learn how to deal with our loss and start all over. But I was too mired in my own self-pity to know where to turn. I did the only thing I knew how to do. I worked myself into the ground in an effort to never forget a second of the pain. I’d have drilled it into my bones if I could have. I’d have given my own life for her.”
“But not for us!” Brett clamped his mouth shut, angry at himself for letting the old hurt derail him. “Sorry,” he snapped. “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t come here to accuse you.”
“Bullshit. You meant it, as well you should have. I fucked up, Brett. I fucked up everyone’s lives, and I have no excuse for it. Hell, I’m only now starting to grasp the depth of my failures.” He swallowed hard and said less vehemently, “When I went to that fundraiser and saw the pictures of my baby girl, of your sister. Of Lorelei…”
Brett’s throat thickened. He hadn’t heard his father say his sister’s name since she died.
“When I saw her smiling down at the world, it tore me up.” Tears streamed down his cheeks. He turned away and leaned on the windowsill, his head falling between his shoulders. “I tried to get lost in work, and when that didn’t cut it, I tried drinking. But I wasn’t weak enough to disappear into a bottle.” He scoffed. “Too weak to save my family, too strong to become a drunken bum. Senseless.”
He turned around, his face a mask of devastation. “That was the night I called your mother.”
“What?” Brett’s protective urges surged forward. His fingers curled into fists. He and his brothers had protected their mother from their father’s wrath ever since his father moved out.
“I understand why you look like you want to kill me,” his father said. “But please, hear me out. I didn’t call her to cause trouble. I called her because finally, after all these years, I hit rock bottom. She always knew I would, and she left that door open. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I never stopped loving her. She came over the next day, and I won’t give you all the details, but she convinced me to see a therapist.”
What the hell? Brett wanted to grab hold of the beacon of hope his father’s confession held, but he’d been burned too many times. “All these years you would lose your shit if we brought Lorelei up, and now you’re suddenly ready to deal with it? Why? What’s in it for you?”
His father held his steady gaze, the loaded question hanging between them like a line drawn in the sand. “What’s in this for you, Brett? Why are you here after all these years?”
“Because I can’t move forward carrying all this anger and guilt around, and I don’t want to end up”—like you—“alone and angry, making people walk on eggshells.” Brett squared his shoulders, thinking about Sophie and her family and how wonderful it was to be part of that. “And because even though I know we’ll never be a close family again, that doesn’t mean we can’t be something.”
His father’s eyes misted over again. “Common ground. That’s where I’m coming from, too.”
Emotions bowled Brett over, momentarily stunning him into silence.
