He hung his jacket up and came into the room.

She moved to sit back on the couch, pulling the blanket around herself. To keep him back because she wasn’t ready yet. All the things he’d said had mattered. A lot. But there was more that needed saying.

“In all my life, I’ve never let anyone who wasn’t my sibling get as close as I let you get.” She played with the hem on the blanket, noting that she needed to fix where it was beginning to fray.

Instead of the chair, he sat next to her. Giving her a little space, but not as much as she liked. She could smell him this close. Could look and see the jump of his pulse at his throat. She knew what that felt like against her mouth. Knew the taste of his skin, the warmth he gave off.

She’d missed him much more than she’d been willing to let herself admit. It rolled over her with such force she had to close her eyes for long moments to keep herself together.

“I’ve been working so hard to get you to see. To see me. To understand how much I loved you that I guess it didn’t hit me until now. Your absence, I mean.”

He scooted a little closer, but she put her hands under the blanket.

“I’m sorry. I hate seeing you this way. I want to fix it. I want to touch you. God, I’ve missed you.”

“Not yet.” She looked up at him, feeling a little more together. “You don’t get to touch me. And if you missed me, where have you been?”

“Three days a week I go in to the shop early to get ahead so I can leave at two. I take my dad in to see his therapist. I don’t know what goes on, only that it does. And they’re watching him more closely now than they did before. One of those days I go to see a therapist of my own. I guess…I guess I had stuff to unload.”

“Is it helping?”

“This mix of medication and talk therapy, listen to me, I have all that lingo now, anyway, it seems to be working for him. He hasn’t had an episode in three weeks. My mom, she’s in therapy with him. One day a week on her own, one with him. She’s more steady.”

Beth nodded. “I’m relieved. I can’t imagine how scary it must have been. Must be.” She corrected herself. “But I meant you. Is the therapy helping you?”

He chewed his bottom lip. “I had this anger. A lot of it. Some from the situation with my dad. But a lot from Iraq. I hadn’t really realized it until I started getting it all out. It’s better. I guess that’s really when I started to realize how much difference you made in my life. Once the other shit cleared up, I saw you. In all the places in my life. I kept telling myself you were better off away from the insanity. After all, you had this shit you had to get over, all that stuff from your childhood. Who was I to shovel more on you?”

She snorted. “God, you’re so dumb. How many times can I tell you that I wanted to help? That I wanted to be there in your life to support you through all this stuff?”

“Hey, look, I’m doing the best I can! I did it for you.”

“Bull! You did it, yes, and maybe you think you did it for me. But it wasn’t for me. I stood in front of you and begged you. It’s been a long time since I begged anyone for anything. It wasn’t easy. But I did it because I love you. I saw you were hurting and I wanted to help. There was no difference between that night at the Sands and the night before that.”

“You saw it! You saw the horror of it. It could have really harmed you, Beth. Don’t even say there was no difference. There was all the difference in the world.”

She turned to him, hurting on his behalf.

Quick and clever, he grabbed the hand she’d put on her leg, tangling his fingers with hers. Not letting go. And she let him. Let herself accept that just maybe, they could come out of this on the other side together. Stronger. But she had to deal with all the hard stuff or it would fester.

“The truth is it was there, whether I saw it or not. Your dad has a chemical imbalance. It makes him do things he wouldn’t otherwise. If he had cancer, would you be as ashamed? Because he’s sick either way. He didn’t ask for it. You didn’t ask for it. But it’s there. And it hurts you. And you hid it. My heart breaks to know you suffered through all those months with that knowledge and fear and that you didn’t tell me. Were you afraid I’d judge you?”

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Beth. But thank God for it.” He sighed. “I don’t know what I felt. To be totally honest, I just, I don’t know, survived. I didn’t know what was happening. I had to fight my mom’s reluctance to rock the boat. Her fear of whatever we’d find out. I had to fight my dad’s fear that he was going crazy no matter what. My fear of the unknown. It felt like those hours I had with you were the one right thing in my life. I didn’t want to infect that with all the crap from my parents. I failed them. I wanted to be better. And then you came along. I knew I shouldn’t have given in, that I needed to keep you back. But I couldn’t resist and once I let you in, I couldn’t keep you out. Because it was good and right and you made me really happy.”

“Okay. Fair enough. Where do we go from here?”

“I saw you tonight with Trey and…and part of me said, hey look, she’s moving on, that’s what I told her to do. Another part said, hey that’s my woman! I’m going to lose her for real if I can’t fix things.”

He looked down to where he held her hand. “It was the last one that won out.” He tipped his chin, catching her gaze and feeling that connection between them click back into place. “I love you, Beth. I was a damned fool to push you away. It was dumb to push you away when you have so much to offer. When I needed your support and you offered it so freely. All you’ve ever done for me, you’ve put me first. Before your own feelings. I want you to know I see that. I understand it and I’m so grateful for it. And for you. I don’t deserve you. At all. But I sure do love you more than I can even put into words. If you forgive me, I’ll spend every day for the rest of our lives making it up to you.”