“I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?” Vincent asked, his tone sharper than James’s, but the same need and pain was in his eyes as in James’s.
“It hurts so much. Patterson…Patterson called me fluff. You know that. It hurts to hear you say it.”
“It’s just a word, fluff,” Vincent said, his tone slightly softer but no less powerful. “Look at me.”
She couldn’t. The pain was dangerously close to the surface and ripping the scab open tonight was too great a risk. Her heart couldn’t handle that again. It was bad enough that she had nightmares every night. If she went there with them it would take her days to pull herself back together and she didn’t have time for that. The store needed her and she had that trip to take for her father.
Vincent finally tipped her chin so she had no choice in the matter unless she wanted to be childish and shut her eyes. She couldn’t keep him out like that but it still hurt when she looked into his beautiful green eyes.
“You can hardly look at me, can you?” The pain in his voice deepened the ache in her chest. “Why the walls, fluff?”
He kept picking at her like that and she knew it was on purpose but couldn’t completely blame him. He had a right to know why she’d been avoiding them. Could she get it all out without breaking down? Her strength and resolve wobbled and she reached up to grasp James’s forearm for support.
Breathing rapidly, praying she could keep it together yet knowing it was an impossible task, she finally said, “He’s everywhere I look. I have nightmares about him dying every night. I can’t sleep. The only place I seem to function properly is at the store.”
“That explains the longer hours,” James murmured. She hadn’t realized they’d even noticed.
“You call me fluff and it’s like a knife in my heart. Your eyes, your features, your builds, your taste in music, even your voices are so much like his, it’s…killing me.”
“Why, honey?” James asked, his eyes now bloodshot.
“Be—because it’s my fault he’s gone!”
The wall shoring up her emotions fissured and crumbled before finally breaking under the pressure.
* * * *
Vincent crowded Leah close between him and James as she fell apart. He could see the regret in his brother’s eyes but they’d both agreed that pushing her a little might yield better results than letting things go on as they had been. They’d allowed her to avoid them, to give her time to heal. It was obvious she wasn’t healing. He was ready to move forward and she needed to for her own health.
James gathered her lustrous brown hair away from her face and kissed her flushed, damp cheek. “Honey, you were not at fault. It was an accident.”
Her forehead fell to Vincent’s chest and his heart broke for her as each wrenching sob made her body shake between them. Such a caring woman shouldn’t feel so much pain, hold it all in like that.
He’d suspected for a while that she still believed she was at fault for Patterson’s accident. They’d talked about it the day of the funeral, but neither of them had been sure she was really processing what they were saying. The guilt he felt now had more to do with letting this go on as long as it had.
“It is my fault. If I hadn’t agreed to let him get me supper, he wouldn’t have been on that side of town.”
Vincent cupped her jaw in his hands and tilted her face so she looked into his eyes. “Doll, listen. The driver of that truck chose to text while driving. That’s an open-and-shut case. He’s the one facing involuntary manslaughter charges. He’s the one who should be losing sleep at night, not you. Never you.”
James nodded. “Come sit in the living room, Leah. We need to talk this out and there’s no sense in doing it standing in the kitchen.”
“It’s getting late,” Leah said, swiping her cheeks as they directed her to the couch. Vincent could see her desperately trying to put the wall back up but more tears kept sliding down her cheeks.
Making a decision his brother might not fully agree with, Vincent said, “Fluff, it’s not even nine yet. Don’t tuck tail and run now—” James cast him a frown.
She turned to him with devastation in her eyes and shoved ineffectually at his chest. “I said don’t call me that!”
“I think you need to hear it. Patterson would be so pissed off if he could see what’s happening to you. He’d want to kick our asses for letting it continue this long. This guilt you carry around is eating you. You didn’t cost him his life.”
“What’s at the heart of this? Really?” James asked, squeezing her shoulder.