“You make it look easy,” I point out. “You and Alyssa… you’re about as tight as I’ve ever seen two people.”
Brody’s eyes go soft as he looks at her. “We share a bond that’s hard to explain.”
Holding up my glass of Scotch, I give it a little shake. “I’ve got a glass of liquor to sip at, so I got the time.”
With appraising eyes, Brody stares at me. I can see the moment he feels like I’m worthy to hear his story, and it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with anything he knows about me. He’s trusting Savannah’s instinct about me.
Leaning back against the wall, Brody fiddles with the plastic cap on his water bottle. “Did Savannah tell you I was in prison?”
“Yeah… just that it was a drunk driving accident, someone died, and you went away for five years.”
“That’s part of the story. The other part… the part that only a select few know, and that select few includes Savannah… was that I wasn’t the one driving the car. I foolishly took the fall for my girlfriend because she begged me to… and I paid the price by losing everything that was important to me. I lost my freedom, my medical career, and my family for a time. She took everything from me.”
My jaw drops as I realize, at this very moment, Brody and I share something in common. We’ve both had loves who had taken something away from us. Granted, it was two very different ways in which we were hurt, but still hurt by women in a profound way all the same.
“I was pretty broken when I came out of prison,” Brody says as he continues his story. “Had given up on life… on people… on my family. I was existing in a world I didn’t know.”
His words are like a sucker punch to my throat, because I know exactly what he means. I know exactly how that feels. I open my mouth to talk, but my throat catches because of the rawness sitting there. I clear it and say, “How did you survive it?”
Brody turns from me and nods his head toward Alyssa. “I survived it for her. Because of her. All her.”
As I sip at my Scotch, Brody tells me how he had kept it a secret from everyone that he had not been the one driving. He told me that Alyssa came into the secret by mistake, by overhearing a conversation between Brody and his ex-girlfriend. How she kept his secret, and all the while shared his hurt and pain. How every time he was with her, talked to her, touched her… it became more and more bearable, until finally… he just couldn’t remember the darkness anymore.
He didn’t say it in quite those flowery words, and hey… I’m a writer so I tend to expound, but that was the gist of what he was telling me. By the time his story is over, I’m staring hard at Savannah because she’s offering me the very same path to salvation that Alyssa offered Brody.
This is not news to me. I figured that much out all on my own last night. But the moral of the story is the same… that not all women are created equal. That as humans, we can have untold suffering and still persevere and, above all else, there can be a full life after heartbreaking misery.
I suspected as much, but at least Brody is living proof that it is so.
Savannah and I end up staying at Last Call for the rest of the night rather than leaving to get our fill of each other. At this point, after listening to Brody, I’m pretty sure I’m not going anywhere after this manuscript is finished. I’ll have days and nights and more days and nights with Savannah, so the next few hours aren’t going to break me if I have to just watch her having fun with her friends from afar.
When we leave, Savannah is blitzed, and I’m thankful I limited myself to just three drinks the entire night, the last one having been drunk almost an hour and a half before we left. I’m completely fine to drive.
Where I run into trouble is when Savannah—who is a little too inebriated—decides to knock off an item from my sex wish list. She tries her damnedest to get me to pull the car over on the side of the road, so she can fuck me in my car.
I groan at the thought and groan more when Savannah leans over in the seat and palms my raging hard-on. She even leans over and kisses me through my jeans.
“Get back over in your seat, Savannah,” I tell her gently. “I don’t want you slipping out of your seatbelt like that.”
“Then pull the damn car over, Filthy, and prove to me why you earned that nickname.”
Chuckling, I grab her hand and bring it to my mouth, giving her a soft kiss on the tips of her fingers. “Oh, Sweet… you are absolutely perfect for me.”
She giggles as she turns to look at me. I give her a brief glance. Even though her blood is swimming with alcohol, her gaze is serious and intent. “I’m so fucking perfect for you, Filthy. We were made for each other.”