Reckless Mind (18 page)

Today was Sunday, family dinner night, but from what I assumed one member of the family  would be missing. I didn't want to have the conversation about Brandon that I knew was coming from his family. He should've been the one to tell me his story, the one to open up to me when he was ready. Now they would tell me because they felt sorry for me, and figured if I knew at least some of what kept Brandon running I might not feel so bad.

Right now I wasn't as concerned about the guy who kept running from me, as I was about the guy who had stood by my side unwavering. Cole let Brandon hit him, he stayed my friend even after I told him how I felt about Brandon, took me canoeing in the rain, checked on me when he thought I was sick, and checked back in just like he said he would.

This whole time I'd been chasing someone who kept running. Someone who clearly didn't give two shits about me and who did ruin me a little for the next guy. But I was lucky enough to have the possibility of Cole being that guy, until I had to go and blow it.

Everything I touched or came close to seemed to fall apart. That's how it'd been my whole life, though usually the thing falling apart was me. Now that I'd let other people into my life I wasn't only self destructing, I could, and did, take them down with me.

Chapter 15

Walking into the Lucas' house felt a little bit like coming home. Dan, Jules, and Jax were there. She came out and s
cooped me right into a hug and Jax carried me into the house and put me on the couch saying he didn't think I should be up walking around. Jules had some water and my favorite pop sitting on the table next to the couch, and told me if there was anything I needed all I had to do was ask.

I thanked them all for their kindness and letting me stay there until the doctor released me to go back to all normal activity. Emma grabbed an extra blanket from the closet as her parents told me to rest, and made their way into the kitchen to finish getting dinner ready.

The oversized couch was so comfortable, and I was certain I kept dozing off just not sure for how long. Emma came and sat at the end of the couch, picking my feet up and putting them back down on her lap. “Let's chat.” It wasn't a question of whether I wanted to, just that we were going to. I nodded and waited for her to continue.

“Looks like I've been the one chosen to explain my brother to you in more detail.” She rolled her eyes obviously irritated to be put in this position. I started to object telling her she didn't have to do this, that his choices were his choices, but she cut me off. “Yeah I do Kay, you need to hear it, and since he isn't here to do it, I will.”

I instantly got a little nervous, if she thought it was a big enough deal then I knew it needed to be taken seriously. Pushing myself so I could sit up a little, I rubbed my hands across the blanket.

“Brandon met Jax and Sadie the summer going into all of their freshman year here at University of S.C. Brandon had never been big on relationships, I actually don't think he ever had one, still hasn't. Anyway, so they all met in orientation, just like we did. It was clear to both the guys that Sadie was into Brandon, so Jax said he'd back off and let my brother do his thing, but that when Brandon was done with her he wanted to be able to try and date her.

Brandon said he didn't care what Jax did, and like they both thought, Sadie wanted Brandon. She was young, inexperienced, everything my brother needed to ruin her completely and not care at all while it was happening. Brandon was, and has always been, really careful when it came to having sex, always using condoms, always.”

She took a deep breath, pulling at her bottom lip with her thumb and finger. I started to see how she may have issues dating Jax, but needed to hear where this went.

“So of course Brandon hooked up with Sadie, but she wasn't the only one he slept with or saw during that time. Much like you, Sadie thought she saw something in Brandon that drew her to him. I think it's just the fact that some girls want to find a guy they think they can fix, and y'all are stupid, but that's my opinion.

Anyway, Sadie ended up giving up on Brandon and ran straight to Jax. Brandon could have cared less, school had started, they met Cole and started the band, everything was chill. But Jax cared, he is a naturally caring person, but he liked Sadie. Then for whatever reason, Brandon got pissed about the whole Jax and Sadie thing. No one knew why at the time, but I know now.

Turns out Brandon pulled Sadie back in and was sleeping with her again, but she knew he wouldn't ever want her the way Jax wanted to be with her, so she stayed with Jax. It was over like a two month time frame she had been sleeping with my brother while still with Jax.

Out of the blue she wanted to sit down with both of them, but instead of telling them she was moving on from both of them like they thought she was going to do, Sadie told them she was pregnant.”

Oh holy shit. Brandon had a kid out there? That's why he pushed girls away and never got into a serious relationship?

“Brandon automatically assumed it was Jax's kid because he was sure he used protection every single time. Jax said there was no possible way it was his baby, none. No one knows why he was so adamant about it, Brandon was too, but there was something so matter of fact with Jax that we all knew deep down. It was Brandon's baby. No matter how careful he was, he'd messed up.

He went down a horrible spiral, and fell into depression. For whatever reason, Brandon felt like Sadie trapped him. There was never a time he wasn't safe, and he knew condoms weren't a hundred percent, but he was sure she'd done something. He flipped out on Sadie, told her he wanted a test done as soon as the baby was born and until then he wanted nothing to do with her.

She called him two weeks later but he never picked up the phone. Later that night he got a call from her parents telling him that she'd passed away in a horrible car accident. The cops said it was a freak accident...she wasn't drunk, the other driver wasn't drunk. Sadie was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Emma took a long drink of her pop. She looked me over seeing if she could figure out how I was taking all of this. I stared back at her thinking the story over and over. It was a sad story obviously, any time someone loses their life before they even got a chance to live, that's sad. But Brandon didn't love her, and while I'm sure her death affected him like it would anyone, I can't imagine it turned him into what he was now.

“I don't get it, Em. What am I missing?”

“What you are missing is the two voicemails that passed between Brandon and Sadie. One voicemail Brandon left on Sadie's phone the night they hooked back up for the first time when she was still with Jax, a voicemail she never told anyone about. After she passed her parents gave Jax her phone since the majority of the pictures on there were of Sadie and him, and that's when Jax heard the voicemail. He played it for Brandon, but my brother said, and sounded, so wasted he didn't remember leaving it. And then there's the voicemail Sadie left Brandon the day she died.

Brandon's voicemail told Sadie how dare she approach him saying Jax was a better man, better lover, better all around person, that he knew she wanted him to fuck her more than anyone else and he'd make her come twice as much as Jax could ever wish to. Then Brandon told her he'd ruined her for any other man, that she'd always want him and she'd never be able to have him.”

Emma got choked up now, which only told me the worst was coming.

“The voicemail she left him told him he was right, that she stopped taking her birth control she was on and she messed with the condoms he was using with her. Sadie told him she did it because he was right, he did ruin her. She thought he was in love with her, but there was no such thing as love. She still wanted a piece of him to keep with her forever because even knowing he'd never love her she was still so in love with him, so she got pregnant.

But the last thing she said was she hated him so much for what he'd turned her into and he could go to his grave knowing his fucked up mind games, his reckless carelessness for her and what it drove her to do was on him. That her death was on him.”

Emma had a few tears slip down her cheek, but she quickly wiped them away. She shook her head still not understanding why any of the three of them did what they did.

“She did kill herself, Kay. And she made sure to call my brother while she was in the car, she said everything she said to him, and then killed herself and his baby, and she made him listen to it all. She never hung up the phone, she left it recording. Not only does Brandon know the things he did caused her to kill herself, but she also took his child with her, and he'll never be able to forget what he heard on that message. And he never let anyone else listen to it either.

It's crazy she took it as far as she took it. He doesn't understand, and hasn't for the last two years, that while, yes, he did make mistakes throughout the whole relationship or whatever you want to call what they had, she made her own choices too. He didn't make her get herself pregnant by a guy who made it painfully clear he didn't want or love her.”

Emma paused for a second, but I finished for her, “And he sure as hell didn't force her to take her own life and fucking leave a voicemail of every lasting second of her doing it.” Yes, Brandon was wrong on so many levels for how he treated Sadie, but if that test would have come back positive that the baby was his, he would have taken care of his child, that much about him I knew for sure. He would never have been with Sadie, and that apparently was the part she couldn't get over. She did what she did to punish him, and ruin him for any other girl that might come along and dare care about him, just because he'd ruined her.

I was right about the connection I felt between Brandon and I when we first met. He went through something tragic, something no person should have to go through...just like I did. If not our hearts, then definitely our souls were connected. You can have a deep connection with a person like that without it ever turning into falling in love, or anything physical and sexual.

But it had crossed over into that with Brandon. Now I just had to figure out if, in my life right now, there was a place to love Brandon and have the opportunity to fall in love. He was still running, trying with everything he had to forget the past by never standing still long enough to enjoy the present. Would I ever be enough for him to stop running?

I needed a constant in my life, someone who would be there for me every step of the way. That person might be who I'd successfully pushed away in the hospital. Maybe it was for the best that Cole took a step back. I needed time to work through the feelings I thought I had for Brandon. Time to think about and develop myself on my own. But I also needed time to think about Cole and what the feelings I had for him meant. 

“You just figured it out, didn't you,” Emma asked sadly. “You finally realized that just because you feel connected to someone, like the way you felt with my brother, doesn't mean you are destined to love and be with each other.” Quietly I nodded, my eyes filling with unshed tears. “It’s okay, Kay. He isn't ready anyway, and I honestly don't think you are either. Even if he got the help he needed and was able to move past everything that happened, he'd always blame himself for the things he's already done to you. I'm not trying to hurt you when I say this, but I think you would be a reminder to him of everything he'd done wrong in the past, and had continued to do when he met you.”

I cried now, like really ugly cried, because I knew she was right. “But I can be his friend, Em. I'll always be here f
or him as a friend, anything he ever needs, I'd never walk away from him if he needed me.”

“Shhh, I know,” Emma wrapped her arms around me, we both sat there crying for a while. “He disappeared like this for a little while after everything happened. My parents think he's trying again.” I didn't understand, and based off the look she saw on my face that was apparent. “They think he checked himself into an inpatient facility to work through the depression that has him walking a line so thin between keeping it together and losing it completely every day.”

“What would make him do that now though?” I thought out loud. Emma gave me a sad smile, squeezing my hand in hers.

“You, Kay. He's doing it for you.”

“But you just said I would always be a reminder, that he could work through everything, but with what he's gone through he needs to find someone who isn't tied to memories of how he, in his words,
ruins
girls.”

“My parents and I sat and talked about this earlier. We all know the feelings you thought you had for him. We know, and trust me one hundred percent when I say this, and are so thankful because of the feelings he thinks he has for you going into the facility he might actually get better and figure out how to save himself.

But as he goes through the counseling and grief stages he will come to realize what he saw in you was a girl he thought he could save. A girl who he could love and that love would save you from yourself.”

“Because he couldn't save Sadie,” my voice a whisper I finally understood. “But what is going to happen if when he comes back, he's coming back in a different state of mind? One where he thinks we can be together?” I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands now.

“And that might happen.”

“So what you are saying is everything you've told me is your opinion, and it really comes down to what I think is best for me, and if he means enough to me to wait it out and find out.” Emma smiled but shook her head. She told me she knew he meant a lot to me, but that her opinion was it would not work with Brandon and I, and I believed her with all my heart. But she also said I needed to pull back from Brandon and Cole for a while. I needed to move through my own issues before I could be with either of them.