Every Night (Brush of Love 1)

“I didn’t know you needed to be healed. I think you’re perfect, Bryan.”

“Did you think that by sleeping with your dead art student’s brother that you could somehow make it right? That you could somehow appease your own pathetic piece of guilt over some dead student?”

“No,” she said, sobbing.

“What do you know about my brother?” I asked. “What do you know?”

“I was there when your brother died,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“I-I was there. When he died,” she said, sniffling. “He-he was so cold and alone. In so much pain, a-a-and I heard his cries. From the alleyway. I called an ambulance, and I held him. Trying ... trying so hard to just keep him talk-talking.”

She heaved, trying to choke back the vomit rising in her throat as I tried to process everything she had said. She was there when he died. She was the one who called the ambulance. She was the woman the doctor told my parents had ridden in with him.

Hailey Ryan.

The woman I’d come to love.

The woman who had lied to me from the very start.

“You were there,” I said breathlessly.

“I wanted to tell you for so long, Bryan. Please.”

“You were there, and you didn’t tell me,” I said.

“There were so many times. So many openings and I have nothing to blame but my cowardice. All it started out as was a little white lie, and it just grew. I avoided the truth, and I shouldn’t have. Please. Please let me make it up to you. I’ll do anything.”

“You knew... my brother...”

I clutched the paintings as tears spilled over onto my cheeks. Hailey was on her knees clutching her stomach, trying to settle her body that was in an uproar. That was the emotion I kept seeing in her eyes. The guilt that was eating her up because of her deceit. I felt sick to my stomach as memories of us writhing together rose to the forefront of my memory.

“I gave you all of me,” I said. “And you threw it in my face.”

“No, Bryan. I swear to you—”

“Did you think fucking me would ease your guilt? That making John’s brother happy would somehow erase what more you could’ve done to save his life?”

“No. Please,” she said, sobbing.

“Did you know how he died?” I said, roaring.

“The lie just built and built, and I didn’t know how to tell you. I never planned on falling in love with you, Bryan. I never planned on any of this.”

“Did you know how he died?” I asked between my teeth.

“Yes, but it wasn’t of an overdose,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“I knew how he died, but it wasn’t of an overdose. Your brother, he’d been clean for months.”

I watched her slowly rise to her feet, unsteady as she stumbled around for a little bit. I felt my heart stop beating at that very moment as I hung onto the words that were pouring from her lips.

I knew my brother had been clean. I just knew it.

“How did he die?” I asked.