I had every goddamn right in the world, but I can’t tell her that. My hands are tied and I can’t defend myself. All I can do is stand here and let her fling her hurt at me, and honestly, I have too many other things to do today.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
She stares at me across the room, her bottom lip quivering every now and then. I feel fucking terrible, but I don’t know how to fix her hurt right now. I doubt there’s any way to. Only time can make this ache a little less.
Her voice wobbles as she tells me, “I should turn you in.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I mean it,” she says, sniffling and wiping at her nose angrily. “I don’t have to let you get away with this.”
“Yeah, defending the women I love—what a fucking asshole,” I mutter, shaking my head at her. “I’m fucking exhausted, Bri. I don’t have time for this.”
Bri watches me for a minute, not saying a word, then she breaks her silence and asks calmly, “What is it you think I don’t know?”
“Not much point in telling you now, is there?” I ask tiredly. “Can you please just trust me on this? I didn’t go after Theo because of anything you said to me last night. I didn’t go after him at all. I’m sorry, but I can’t really explain any better than that.”
Bri sniffs again, then she nods her head. “Because you think I don’t know about him and Alyssa?”
My eyes widen to about the size of silver dollars and I look at my sister, unable to hide even a little bit of my shock. “What?”
Shooting me another look of mild disgust and annoyance, she tells me, “I’m not a fucking idiot, Brant.”
I am absolutely speechless.
“The funny thing is, I didn’t know know until I saw her with you. Before that I had suspicions about them, but not outright…” She trails off, shaking her head. “But then you were involved, and why would you be involved? You don’t even socialize, so how the hell would you ever meet Alyssa? No, the only way Alyssa crossed your path was if she was part of some… some rescue mission to keep the life I’m so attached to from going down the drain. And at first, I thought that was all it was—you were just managing a crisis for me—but then she made you happy, for real, and I just…I just wanted you to be happy.”
I still can’t summon a single goddamn word.
“Why couldn’t you just want the same thing for me?” she demands tearfully. “Yes, my husband fucked around on me—why isn’t it up to me how to respond to that? Why is it that a man decides to cheat on a woman, and if she doesn’t immediately choose to ditch him, she gets judged far more harshly for not leaving than he does for the actual cheating? It’s such fucking bullshit,” she says, angry at someone who isn’t me, I think. She turns around and paces across the room. “I had a life, Brant, a whole life, and no, Theo wasn’t perfect, but don’t you get it now? No one is! No one, Brant. You love Alyssa, right? She’s not perfect!”
This is probably not the right place to start exercising my ability to speak again, but I do, anyway. “No, she’s not perfect, but she loves me and she’s loyal to me. Can you really say you believe Theo loves you? Loved you,” I amend awkwardly. “It’s not about perfection, Bri. It’s not about never making mistakes. It’s about being with someone who’d never hurt you on purpose. That’s all I want for you. That’s all anyone can really ask for.”
“But it wasn’t your call,” she grates out lowly, still so mad at me she could spit.
I swallow, hating what I have to say but knowing I have to say it. “He came to my house last night, Bri. He attacked Alyssa while she was sleeping in our bed.”
All the fury and the hellfire melts instantaneously, replaced by a numb sort of shock. “What?” she whispers. “No, he couldn’t— When?”
“When I was over here with you. Alyssa called me on my way home, hysterical, out of her fucking mind with terror. She was locked inside our bathroom hiding from him. She was a fucking mess when I got there. I never wanted you to have to know any of this, but especially not this part. I didn’t lay a hand on him because he broke your heart, Bri. I had to do it because he hurt my wife.”
Shaking her head in disbelief, she says, “He couldn’t have. Brant, he couldn’t have done that.”
“He did. It wasn’t the first time, either. When Alyssa first broke things off with him he got aggressive with her, then again shortly before our wedding. She didn’t tell me about that time because he threatened her, said he’d tell you about the affair if she told me what he did to her, but it all came spilling out of her last night. Your husband was not the man you thought he was,” I tell her gently.