Yup, heading in a bad direction already. Shifting on the bench, I ask, “What?”
“First off, let me tell you that no matter what your answer to my question is, I’m not going to be mad at you.”
Okay?
“I just can’t stop myself from asking because . . .”
I raise my eyebrows. “Because?”
His jaw twitches. That ever-present pain floods his eyes as he focuses fully on me. “I’m sick from not knowing.”
Life would be so much easier if his pain didn’t affect me. If it didn’t make me hurt equally as bad. “What do you want to know?”
“Did you leave the bar with Austin the other night?”
I’d had a feeling he’d seen Austin follow me out. He’s been a bit distant, which should please me, but doesn’t. My first thought is to deny him an answer and let him know it’s none of his business.
Surprisingly, I can’t do that. The urges to hurt Brayden are hitting me less and less lately. I’m still hurt and angry at him, but it’s not the same anymore.
“I didn’t leave with him.” I can’t stand the way his expression melts with relief. It makes me want to curl into his lap and hug him. “Is that the only reason you wanted to hang?” To interrogate me?
“No. Besides wanting to spend time with you, I want to see how you’re doing.”
“Meaning?”
He sighs. “Is the fighting still bad, baby?”
Oh. That. I shrug, staring down into the water. “I think your dad’s cheating on my mom.”
“I got the same feeling.”
My head shoots up. Anger sends my heart into a tailspin. Hearing Steven’s son confirming my suspicions only makes them seem that much more true. “I think I’ll kill him if he is cheating on her.”
Brayden nods. “I think I’d help you. It would make what he did to my mom that much more pointless. If he was going to break her, the least he could’ve done was do it for a woman he truly loved.” He realizes what he just said too late, his eyes widening and pupils expanding.
The irony of his statement hurts too much to contemplate on. After all, he once ruined me for a woman he claims to have had no feelings for.
Actually, there were a whole lot of women he supposedly felt nothing for.
I decide to ignore the awkwardness and pain between us. “What makes you say that?”
“The signs are all there, Kira. And, apparently, your mom is picking up on them.”
“How do you see them if you aren’t even living here anymore? You’ve hardly seen them together.”
He scratches his chin, then nods. “I remember what they were like before the cheating. Or, before Mom found out about the cheating. Sonia wasn’t the first and she won’t be the last because that’s who he is. He doesn’t do love.”
“Neither do you.”
He shakes his head, his green eyes swirling with pain, much like they did years ago. “I don’t do emotional pain. To me, that’s all love ever was. If I didn’t fall in love, problem solved. But there’s a flaw.”
“Flaw?”
He reaches out and caresses my cheek. “Love isn’t a choice. It’s a force, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. You can fight it, but in the end all you do is cause yourself the pain you were trying to avoid in the first place.”
“So you had sex with all those women, and your father has also run through his fair share, both while claiming to love one woman . . . How does that make you any different from him?”
He turns from me, dipping his hand in the water and splashing it onto his chest. When he looks back, there’s a sort of resolve I haven’t seen in awhile.
“I couldn’t be with you. First due to your age, and then because they got married. I was a horny teenager and didn’t make the best decisions for me or for you. That’s the power of hindsight. The correlation means nothing, because I don’t want anyone else. I want to love you and you alone. I’m not a cheater.”
“Yeah, right,” I grumble and place my hand on the edge of the pool, preparing to get out.
Brayden stops me, grabs my chin, and forces me to look into his burning eyes. “I’d rather die than ever cheat on you.”
“I’m not in the mood to fucking deal with this right now.”
“You never are.”
“Damn right. I don’t owe you shit. Now let me go.”
Clearly, “let me go” translates into “don’t let me go” in his book. If I tell him to keep his hands on me, will that somehow register in his dyslexic brain and make him release me?
“I haven’t been with any woman, except you, since I decided I was going to do right by you this time. Since the day I told Ryan I would wait for you, come to you at your eighteenth birthday.” His eyes beseech me.
I shake my head, and his hand falls away from my face. “So?”
“Do you believe me that I haven’t been with anyone else?”
“What?”
Brayden moves closer. When I try to look away, he moves back into my line of sight. “Do. You. Believe. Me?”