Bad Boys Do (Donovan Brothers Brewery 2)

“What?” he asked, the word barely audible even to his ears.

“It was almost like…like you lost part of yourself.”

He stood up so quickly that his head spun. “Of course I did. We all did.”

“I know that.” He didn’t understand how she could stay so relaxed, talking about something so awful. But she just looked up at him, eyes sad and mouth serious, her chin still perched on her knees.

He walked away, but he heard the scrape of her shoes as she got up to follow. Bending down to avoid her eyes, Jamie worked the offending bush out of its spot with a hand shovel. It came up easily, letting him know the roots had hardly grown at all.

“You were so angry that first year,” Tessa said softly.

He glanced up but pretended the sun was in his eyes so he wouldn’t have to meet her gaze. “I wasn’t.”

“It’s normal, you know. The anger. It’s okay to be mad at them for dying. For being out on that road late at night. It had been raining for so long, and with all the snowmelt, maybe they should’ve known. There’d been landslides…”

Jamie surged up and rushed away as if transferring this damn bush was a life-or-death matter. “I wasn’t mad,” he ground out past his tight jaw.

“You were, Jamie. You were furious. You lashed out at Eric all the time. You skipped school to party with your friends. You even cursed out the principal.”

“He was an ass.”

“Maybe he was. But that wasn’t like you. You might’ve been a little irresponsible before. You might’ve been lax about your schoolwork, but you were never bad. But after they died, for a while there, you didn’t care about anything.”

“You don’t understand,” he said, dropping the bush into the hollow of dirt so he could press a hand to his tight neck.

“I do understand,” Tessa whispered. Her hand touched his shoulder. “I was mad at them, too.”

“No, you don’t get it. I wasn’t mad at them. I was mad at myself.”

Her hand slid down his arm. “Why?”

A confession spun through him like the blades of the barley grinder, chewing up his insides and turning them to meal. He couldn’t do this. He didn’t want to do this. Bile rose in his throat and he swallowed it back. “I wasn’t the son they deserved,” he said simply. And it was the truth, but not even close to all of it.

“Oh, Jamie.” Her hand moved down his arm as if she meant to take his hand, but Jamie pulled away to grab the shovel and start filling in the hole with black soil. “They loved you so much,” Tessa whispered.

“I know.”

“Even when you got into trouble…they’d put so much effort into lecturing you, grounding you, trying to break you down. But afterward, I’d hear them laughing in their room, because it was so hard to keep a straight face when you were being a smart-ass. They loved everything about you, Jamie.”

Jesus, she was trying to make him feel better, but she didn’t realize she was only driving the blade deeper. “I know they did, damn it.”

If he’d been looking, he could’ve avoided her, but since he was glaring at the shovel, Tessa was able to sneak her arms around him and squeeze. He heard her sniffle, and he cursed.

“Come on, Tessa.”

She sniffed again. He couldn’t ignore a crying Tessa, so he dropped the shovel and turned toward her. Her arms held him more tightly as he pressed his hands to her back. “Don’t cry.”

“You’ve felt like this all this time? That’s awful.”

She had no idea. But he deserved to feel like this. He deserved to feel much worse.

“I want you to start talking to us again, Jamie. I want to know you better than all those strangers you spend so much time talking to.”

He rested his chin on her head and didn’t answer. It was easier talking to strangers. He didn’t owe them anything. He hadn’t taken anything from them by being a stupid, selfish kid.

“Please?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “Sure.”