Page 40 of Forever Finds Us (Wisper Dreams #7)

Chapter Thirty-Two

Brand

We left Tilly and Zephyr locked behind the gate, and they yelped and whined their displeasure at being left behind, but then they spotted a rabbit across the field and raced after it like fluffy, white bullets again. I hoped the rabbit had a safe place to hunker down until their attention waned.

“Listen,” Dixon said. “I know I’m askin’ a lot, and I heard you when you said keepin’ my secret was tearin’ you up, but can you keep it a little longer?”

“Dix—”

“Please, Brand. I wanna tell Bax myself about Stu’s mama. And I need to have my shit together before I see Merv. She and I have a lot we need to talk about. I’ve been workin’ with my therapist on it. My plan was to come home in the new year. It’s only a few more months.”

“Therapist?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s one of the Coulters’ stipulations to stay and work here.

I gotta go to therapy once a week and to AA or NA every day.

There’s a group that meets in Mad River four days a week that me and a couple of the guys here go to.

The other times, I borrow Brooks’s truck and drive over to Bridgeville. It’s not far.”

“I’m proud of you, Dixon.”

Shrugging, he mumbled, “Thanks.”

“You know,” I said, trying to dismiss the feeling in my gut that he was playing me again, “you’re like a tank now. How’d you get so damn big? I don’t remember you bein’ this fuckin’ tall.”

I wanted to believe he was on a healthy path, but history had jaded me. He had always been good at saying what his family wanted to hear.

He chuckled. “I got a lotta downtime these days, and usually, I’d drink or get high to pass it, so now I work out.

Do odd jobs for people around here. There’s lots of farms in the area, and it seems I picked up a few skills from the son of a bitch who raised us.

I’m makin’ money. Savin’ it up for Stu.”

He looked me over. “It’s been a long time since I really looked at you. I was wrong before. You do look different.” He cracked a smile that showed hints of the little boy he used to be. “Have you always been this ugly?”

“Oh, you’re gonna pay for that,” I said, and I had to jump to get my arm around his shoulder, but when I did, I bent him over and gave him a nuggie. Just like old times.

“He’s not ugly,” Roxanne said as she stepped onto the Coulters’ back porch with a cup of steaming tea in her hand. Brenda followed, along with a tall, skinny man with salt-and pepper-hair, who I assumed was Brenda’s husband, Brooks.

“Roxanne!” I yelped as my brother took me to the ground and sat on my legs so I couldn’t move. “This is my baby brother, Dixon. Arrest him for bein’ a pain in my ass!”

“Wait. Shit,” Dixon said, out of breath. “You didn’t say your lady was a cop.”

“Deputy, actually,” Roxanne said. “And sorry, baby, I have no jurisdiction here. Guess you’re screwed.”

Brenda was smiling, but she said, “Get up outta the dirt. Get cleaned up and come on inside for dinner. Roxi says they can stay.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dixon and I replied in unison.

When we boarded the plane home the next morning, after dinner with my brother and the Coulters and another amazing night in our yurt, Roxi asked, “So, when are you tellin’ your mama? Abey’s gonna be so excited Dixon’s comin’ home soon. I can’t wait to see her. They’re all gonna be so happy, Brand.”

I cleared my throat, trying to buy a little time. “I’m not.”

“You’re not what?” she asked as we ascended the stairs onto the plane.

“Tellin’ them. Not yet.”

“I’m sorry. What?”

“Dixon asked for a little more time. He wants to tell our family everything himself when he gets there.”

“Okay, and when will that be?”

“A few months.”

Roxanne deflated, and she flopped down into a seat and fastened her seatbelt. “Oh, Brand. You agreed to that?”

“Yes.” I left our bags in the aisle for the flight attendant and took my seat next to her. “He’s healthy. You saw him. He’s himself again. He’ll keep his word.”

“And if he doesn’t? He’s an addict, Brand. On the job, I’ve seen it time and time again. They make promises they don’t know how to keep. Or they relapse, and their loved ones are left holdin’ the bag.”

“He’s my baby brother,” I said, letting the cracks in my armor show, the armor I’d kept so close to my chest all these years, but if I was going to let anyone see it, it would be Roxanne. “Please understand.”

“I do understand. Truly, I do. But it’s a mistake.”

No. She didn’t get it. Keeping my promise to my little brother was all I had to prove me worthy of her . Didn’t she see that if I went back on my word, my integrity, my loyalty, and my right to everything I’d earned in my life weren’t worth shit?

“I’m not discussin’ it with you, Roxanne. Dixon gave me his word and he’ll keep it. End of story.”

“And what about your word? You promised me you’d tell your family.”

And now my armor hardened around me, like cured concrete, and I broke into pieces beneath.

But I couldn’t let her see the devastation.

I loved her for questioning and challenging me, but on this matter, my decision had to be final.

My family’s happiness, their love for me, and my fucking self-worth depended on it.

“And I will. When Dixon’s home, we’ll tell them everything together.”

“Did it occur to you how this might affect me? I have to face your sister every day, which now means I’ll have to lie to her every day.”

She looked at me for a long while, silent. But I couldn’t look at her because she was right. If I kept Dixon’s secrets one day longer, I would be letting her down.

“You said this is about trust.” She motioned with her finger between the two of us. “Trust between you and me.”

“It is. I trust you. Don’t you trust me?”

She didn’t answer. She crossed her arms over her chest, closing herself off.

“Roxanne, answer me.”

“No. You don’t get to do that anymore. I’m not your toy. You can’t wind me up when you want me and expect me just to sit around waitin’ for the next time if you won’t give me anything back.”

“Pardon me,” the flight attendant said as she approached us, “I’m sorry to interrupt.” Her smile seemed forced, but she’d probably heard us arguing. “We’ll be taking off soon. Can I get you anything?”

Roxanne shook her head, looking out the window.

“No, thank you,” I said.

“Very well. Please buckle your seatbelt, sir,” she said, and she waited while I complied. “Thank you. We’ll be in Wyoming soon, but once we’re in the air, let me know if you change your mind.”

“Thanks,” I said as she dragged Roxanne’s suitcase and my backpack behind her to stow before takeoff.

As soon as she was out of hearing range, Roxanne turned toward me. Her beautiful brown eyes flashed with hurt, and I wanted to fix it. I wanted to tell her what she wanted to hear but?—

“I’ll answer your question,” she said, “but not because you expect me to or demand it of me.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t trust you, Brand. Not in this moment, because you’re choosin’ to put your faith in someone who has repeatedly lied to you and taken advantage of you. You have no faith in me , in my knowledge of this kind of situation, and you’re settin’ yourself up to fail and stay miserable.”

“Roxanne, he’s my brother .”

“Yeah, he is. Your baby brother, and you love him, and you want everything to be okay, but he’s also an addict.

You have this idea in your head that you have some kind of control over the situation.

Hear me when I say you do not . You can’t control Dixon any more than you can control the change of seasons.

“What you can control is how the rest of this flight is going to go. The next three months. I’m your girlfriend, or I was twenty minutes ago, but just like every other man I’ve ever dated and my family, what I want doesn’t matter to you.

What I need doesn’t matter. Because I need to not be tangled up in this lie with you, but now I am. And you don’t care.”

“You’re puttin’ me in an impossible position, R?—”

“No, actually, I’m not. You’ve put yourself in an impossible situation, and no one can get you out of it but you.

It seems so obvious now, but all this time, you thought you’d tell your brother what you wanted him to do and he’d just do it.

But there’s a lot of work you both need to do in your relationship.

You can’t just ‘man up’ and expect things to be hunky dory.

“I’m so stupid. It wasn’t another woman or an ex I needed to be worried about. It was you. Your entitled belief that everything should just go the way you want it to. You can control me in bed. It’s fun and sexy, but out here in the real world, things just don’t work that way.

“And you need to learn the difference.”

My mouth gaped open. She’d put me in my place, just like when she bit me and I bled for her.

Roxanne was absolutely right, but I had no idea how to bridge the divide between what I needed and what she did.

A chasm grew between us on the plane. I felt her icy distance now and it burned me inside.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you’re right. I hear you, Roxanne, but I need to believe in my brother. I need to have hope. If I betray him now, what was it all for?”

“That’s for you to figure out,” she retorted.

“When we get back to Jackson, please drive me home, and then you can be on your way. Bein’ with you these last few weeks has taught me somethin’ about myself.

I am worthy of love and I deserve it. But not just from you.

From myself, too, so you can go be miserable over the holidays without Dixon, but I won’t be around to watch.

I cannot and will not lie to your sister again, not about this. It’s way too important.”

“Are you… breakin’ up with me?”

“Yep. How you like them apples? Mr. Important Rich Guy who can snap his fingers and demand whatever he wants gets dumped by the weird, small-town cop.” She laughed, but there was no humor in her eyes.

“Forty years it took me to find what I wanted. Who I wanted, and I lost him before I ever even had him. It fuckin’ figures. ”

The pain in my chest squeezed around my broken pieces.

They shattered further into jagged shards, and if I wasn’t sitting upright, breathing and feeling my heart pound, I would’ve thought those shards had sliced up my lungs and cut all my arteries.

It felt like I was bleeding out right in front of the woman I loved, but she refused to see it.

I whispered, “What will you do?”

“That’s none of your business anymore.”

“Will you— Can you just give me a little time?”

“Time’s up,” she said, looking away and trying so hard to keep up her bravado, but it was killing her just like it was me.

It was clear in the way she held herself, trying to hold her hurt inside, trying not to let me see her shaking.

“Even if you walked into a therapist’s office the second we stepped off this plane, you can’t process twenty years of co-dependency and trauma in five minutes.

And I’m too damn old to wait around until you do. ”