Page 79 of Unbound
“So… are you gonna tell me what that was all about?” I can’t see his face but I can certainly hear the smile.
“I could ask you the same thing?”
Red stops at the bottom of the stairs. I’m one step up from him. “I mean with Sophie.”
“Oh, I know what you mean.” I step down, shouldering past him to head outside where the delivery truck just showed up with the tents. “And no, I’m not gonna tell you what it was about because I have no idea what it means.”
His lips pull up into a smile. “You little shit, you slept with her, didn’t you?”
I can’t hide my smile. Funny thing about it, I don’t want to anymore. It’s like I’ve been hiding for years. I shove him toward the back door. “Don’t you have a wedding to get ready for?”
He shrugs and we walk outside, the rain’s still coming down, the backyard beginning to flood as the guy’s scramble around.
“Jesus, what a mess,” Red mumbles, and I’m not sure he’s talking about the rain or the wedding itself. I can see in his eyes he’s worried about Lenny.
“What you said to Lenny….” My voice trails off, my hands finding residence in the pockets of my jeans. We wade through the mud to the stage. Luckily we’re about to get a tent big enough to cover the whole thing.
Beck and Lincoln are setting up the equipment so we can rehearse, but I’m more focused on my brother and what he was saying to Lenny moments ago. Music comes easily to me, this, being Red’s brother and then everything going on with Sophie, that’s where my mind is essentially lost. “Is it true?”
“What?” He eyes me curiously, as if my words are foreign to him.
“What you said to her about loving her differently.” I’m afraid to look up at him for a split second and then I realize, I don’t need to be. “Is that true?”
He thinks about it, his own stare on me and I can see him remembering what he said to his soon-to-be wife. “It has to be. I can’t love anyone like I love Nevaeh.” I don’t miss the tense he uses. Present tense. His love for the mother of his daughter will never change and it shouldn’t for her sake. She deserves to have him love her still, always. “I thought I did in the beginning but I knew it was different. Like I told Lenny, some things are still the same, the attraction, the want, you know, the physical sides of being in love with someone, but the love, you can love more than one person and in completely different ways. I love Nevaeh for what she gave me, our daughter, and what she showed me, how to love innocently and purely. With Lenny—” Red stops, his eyes closing. His chest expands in a deep breath and he shakes his head, his voice softening. “She’s like a gift, one you didn’t know you needed, but appreciate for what it is. It’s like taking the bus every day to work and then someone giving you a car for free without you even asking.”
I don’t say anything to him, his words rattling around in my head as I attempt to make sense of them.
He notices and dips his head to catch my eyesight. “Just because the two of you didn’t work out before, doesn’t mean you can’t now. You both lost something, just like I did.”
How can he even compare the two?
“No, you lost your wife, that’s completely different.”
“No, not really. You hadpure love, the innocent kind I had with Nevaeh, and then it was taken from you. Maybe you didn’t mourn the loss in the same ways, but in order to love her now, in the ways you need to, you have to love what you have now. It won’t ever be the same. Neither one of you are those people you were before Mexico, and you shouldn’t be. You have to learn to love her for what she is now, the mother of your son.”
I think about his words until Nova comes up to us, still in her pajamas and what looks to be chocolate on her face.
She tugs on the sleeve of Red’s sweatshirt. “Daddy?”
He kneels down to her level, attempting to tame her curls by tucking them behind her ears. “Yes, darlin’?”
She shakes off his hands. “I thought we were having a zombie wedding?”
“Who said that?”
“Auntie?”
“Well, Auntie’s crazy so ignore her,” I tell Nova, smiling.
Raven choses then to come outside, holding Lyric in her arms. When he sees me, he practically lunges into my arms with a wide grin. I take him in my arms, holding him close. I don’t know how he did it, but in just a week’s time, this little boy has completely wrapped himself around my heart and life to the point where the next three weeks are going to be tough leaving him.
“I’m not crazy!” Raven glares at me.
“Twenty-three years of experiences with you says otherwise.”
Raven’s eyes narrow in on me. “If you weren’t holding my nephew in your arms, I’d lay your ass out.”
I don’t look at her; instead, I smile at Lyric as he touches my face. “I’d like to see you try.”
