“You aren’t fine, baby girl. Far from it, and if you expect me to sit here and buy that plate of shit you are insisting on dishing up, you’re out of your fucking mind. You forget I know you. That play won’t work with me.”
“Greg, seriously?” I screech. “Are you fucking serious right now? I am not trying to serve you some shit. I just don’t want to go there. It really is just as simple as that. I have no hidden motive here. Just give me a goddamn break. You know . . . You fucking know what he meant to me. Could you just give me a minute to, I don’t know, process this shit? Dead, G. He has been dead for twelve years and all of a sudden he isn’t. That isn’t something I can just wake up and deal with.” I can tell I struck a nerve and I might feel bad if I wasn’t so pissed off. He isn’t letting me figure this out. He isn’t letting me think. I just want a second, just a fucking second to wrap my head around this colossal mindfuck.
He looks a little more understanding after my outburst—not by much—but I can see that he is trying hard to see this from my shoes. “I’ll give you today, Izzy, but hear me this. We will be talking about this. No pushing it away, no locking this in tight. The can has been opened, and try as you might, there is no way you’re getting those worms back in.” He squeezes my leg and stands, leveling me with one more serious look before he turns to stomp heavily out of my room, firmly snapping the door shut behind him.
Well, that went well.
I know he is right. I do. I have to deal with this. I might not want to, and it isn’t going to be pretty, but I have to face this. With everything else going on, it isn’t something I even want on my radar, but it’s there. I’ll deal with it, but on my terms, and it will not be today.
I lie back down and roll onto my side facing the big picture window, looking up into the bright, cloudless Georgia sky. What a fuckedup mess. I still have to deal with Brandon, the divorce—or actually the lack of one—and his continued reminders that he is in my life and knows how to reach me . . . how to hurt me. Now I have to deal with Axel and a past I have been struggling to forget and move on from for almost half of my life. Oh how cruel fate is.
*
It really is funny sometimes how everything comes full circle. Just when you think your life is headed in one clear-cut direction, the light turns red and the turn signal comes on. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish my parents were still here, happily residing a few counties over in our old small three-bedroom ranch. If I hadn’t lost them, I never would have had Dee come into my life, and even though it doesn’t take away the pain of their loss, I have to consider myself lucky on some counts. Even through the dark times of my marriage, when our contact was few and far between, I always knew she was there and always would be.
Through Dee came Greg, another thing I wouldn’t have in my life if my parents had survived that wreck. He is another person Dee roped in with her overwhelming personality. She met him when she was dating his cousin, and even though the cousin didn’t last, her friendship with Greg did. She can’t help it. She just has something about her that people want to be around. She has that permanent outlook that everything is right in the world. And lucky for me, he just happened to be close the night she came to save me, even though I don’t remember him showing up with her. By the time she made it to me, I had completely blacked out. The first time I saw him, my initial reaction had been fear; Greg mad is not someone you want to be around. When he saw me step out of the van that day, his reaction scared the shit out of me. Huge, raging mad, and ready to kill. No one was more shocked than I was when the feral giant turned human shield. He was ready to protect me from anything, and that has never changed.
I know I am lucky with the friendships I have with Dee and Greg. They are the only two people I have left in the world. The only two people I know would die before they hurt me. They are my family now—family I sometimes want to hurt, but family nonetheless. It is hard sometimes to deal with all my fuckedupness. I know it isn’t easy for them. When I have a setback, they both have to deal with it right alongside of me. I go and crawl into myself, Dee goes into worried mother mode, and Greg goes into his protective grizzly alpha persona.
Dee and I are close, and we will always be, but Greg and I share a bond of loss and heartache no one else will ever touch. I still remember the look he had in his eye when he told me about his sister. That was the only time I have ever seen his hard self shed a tear. I broke down, clinging to him, mourning his sister, but also feeling the pain the last six years of my life had imbedded in me with the stark, cold knowledge that I could have had a very different ending. That was the day he promised me he wouldn’t let my husband touch me, the day he promised to do everything he could to keep the pain at bay.