Change of Heart

  She needed to grow a pair and just face me already.

  I walked into my mom and dad’s a little late Friday night, dragging ass. I hadn’t wanted to go to dinner. I just wanted to head home, grab a beer, and sit in front of the TV in my underwear—but I wasn’t going to be the one who didn’t show up.

  I’d been where I was supposed to be that week. I wasn’t going to be the one who flaked out on family dinner.

  “Hey, Mom,” I called as my mom came out from the kitchen.

  “Dinner’s on the table,” Mom said with a smile, looking me over closely. “You’re late, and you look tired.”

  “I am tired,” I replied, kissing her head as I reached her. “Long week.”

  “Well, let’s fill you up and then you can head on home.”

  I followed her to the dining room and let my eyes sweep over the table. Dad, Trevor, Aunt Ellie, Uncle Mike. I tried to keep my face blank as I realized Ani wasn’t there. I was fucking pissed. She didn’t even show at family dinner?

  I stewed as we started dishing up the homemade mac and cheese. My aunt must have cooked that night because mac and cheese was her specialty, not my mom’s.

  “Where’s Ani?” I asked when I couldn’t take it anymore. I immediately wanted to bite back the words.

  “She had some other stuff planned tonight,” my mom said with a shrug, like she hadn’t guilted me into changing any set of plans I’d ever made that would land during family dinner.

  “She wasn’t at work all week,” I said, staring at my food like it was the most important thing I’d ever seen. “She go on vacation?”

  I glanced up at my suddenly quiet family and looked at their faces around the table. “What?”

  “She had some stuff to do this week so she took some sick leave,” Trevor said flatly, not even looking at me as he spoke.

  “Sure she did,” I said under my breath, shoveling a forkful of food into my mouth.

  “What?” my mom asked, turning to me.

  “Nothing.” I shook my head, then looked quickly at my aunt. “This mac and cheese is good, Auntie.”

  “Thanks, honey,” Aunt Ellie said with a smile, turning to my dad to talk about…whatever it was they’d been talking about before I interrupted.

  I couldn’t focus on anything happening around me. My skin felt tight, and my head was beginning to throb at my temples from clenching my jaw so hard.

  “I’m gonna head out, Mom,” I finally said when I couldn’t sit there a minute longer. I was being rude, and I always stayed to help with cleanup, but I was so wound up I knew there was no way I was going to be able to stay at my mom’s for another hour to do the dishes.

  “Okay, you go home and get some rest,” she said, reaching out to rub my back and making me feel like an absolute dick for pretending that was why I was leaving.

  I said my good-byes and headed out the door before anyone else had stood from the table.

  Then I drove across town to the little house Ani had bought six months ago. It was a fixer-upper, built in the 1930s, but what it lacked in looks and function, it more than made up with charm. It was actually kind of perfect for her since she had four men in her life that were good with their hands and willing to pitch in. The first thing she’d done was paint the outside, which didn’t make any sense whatsoever but she’d said she wanted to come home to a pretty house, even though the floors inside had been covered in olive shag carpeting and she’d had no appliances in the kitchen.

  I pounded hard on the door, and the minute it opened, I started railing.

  “You don’t show up for work all fucking week and then you bail on family dinner? What? Are you avoiding me now? Let’s just be adults—” My words faded out as what I was seeing finally sunk in. “What the fuck is wrong?” I asked, immediately taking a deep breath when it came out sharper than I’d intended.

  Her hair was wet like she’d just gotten out of the shower, but her face was pale as a ghost except for dark circles under her sleepy eyes, and she was hunched over a little like an old lady. She looked like shit, and she was wearing flannel pajamas at seven o’clock at night.

  “Hey, I’m not feeling well,” she said, giving me a crooked smile. “Can we talk about this in a few days?”

  “No,” I replied stubbornly, stepping forward so she was forced to move farther into the house. “What’s wrong with you?”

  She sighed and winced, motioning for me to close the door, then turned and started hobbling toward her bedroom.

  “Hey.” I reached out and grabbed her arm, stopping her halfway down the hallway. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I had to have surgery—not a big deal, okay?” she said, pulling her arm out of my grip. “I’ll be back at work next week, but right now I feel like shit. So could you just go?”

  I followed her as she shuffled into her room, and watched as she sat gingerly down on her bed.

  She looked up in surprise when I shut the door behind me, then her lips twisted in a wry grin. “If you’re back for a repeat, I’m not really up for it,” she said sarcastically, smoothing her hand down the wispy dark hair that was beginning to dry.

  “What kind of surgery?” I asked roughly.

  Why hadn’t anyone told me she’d been in the hospital? I was so fucking confused that my mind was racing. Was she really so pissed at me after we’d fucked that she told them not to tell me? We were family, our lives were entwined, hell we even worked together, and no one had thought it was important to let me know what the fuck was going on?

  “None of your business, Abraham,” Ani answered flatly.

  “That’s bullshit.” I looked her over trying to find where the hell she’d been cut open—I grew nauseous at the thought of that—but I couldn’t see anything except the pajamas that she was practically swimming in. “You had surgery, and no one fucking told me?”

  “Because it’s none of your business.”

  “Fine,” I snapped, pulling my phone out of my pocket.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Calling Katie. Maybe she’ll tell me what the fuck is going on.” I had just pulled up my contacts list when my phone was slapped out of my hand.

  “She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t need to know,” Ani hissed, glaring at me as she leaned forward, her hand braced gently against her belly. “Just go the fuck home, Bram!”

  I lost it. Before she could step away, I was unbuttoning the first button on her pajamas and moving quickly to the next. “I have to find it? Fine.” My hands were shaking so bad I could barely unfasten the second button.

  “Bram,” Ani finally said gently when I’d reached the fourth button. “Bram, stop.”

  I paused, clutching the sides of her top in my hands, and glanced up at her, my heart racing. What the fuck? What the fuck was wrong with her? Did she have cancer? Did they have to take something out of her? Her appendix? That wasn’t a huge deal. Or was it something worse?

  “Just tell me,” I ordered, working hard to keep my voice steady.

  She stared at me for a long moment, then finally spoke.

  “Oh, you know, routine hysterectomy.” She tried to say it jokingly, but on the last word, her voice broke, and she started to cry.

  My stomach rolled. “Aw, baby. Don’t,” I murmured, the words coming without any thought. I leaned down and slowly lifted her into my arms as she sniffled, trying to get herself under control.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured as I laid her down on her bed. “It’s not a big deal. At all. I don’t know why I’m crying.” Even as she said the words, her voice hitched and more tears ran down her face. “I just took a pain pill—Vicodin makes me weepy.”

  “Shhh.” I stepped away from the bed and turned out her bedroom light, leaving the room dark except for the moonlight coming through the window.

  “Thanks for turning out the light,” she said, sniffling. “I’ll see you Monday, okay?”

  I nodded my head as I kicked my boots off.

  “I’ll even bring c
offee since I know you’re too lazy to make it yourself so you haven’t had any all week.”

  “All right,” I replied as I pulled off my shirt and dropped my jeans to the floor.

  She sniffled again as I rounded the bed, and sobbed once as I climbed in behind her, curving into the shape of her and wrapping my arm around her chest so I wouldn’t touch her incision.

  The dam broke then.

  She moaned as her sobs burst out of her mouth, and I pulled a pillow in front of her so she could press it against her belly as she curled into a ball. I didn’t know what to do for her. I thought about calling my mom, but I knew that Ani must have sent her home or she would’ve already been there hovering.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered as her sobs finally seemed to calm. She hiccupped and groaned, and I placed my hand over hers on the pillow, holding her steady against me.

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” I said softly, kissing the back of her head.

  She went quiet. She didn’t say anything for so long that I thought she’d fallen asleep until she spoke again. “I can’t have babies anymore,” she said sorrowfully, her hands clenching into fists against the pillow.

  I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t a bad thing. I wanted to ask why the hell it mattered. Why she was so upset about it. Why she’d even want to bring kids into our fucked-up world in the first place.

  But I didn’t.

  Instead, I just ran my fingers lightly over her hands until they relaxed and gripped mine. “I’m sorry,” I said simply.

  She nodded, and a few minutes later, she fell asleep with her fingers threaded through mine.

  Ani wasn’t a crier. She didn’t show a ton of emotion normally, preferring to mask any discomfort or sadness with a sharp tongue and a sarcastic remark. I understood that about her, because she and I were a lot alike in that respect.

  I used my chin to smooth the hair at the back of her head out of my face and closed my eyes, refusing to think about why I wasn’t hopping out of bed and getting the hell out of there.

  Chapter 4

  Anita

  I woke up around three in the morning and knew two things simultaneously.

  I needed a pain pill, and Bram had stayed.

  His arm was still around me but had moved up my torso, his palm resting on my collarbone and his forearm pressed between my breasts. It felt good. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spent the night with someone. Sex—yes. Sleepovers—no.

  But as nice as having Bram’s arm around me felt, I needed to move it so I could get out of bed and grab some pain pills from the top of my dresser across the room.

  “Hey,” Bram rasped as I tried to lift his arm off me. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I whispered back, suddenly feeling awkward. “I just need to take a pill.”

  “Oh!” He sat up behind me, and I immediately missed his warmth at my back. “Where are they? I’ll get ’em.”

  He stood from the bed as I tried to protest, but my words were cut off on a giggle as he stumbled around trying to get his balance. I’d heard about Bram’s wake-up clumsiness, but I’d never actually seen it. “Are you drunk?” I asked, watching as he braced himself against the wall.

  “No,” he shot back defensively. “It just takes me a minute to wake up.”

  “That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” I said seriously, sitting gingerly up in bed.

  “Shut up.”

  “No really, you’re like a newborn giraffe. It’s adorable.”

  “I can’t fuck with you right now, but you know I have a good memory, right?”

  “All wobbly legs and bewildered expression,” I teased, grinning as his expression became even more disgruntled.

  “It’s dark in here, and I don’t know my way around,” he argued, taking a few tentative steps forward.

  “It’s not that dark.”

  “Then you have eyes like a fucking bat,” he mumbled. “Where are your pills?”

  “Top of the dresser. I have a cup of water there too.”

  He stumbled over to the dresser and grabbed my little orange bottle of pills and my cup from the hospital, but his steps became steadier as he came back to the bed.

  “You found those pills pretty easy in this super-dark room,” I needled as he handed me the small bottle.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he replied, handing me the water and crawling over the foot of the bed to climb back in behind me.

  I snickered as he got comfortable, then took my pill, lying back down when I was finished. I wasn’t sure how to position my body. Bram was lying on his back with his hands behind his head, but I didn’t want to just assume he wanted me to snuggle into him. However, lying on my side with my back to him seemed kind of rude. Was that against bed-sharing etiquette? Whenever I saw a couple like that in a movie, it was when they were fighting—not that we were a couple or anything.

  Finally I just lay down on my back next to him, even though it wasn’t exactly comfortable, and rested my hands on my stomach. That should work. Super nonchalant.

  “Why did you have the surgery?” Bram asked quietly once I was settled.

  “I have—had these things called fibroids. They’re painful, and I’ve had them for years, and it finally got to the point that I just couldn’t take it anymore,” I answered as simply as I could. I didn’t explain the long periods that left me feeling drained and depressed or the few times when it had hurt to have sex. I wasn’t going to go into the fact that I’d debated it in my head for over a year before I’d finally elected to have the surgery. How the thought of never carrying a baby had been completely abhorrent for a long time. That I’d finally come to the decision on my twenty-ninth birthday that I couldn’t keep dealing with the pain on the off chance that, at some point, I’d have a husband and I’d want children. That I’d cried about it for the two weeks leading up to the surgery, and even while they were putting me under, I’d wondered if I was doing the right thing.

  “Is that—” He paused for a second. “Is that cancer, or—”

  “No. Not cancer.” I turned my head to look at him, and found him staring at the ceiling.

  “But they’ve been hurting you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Why would you?” I asked in confusion.

  “Well, at least you won’t have to deal with that anymore, yeah?” He tilted his head down and met my eyes, his jaw tight.

  “Yep,” I said quietly, nodding my head.

  How did I explain that I almost wanted it back? It wouldn’t make any sense to him. Shit, I didn’t know if it would make sense to anyone.

  “Come here,” Bram called, reaching out to grab my hand and pull it so that I rolled into his side, my arm around his waist. “That okay? It doesn’t hurt or anything?”

  “No.” I shook my head before laying it on his shoulder. “They went through my vagina so I have some little incisions from the laparoscopy on my belly but most of it is—” My words cut off as I realized how absolutely still Bram was.

  “Bram?”

  “They—” His body shuddered. “They were—they cut you—”

  “I’m fine,” I tried to reassure him, but his body didn’t relax. “Bram, seriously, they do it all the time.”

  “They don’t do it to you all the time.”

  “Thank God for that. Shit hurts.”

  Bram shuddered again, and his hand swept down my back, pushing me closer against his side.

  “Let’s just go to sleep,” he said roughly, pulling the sheets up and over us.

  My skin prickled. “What, are you grossed out now?” I said sharply, embarrassed at his reaction. “I didn’t ask you to stay. You can go at any time. Wouldn’t want to gross you out or anything with the surgery I just had, that I wasn’t even really sure I wanted, and—”

  He cut my words off with a wet kiss, one that probably wasn’t appropriate considering the fact that I wouldn’t be able to have sex for a long time while I healed.

>   “I don’t like the idea of someone with a fucking scalpel up inside you, okay?” he hissed into my mouth, his hand coming up to tangle in my hair as he was careful to keep his weight off my body. “Can we just fucking drop it?”

  His breath was ragged, and I could feel his heart racing where my face pressed against his chest. He was really freaked out. I could see it even though I didn’t understand it. By the look on his face, he didn’t understand the reaction, either.

  “Okay,” I finally whispered with a nod, kissing his chin softly. “We can drop it.”

  He nodded back, inhaling deeply as he pulled his fingers through my hair and then smoothed it away from my face.

  His muscles relaxed as he leaned back to rest his head on my pillow, but his arm never released the tight hold on my back.

  * * *

  The next time I woke up, Bram was gone. I wasn’t surprised. He’d never struck me as a wake-up-the-next-morning-and-make-breakfast kind of guy. No, what surprised me was that he’d even stayed at all the night before.

  I groaned as I leaned over the side of the bed and grabbed my pills and water cup from the bedside table. The cup was one of two that I’d brought home from the hospital with me, with a lid and a straw that had kept me from tipping it over and spilling it as I’d fumbled for it the first couple of days home. I leaned forward a little bit and paused with my lips around the straw.

  The cup was cold and so was the water inside it. I shook it a little and heard ice cubes clicking against the plastic. I smiled. Bram had gotten me fresh water before he took off.

  After another pull of the water, I set it down and lay back on my pillow. My pain was significantly better than when I’d first gotten home from the hospital, but I was still pretty sore. I wanted to give myself a few minutes before I tried walking around the house.

  My eyes were just starting to grow heavy again when my foster brother Alex’s voice came from my phone somewhere near my pillow.