“The family won’t have you taking this over, trying to run this show. You’re not her husband anymore. You’ve got no claim on her and if you want to help, you’ll do it our way.”
A spike of adrenaline had Connor on the verge of saying something he would almost certainly regret. But he wasn’t the same hotheaded, self-centered kid he’d been when he’d ruined his marriage to Aly. This wasn’t about him. It wasn’t about Dante. It wasn’t about their lifelong friendship that had been tested more than once and ended up turning into something hard and dark and ready to explode.
This was about Aly. Connor would remember that. “Fine. I’ll ride with you.” He took his cell from his pocket. “Let me just call Daniel.” The oldest of Connor’s siblings, Daniel ran the family company, Valentine Logging. Connor was CFO.
Dante eyed him with furious suspicion. “We don’t need the family business on the street. What’s your brother got to do with this?”
“For God’s sake, chill. I need to let Daniel know I won’t be in today.”
Dr. Serena Warbury had her office in Valentine Bay’s downtown historic district. She’d taken a room on the second floor of a rambling two-story Craftsman-style house repurposed for professional use. Connor and Dante sat in the downstairs waiting room until Dr. Warbury was ready for them.
Dante didn’t even try to make conversation. He sat with his elbows on the chair arms, fingers laced together between them, and never once even glanced in Connor’s direction.
Connor thumbed through a dog-eared Sports Illustrated. When that got old, he stared out the window and tried not to worry too much about Aly. Eventually, the therapist came down the stairs and led them up to the second floor.
Right off, Connor liked Dr. Warbury. She was smart and direct. It took her no time at all to figure out that Dante’s hostility toward his ex-brother-in-law wouldn’t help the situation. She sent Dante back downstairs to wait. He wasn’t happy about it, but he went.
Connor refused a cup of herbal tea. He took a chair by a window with a partial view of the Pacific a few blocks away. The therapist repeated what Dante had already told him about Aly’s condition and how it would most likely fade over time on its own.
She went on to explain, “Right now, we want her to take it easy. That’s unlikely to happen until we can reduce the anguish and confusion she’s suffering, with her brain telling her one thing and everyone else insisting otherwise. She needs a lot of rest and as little excitement and stress as possible.”
“I get all that. But what can I do?”
“To help her, you will have to be patient and kind—and honest, too. The whole point is to reassure Alyssa that everything will work out, while at the same time never giving her any less than the truth. You can’t ‘humor’ her or go along when she insists something’s true that isn’t. You have to be frank. You are divorced and have been for several years. If she tries to insist otherwise, you must quietly and firmly tell her that’s not true.”
“No lies. I can do that.”
“And you mustn’t indulge your own emotions, either. You have to be calm and steady. Let her lead the conversation. And no matter what she says, you must not become defensive or angry. This is not about you, not an opportunity for you to justify your past actions, whatever they might have been. I’m not privy to the details of your divorce, but I understand from what members of her family have said that it was not amicable.”
“They’re right. I was a dick, okay?”
“Well.” Dr. Warbury seemed to be hiding a smile. “Don’t be overly hard on yourself, either.”
“I get it. I honestly do.”
“If you’re going to become upset, you will upset Alyssa.”
“I won’t upset her,” he vowed, and wondered at himself to promise such a thing. Anything could happen. She might take one look at him and realize he really just pissed her the hell off, no matter how bland and even-tempered he managed to be.
Dr. Warbury smoothed her yellow skirt. “I believe it could be helpful to her, to see you and reassure herself that you are all right, to hear it from you that you two are divorced. But if you don’t think you can keep control of your emotions, please say so now and I will recommend to you and to her family that you stay away.”
By then, he was seriously considering backing out. If seeing him ended up only making it worse for her, he would never forgive himself.
But at the same time, he really wanted to help—and he needed to see her, to find out for himself just how bad off she was, to do whatever he could to make things more bearable for her. She’d always been so strong and focused, so totally in charge of herself and her life. It must be killing her to have her own mind betraying her, to have everyone telling her that reality was not as she believed it to be.
He had no illusions. There was no possibility of a future for them, together, anymore. They’d had something real and true and beautiful. All that was gone now, broken beyond repair, mostly by him. He didn’t want to fix it. He didn’t believe it could be fixed.
He just wanted Aly to be whole and happy. He wanted her to be ready, the way she’d always been, to take on the world. He wanted to be able to picture her living the East Coast life she’d created for herself, making it big in New York, New York.
“I’ll follow your instructions,” he said. “Please tell her brother it’s all right that I see her.”
The ride to Cat and Ernesto’s house was as silent as the one to Dr. Warbury’s office had been.
Dante seethed. Connor had the feeling that anything he said might set him off. He and Dante were the same age, both of them two years older than Alyssa.
It was sad, really. What they’d come to. All through elementary school, middle school and high school, it was Connor and Dante, joined at the hip, the best of friends. Alyssa had been off-limits to Connor then. A guy didn’t put moves on his best friend’s little sister—no matter how much he wanted to.
Aly hadn’t helped. She’d done everything in her power to get him to give in and make a move on her.
She’d started crushing on him when she was thirteen. By then, she already had serious curves to go with her beautiful face, her thick, dark hair, cobalt-blue eyes and milk-white skin. She started wearing shorts and tight T-shirts every chance she got, just to drive him crazy.
But he’d pretended he didn’t notice. His mom and dad had died that year, the year Aly was thirteen. They’d drowned in a tsunami during a vacation in Thailand, of all the awful ways to go. He was all broken up about it, like everyone else in the Bravo family. Whenever Aly tried to get close to him, he would think of his lost parents and nurture the ache inside himself, the feeling of bitter loneliness to be without his mom and dad. He’d always felt a little guilty that he used his parents’ death to protect himself, to keep from getting too close to Dante’s gorgeous little sister.
After
