Nothing But This (Broken Pieces 2)

“Olivia wants a divorce,” Greyson said, as unemotionally as he could.

“I just heard, yeah.” Harris’s voice was teeming with sympathy.

Greyson sighed and dropped his face into the palms of his hands.

“Christ. I could murder a drink right now.” The admission made him feel weak and ashamed. But he was never going to lean on that particular crutch ever again.

He lifted his head, wanting to tell Harris that he didn’t mean it, but he tensed when he saw his brother’s face. Harris looked awful.

“You look like hell,” Greyson said, keeping his voice quiet. Not wanting to distress Harris even further . . . but to his alarm, his brother’s eyes filled with moisture.

Shit.

Greyson got up, his own problems set aside for the moment. His entire focus on Harris.

“What’s going on?”

“She had a baby,” Harris said, his voice broken and his words absolutely devastating. Greyson didn’t need to ask who she was.

“Oh my God,” Greyson said, his own voice trembling with shock.

“His name was Fletcher.” Harris’s cheeks were wet with tears by now, and Greyson felt helpless, not sure what to say or do to make this better. “Oh God, Grey. He died. And Tina had to go through all of that alone. While I got off scot-free. How can she ever forgive me for something like that? When I’ll never be able to forgive myself?”

Greyson felt his own eyes fill at that emotional outpouring as he thought of the nephew he’d never known about. Lost to them forever. And Martine, the sweet, emotionally fragile girl who had had to endure so much loss and heartbreak at such a young age. He couldn’t imagine how agonizing this must be. Having come so close to losing Clara through his own stupidity, he could barely even consider the notion of losing her so definitively. Of never having the chance to hold her again. Harris had never had that opportunity with Fletcher . . . and Greyson felt like a selfish prick when he considered how carelessly he had nearly thrown away something his brother would likely move heaven and earth to have. Even for just a moment.

He wrapped his arm around Harris’s shoulders, but when his brother turned in to his embrace, Greyson gave him comfort the only way he could. He held him while he cried.

Dealing with Harris’s loss had temporarily shelved Greyson’s own crisis. He had comforted his brother, talked to him about Fletcher, about Martine, about where to go from here. Harris wasn’t sure of anything except that he had no way of atoning for his part in what had happened so many years ago.

Which was bullshit because as far as Greyson could see, his brother’s only fault lay in caring about a girl and acting on a crush. He hadn’t intentionally set out to deceive her. And yet he felt like everything that had happened was his fault.

Harris was a much better man than Greyson would ever be. Greyson knew that. His brother was riddled with guilt over something that had happened when he was barely out of his teens. Something that he hadn’t been consciously responsible for.

Greyson, in the meantime, had deliberately withheld important information from his future wife and then gone full asshole on her months later when his secrets had come back to bite him in the butt.

He was nowhere near the man his brother was.

Greyson didn’t sleep well. He woke up when he heard Harris leave his room—and then their side of the house—at around one in the morning. The door to Martine’s place opened shortly thereafter, and he heard the couple’s muffled voices quietly speaking for a while before everything went silent. Greyson managed to doze off, but the sound of movement in Harris’s room woke him just before dawn.

He got up and went to check if his brother was okay but found him packing his bag.

“What’s going on?” he asked, and Harris looked up, appearing unsurprised to see him in the doorway.

“I’m leaving.”

“You really want to do that?”

“I don’t want to do it, but I think it’s best for Tina. She’s a wreck, Grey. She has those nightmares. And she couldn’t even stand to be around babies until recently. You should have seen her with Clara last night—it was heartbreaking. I did that to her. I love her, but I ruined her life. How do I reconcile those two things?”

Greyson shook his head. He was the last one who should give advice when his own life and relationship were so completely messed up.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Harris,” he admitted with a heavy sigh. “I wish I did.”

Harris lifted his bag to his shoulder, and they walked out into the cool morning together, stopping at Harris’s rented 4×4.

“Would you do me a favor?” Harris asked.

“Of course. Anything.”

“Will you give this to her? To Tina?” He handed Greyson a silver hoop on a leather chain, and Greyson stared at it for a moment before closing his hand around it.