The Imperfections

My heavy eyes drift shut and I’m filled with peace, listening to Brant’s strong heart beat steadily in his chest. It works like a lullaby, and before I know it, I’m out.

9

Brant

I don’t relish sitting in Alyssa’s driveway, watching her fidget with her bag, looking kinda sad as she prepares to get out of my truck.

“You got everything?” I ask, just to get some kind of response out of her.

She nods her head but doesn’t look over at me. Pulling the charger I gave back to her out of the top of her overflowing bag, she says, “I think this was the last of it.”

I nod inanely, but she doesn’t move. On impulse, I reach over and grab her phone.

That gets her attention, and she looks over at me with a frown marring her pretty face. “What are you doing?”

“Putting my number in here, just in case you need it for anything.” Once I finish typing in my information, I look over at her. “The cabin offer still stands, too. If you decide you’d like to try living on your own, just give me a call and I’ll start fixing it up for you.”

“Thank you,” she says quietly, like my words disappoint her but she doesn’t want to come off as ungrateful. “It was very kind of you to offer.”

I feel an opening here, feel her wanting me to take advantage of it and say something more, but I can’t.

All evening when she was quiet, I kept going over it in my head, trying to think of how it could work with me and her, but there’s no way.

It worked so effortlessly over the weekend because we were isolated in our own little bubble and no one else had anything to do with it. It didn’t matter that she was too young for me or that she made mistakes before we met; it didn’t matter that I’m not a good person, or I haven’t been in an actual relationship with a woman in as many years as Alyssa has been alive. None of it mattered because it was just a weekend away and we could do as we pleased.

Our relationship looks a lot different in the light of day, where other people would see it and want explanations. Bri already knows Alyssa, so how would I explain bringing her around all of a sudden? On top of that, Alyssa can’t babysit for Bri anymore. As long as Alyssa just disappears from her life, Bri can believe it’s because Alyssa is busy with college and just taking on fewer babysitting jobs, but if Alyssa’s mine, that’s not gonna make any sense. Why would Alyssa be unwilling to watch my nephews if there wasn’t some bigger reason she’s avoiding babysitting for Bri, specifically? And why would she do that without a damn good reason?

Plus, then Bri would eventually find out that Alyssa’s pregnant. The way it is now, if Alyssa just stops coming around, Bri never has to know that. No suspicions should rise up in her mind.

If Alyssa turned up pregnant with no boyfriend, and especially if she turned up pregnant with no boyfriend and then somehow on my radar, Bri would start wondering about it. Since her suspicions would be correct, I don’t imagine it would take too long before she started piecing the unpleasant truth together, and there’s no way in hell I could explain that I’m knowingly dating a girl who played mistress to Bri’s husband for a little while. Even if she forgave Theo since deep down she probably already knows he’s trash, Bri would never get over my betrayal. She expects a lot more from me, and I couldn’t hurt her that way just because I have the shit luck of wanting the one person I can’t have.

Since there is no way it works, I’m not going to draw Alyssa any deeper into it. Just because I can’t be with her doesn’t mean I don’t like her and genuinely want what’s best for her. If things were different, I would like to keep her around, but the situation is what it is and there’s no changing it.

Well, not unless she did let go of her pregnancy; then there’d be nothing tying her to Theo permanently and maybe their past could be covered up. But, she made her stance on that clear, and I’m not as big an asshole as Theo. I’d never try to push her into doing something she might regret later just because it would make my life easier. I’d never ask a woman to choose me over her kid, and I’d never want her to make that choice, either.

It’s just not in the stars for us. I can tell she’s disappointed, but as long as she doesn’t know I am, too, she’ll get over it.