“Where is your family, Joss?”
“Wow. Right into it, huh?”
She shrugged. “Life is too short to pussyfoot around.”
That we could agree on. “What has Braden told you?”
“That you were dating, it was getting serious, and then you said you couldn’t be serious and that you wanted to be casual. He said you said you were effed up and he has enough of that in his life.”
“So basically he tells you everything?” I secretly envied their relationship.
“No. Not usually. But with you, he was excited. Like a kid at Christmas. And then the night after you broke up, he got drunk and told Adam and I everything.”
“And now you’re here to see if you can somehow salvage this mess?”
Ellie looked far too innocent. “I wanted to see if there wasn’t some miscommunication.”
“There wasn’t. I am fucked up. And he doesn’t need that in his life right now. Abby doesn’t need that in her dad’s life.”
“Yes,” Ellie pinched her lips together, “not with a mum like Kiersten.”
I found myself curious to know. “How are they?”
“The same. Braden’s keeping a record of all the times Kiersten acts out. He’d like to flip the custody arrangement so that he has Abby more than Kiersten does.”
“He has to do what’s best for his kid.”
“Like breaking up with you.”
“Jesus, you’re a dog with a bone.”
“Why, Joss? Why are you effed up?”
Part of me admired her tenacity. Beneath her willowy, pretty blond looks and soft voice was a will of steel. “I don’t talk about it.”
“What happened to your family? Braden thinks your mum might have died. Is that true?”
And like always when I had to talk about them, my heart started racing and a queasiness overcame me. I put my plate down on the coffee table. “My whole family died.”
Her stunned silence filled the room until I had no choice but to look over at her.
Ellie had paled, her eyes round with shock. “Oh my God, Joss.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
There was a moment as we sat tense on the couch that I thought she might get up and leave, realizing I wasn’t lying when I said I was fucked up.
But …
“Why did you start something with Braden, knowing that he didn’t want a casual relationship with you, if you knew you couldn’t be in a serious relationship with him?”
At her accusatory tone, I found myself wanting to defend myself. “I thought I could get past my issues and try. But I failed.” The anger seeped out of me. “I’m sorry I hurt him.”
“What are your issues?”
I stared at her incredulously. Hadn’t I told her my whole family had died?
Ellie put her plate down on the table too and to my surprise, she kicked off her flats and curled up onto the couch as if she had no intention of going anywhere for a while.
This was turning into the strangest day.
“Okay.” She nodded her head, a determination in her eyes that reminded me of Braden. “If you won’t talk, then I’ll talk.”
“About …”
“About what I’ve been through. I won’t say it’s anywhere near as bad as losing your whole family, but I’ve seen my share of battles. The first was Adam,” she said, and despite myself I found that I was curious about Ellie Sutherland. I listened as she told me how Adam hadn’t wanted to date his best friend’s little sister because Braden was like a brother to him. “The relationship was too important to him. And he hurt me. Not only by acting like a boyfriend-without-the-benefits but because he’d made a choice and it wasn’t me.
“And then …” she heaved a massive sigh, “I was diagnosed with a brain tumor.”
My heart plummeted.
Braden hadn’t told me that.
“When? What?”
“About eight years ago. Don’t worry. It wasn’t cancerous, but there was a moment there when we feared the worst. It was in that moment that Adam decided I was worth the risk. Terrified of losing me, he finally admitted to Braden how he felt. Of course, Braden already knew.” She chuckled. “Bloody know-it-all. It was an intense time. Adam and I became a couple and I underwent brain surgery, which was terrifying, and then the recovery. They shaved my head.” She touched her head, giving me a sheepish smile. “So silly, but at the time, I cried.”
“It’s not silly,” I whispered, thinking how brave she was.
Brain surgery. She was right. She had been through a battle.
“And then a few years later, my little sister Hannah almost died.”
I exhaled in shock. “What?”
Braden hadn’t told me that, either.
A dark fear had crept into her gaze as she went back to an obviously difficult time in her life. “Hannah was seventeen and something happened to her I won’t go into because it’s not my story to tell. All I will say is that she was rushed to hospital and her heart stopped on the operating table. They brought her back. And she came back a changed girl.” Wet glistened in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said sadly.
“Joss,” her brows drew together, “don’t you see? We all have personal wars we’ve been through. Why is it so hard for you to share yours?”
Grief and indignation flooded me.
I kept trying to win against my past, and I kept losing.
Braden was out there somewhere without me because I couldn’t even open my mouth to say the words.
I was so tired of losing.
“I was fourteen,” the words came out hard, brittle, ready to shatter. “My parents had taken the week off work and that particular day, they took my baby sister Beth for a picnic. They were in a car accident. The cops and a woman from social services turned up at my school to tell me that all three of them had died. From there I went into foster care.”
I hadn’t looked at Ellie the entire time I talked; when I did, I was surprised to find her crying. “Don’t cry for me, Ellie.”
She swiped at her tears. “It’s too much, Joss. It’s too much to lose.”
“I know,” I whispered.
“You don’t talk about them. You don’t have pictures of them.”
“No. I don’t like to think about them. If I don’t think about them …” I gasped for breath, realizing what I was about to admit to this stranger.
“If you don’t think about them …?”
Since I’d come this far … “Then maybe they’re not really dead.”
“Oh, Joss.” More tears spilled down her pretty cheeks.
But I didn’t cry. Instead I felt strangely relieved, like I’d unburdened myself of a huge weight. I stared incredulously at Ellie Sutherland, wondering what the hell kind of miracle she’d performed.
She reached for my hand and I let her squeeze it. “You need to start grieving for them, Joss, because right now, you’re paralyzed.”
It was the truth. Perceptive, succinct, and terrifying.
“I’m scared,” I admitted.
“You know,” Ellie rubbed at that same spot on her head she’d touched before, “for months before I was diagnosed with the tumor, I knew something was wrong. I was paralyzed by the fear and so I kept pretending it was nothing because pretending was so much safer than the truth. But I had a seizure and there was no more pretending. And there was this moment in between knowing and not knowing that I thought I might shred into pieces. I didn’t. I somehow got up and got on with my life. You will too, Joss. You’ll let in all the pain and you’ll feel like you want to die … but then one day, you’ll be able to breathe again.”
I stared at her, feeling the wet on my cheeks. I let the tears spill over and stared at Ellie, realizing something quite important. Since I was fourteen years old, I’d thou
ght of myself as one tough cookie. I’d been proud of this, thinking myself strong.
But the tough cookie was an exterior.
A mask.
I was looking at someone with real strength.
And in that moment of perfect clarity, I promised I would try to be a stronger version of myself from that day forward.
The Party
The problem with Ellie Sutherland was that she had a way of getting under your skin and making you trust her.
For the next few months, she was in my life. I had dinner with her and Adam and met her beautiful baby William. We went shopping, had coffee and lunches, and she kept me up to date with what was going on with Braden and Abby.
There were numerous occasions upon which Ellie asked me to Sunday dinner at her mom and stepdad’s house. But since I knew Braden attended those Sunday dinners with Abby, I thought it was a bad idea. He hadn’t wanted me to meet his kid while we were dating, so it seemed wrong for me to barge into their lives after being the one to cut myself out.
I could tell Ellie was frustrated by my refusal, but I felt I was doing the right thing. She conceded that I was probably correct, even though she didn’t like it. During our time together, I talked more about my family than I’d done in the last sixteen years. Ellie had somehow become a friend and a therapist. She lulled me into feeling safe with her because she was the first person I’d made myself truly vulnerable to, in a different way than I’d made myself vulnerable to Braden. I could only assume that there was something in Ellie’s and her brother’s chemistry that called to me.
In not fearing becoming vulnerable to Els, I found myself grateful to her. I hadn’t fully found a sense of peace yet, but for the first time, I felt like it might be possible.
So in being grateful and trusting her, I let Ellie Sutherland blindside me.
Ellie was an art history lecturer and tutor at the University of Edinburgh. She told me she was being forced to attend a formal award ceremony on a Saturday evening and since they couldn’t get a babysitter in time, Adam couldn’t attend with her. She begged me to come keep her company.
And I agreed.
Wearing a peacock-blue Diane von Furstenberg dress I’d bought for the occasion, I’d hoped I was appropriately attired as the taxi pulled up to the hotel where the ceremony was being held. The dress had three-quarter sleeves and hit me above the knee, a wrap dress with a slightly daring V in the cleavage. Paired with matching peacock-blue platform peep-toe shoes, I was sexy-classy and now worried that perhaps for an academic award ceremony, I should have gone with conservative-classy.
Turns out that was really the least of my worries.
I texted Els to let her know I was pulling up. As I walked through the hotel foyer, she hurried toward me, gorgeous in a champagne-colored satin slip dress and strappy sandals.
“Wow, you look amazing,” I said, meaning it and feeling better about the sexiness of my own outfit. “You’re literally a hot momma.”
She smiled, but there was something nervous about it that immediately put me on edge. “You look gorgeous, too. So gorgeous.” Now there was something pleased and calculating in her expression.
“What’s going on?”
“You’re late, that’s what is going on.” She looped her arm through mine and gently tugged me through the reception.
“This is the time you told me to be here.”
“Is it? I thought I said seven.” She was lying. She knew exactly what time she’d told me. Altogether her manner was strange.
Something was definitely up.
“Ellie, what is—” I was cut off as she led me in through a set of doors and I found myself not at an award ceremony at all.
Instead there was a live indie rock band playing on the stage at the far end of a massive room. Tons of people danced in the middle while even more sat at circular tables lining the edges of the dance floor.
There weren’t any balloons or streamers, but the tables were decorated and I noted that a lot of the guests were teenagers.
I quirked an eyebrow at Ellie.
She grimaced. “Don’t kill me.”
“What did you do?” I at once felt a little ill and automatically my gaze searched the crowd.
I found him easily.
Braden stood by a table talking to Adam and a group of people I didn’t recognize.
My eyes swung back to Braden.
I now understood that old cliché about water and the desert. Braden was that tall, cold drink of water I’d been thirsting after since deserting myself in a dry, hot wasteland when I broke things off.
“Ellie.”
“This is Declan’s eighteenth birthday party.”
Shock and horror ripped through me; at the same time, every cell in my body came alive upon finding myself in the same room with Braden. “Why?” I whispered, feeling betrayed.
She gripped my hand tightly. “Please, please don’t hate me. I … I thought you guys should spend some time together now that you’re trying to move through …”
I groaned. “Ellie, I’m not miraculously changed overnight. And Braden’s situation hasn’t, either. In fact, right now, I am the last thing he needs.”
It was true. Ellie had told me only a few days ago that Kiersten had agreed to give Abby to Braden for the weekend to celebrate Declan’s birthday. (Ellie had told me they were having a family party on Sunday … little sneak.) During the week, Kiersten had changed her mind, refusing to allow it unless Braden paid off credit card debt she had accrued buying too many pairs of Jimmy Choos.
He had her repeat her demands while he secretly recorded the conversation.
Braden had refused to pay the debt, losing out on Abby for the weekend, but he’d gotten evidence that his ex was blackmailing him and using their child to do it.
I didn’t think it would be long before they saw the court.
Hence why I was pissed Ellie had put me in his path this of all weekends.
“Does he know you invited me?”
“Yes. I told him.”
“Was he angry?” I didn’t really want to know.
“Um … well … I only told him an hour ago.”
“Ellie Sutherland!”
“I told you it would go well.”
We spun around to find Adam smirking at his wife.
“It’s fine,” Ellie said airily. “Isn’t it, Joss?”
She begged me with her eyes, as if to say, “Don’t let my husband be right, I’ll never live it down.” But I hadn’t forgiven her yet.
“If me wanting to bury you in your own backyard is called being fine, then yes, we’re fine.” My grin was shark-like.
Adam snorted. “Braden said something similar.”
I flinched. “I should leave.”
“No.” Adam lifted his hands in apology as Ellie shot daggers at him. “No, don’t go. Braden’s fine. He was just a little surprised when Els told him you’d be here.”
“He doesn’t think I agreed to this, did he?”
“No. Els told him what she’d done. I think his exact words were, ‘Well, I don’t have to kill you then, because Jocelyn will flay you alive for the both of us.’”
“Wow.” I wanted to look over at Braden, but I determinedly didn’t. “He thinks I’m pretty scary, huh.”
“You are scary.” Ellie slid her arm around my shoulders and hugged me to her. “But in a cute way.”
I frowned. “I’m not cute, Ellie.”
She laughed and tried to lead me into the room.
“I didn’t bring a birthday gift,” I said, stalling.
“Pfft! My brother has gotten more presents than five teenagers need.”
And that was how I found myself being led unwillingly across a dance floor to meet Ellie’s parents and converse with Braden for the first time in three months.
&
nbsp; We’d been apart longer than we’d been dating.
So why couldn’t I breathe the moment he turned to watch us approach?
To make matters worse, his expression was carefully blank.
“Braden, you remember Joss,” Ellie said breezily.
I cut her a dirty look but she beamed at me like I’d called her a princess.
“Jocelyn.” Braden nodded at me. “Let me be the first to apologize for Ellie.”
“I would have,” Adam piped up, giving me an apologetic look, “but I want to get laid tonight.”
“Words every mother wants to hear.” A tall, older blond rolled her eyes at Adam as she appeared at Braden’s side. Her eyes cut to me. “I’m Elodie Nichols, Ellie’s mum. It’s nice to meet you, Jocelyn.”
I shook her hand, relieved by her warm welcome. “It’s just Joss.”
“Clark,” she called over her shoulder, “come and meet Joss.”
Thirty seconds later, I was shaking hands with Ellie’s friendly stepfather, followed by introductions to Hannah, Ellie’s half-sister, and her date, Marco D’Alessandro. Hannah was statuesque, curvy, and drop-dead gorgeous. Marco was this too-beautiful-to-be-real, half-Italian, half-black American who towered over even Braden and had biceps that made me figuratively drool. If Hannah weren’t so smart and snarky and Marco didn’t look at her like she was an angel fallen from heaven, it might have been hard to like them.
But I did like them.
I liked them all. Or I imagined I would like them all. I hadn’t met Declan yet as he was on the dance floor rocking out with his friends.
The truth? I focused on liking these people because it meant I didn’t have to focus on Braden whose blank expression had quickly given way to intense study of my every move.
I wanted to rip the well-fitting black shirt right off his body.
Shit fuckity shit fuck.
“So,” I tried to place Marco’s accent as I stared up into his stunning green-blue eyes, “Chicago?”
He nodded. “For the most part. I’ve been living in Scotland a while. You?”
“Virginia. But I’ve been in Edinburgh for the past twelve years.”
Hannah cocked her head to the side as she leaned into her date. “You don’t have an accent.”