Page 161 of Discretion at Its Finest

“Getting some air?” Brielle said gently, stepping beside me as she hid her hands in the sleeves of her sweater dress, the cold front already nipping at her nose.

“While I can, yeah…” I muttered, and she gave me a soft smile. Her hands tugged at one another, her lip catching her teeth in a nervous lip bite. Her obvious tells over the years never changed.

“Sorry about last night,” she whispered.

I gave a shrug. “You’re not the only one who is.”

She went silent, staring off in the same direction as I was. I placed my elbows over the rails, sighing a breath of fog into the cold.

“I don’t…” I began uneasily. She waited patiently as I shook my head. “I don’t know if I’m ready for her… for him… forthis.”

“You don’t have to be,” she said gently.

I shook my head. “I already fucked up our relationship… I don’t need another one I can’t hold together.”

Her hand found my back. “You know that's not true.”

I let out a labored sigh. “You don’t get it,” I said finally, pulling away from her touch. “This—” I gestured toward the lights, thewarmth inside, the easy way everyone seemed to fold back into each other’s lives “—all of this comes easy to you.”

“Eugene.”

I shook my head. “Love, acceptance, family. For years I didn’t know what to do with the abandonment, ran away so I could survive it. And I ended up leaving the only person I had. You were all that mattered to me and I just… I fucked everything up.”

“You didn’t—”

“I did,” I snapped, then lowered my voice immediately. “I left you. You were all I had and I still left you. I don’t know how to come back from that. I don’t know how to be here without feeling like I’m an intruder in a life that went on just fine without me. I don’t know how to accept the woman who did the same to me, to us.”

She watched me carefully, not interrupting, letting me unravel at my own pace before she stepped in front of me fully, forcing me to look at her. Then she cupped my face with both hands, warm palms against my cold skin, grounding me in a way only she could.

“Eugene,” she said softly, firmly, “you still have me.”

I wanted that to be true. I wanted to accept that I wasn’t alone, that I had a family. That I had a wife, had a daughter, had a sister, had a mother in my life.

But I couldn’t.

I closed my eyes, jaw clenching, breath shaking. “I’m so fucked up, Brielle.” She didn’t flinch at my words. She just held my face steady, thumbs brushing lightly at the tension in my jaw. “God, I still don’t know how you put up with me after so many years.”

A smile graced her lips. “Because you’re my brother,” she murmured. “And because you’ve spent your whole life thinking you’re harder to love than you are.”

I sighed. “You don’t know what goes on in here,” I muttered, tapping my temple. “You don’t know how loud it gets. How broken I am.”

“I do know,” she whispered.

“I don’t know how to be here,” I said again, but my voice wasn’t harsh this time. It was thin. Weak but honest. “Everything in me is wired to leave, shut the world out before I get left again.”

Brielle leaned forward until her forehead met mine. “Then stay until it doesn’t feel like leaving is the only choice,” she whispered. “Stay until you believe you deserve to be with us.”

“I don’t know if I can,” I choked out.

She shook her head. “You can,” she insisted quietly. “Because you’ve already done the hardest part.”

“What’s that?”

“You came back… for me.”

I didn't answer her.

But I didn't pull away either. Because I did come back for her. For so long, I’d run from the abandonment, shut the world out, disappeared into the noise in my head. But I still came back for her. After the army, even now in something small allowing her to drag me to a family dinner or force me to come to her holiday parties. And I loved her more each time she did.