How can I stop?

But this love is what’s making me collapse inside.

Second by empty second.

Brick by heavy brick.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Bram

Six Weeks Later

“You know, I don’t think I ever told you how sorry I am.”

I hear Taylor’s voice from across the table but I’m not really listening. There’s a song playing in this San Bernardino strip-mall café, the volume too low and it’s bugging me that I can recognize the beat but I can’t hear the lyrics.

“Bram,” she says softly and finally I look at her.

“Hmmm?”

“I’m sorry about the way things happened with Nicola,” she says and that name feels like a fist in my heart. “I shouldn’t have shown up at your door like that. I didn’t think that…”

“You didn’t think that I’d have anyone meaningful in my life,” I finish absently. I twirl the watch around my wrist and give a melancholy shrug. “I don’t blame you. And please, there’s no need for you to be sorry. I’m sure I had it coming. Karma has a sharp eye, you know.”

She nods. “I know. But it’s been so many years and…I really didn’t have the right to show up like I did.”

I sigh. She says this but I know she thinks its justified and she’s probably right. When someone has been wronged– when someone else has fucked up so much that their debt will never end – there’s really nothing they can do that’s ever uncalled for, ever too much.

I don’t blame Taylor whatsoever. She was watching the news and suddenly there I was, the baby daddy she tried so hard to forget. She doesn’t tell me this, but I bet she wanted to throw rocks at her TV, perhaps burn it. She at least screamed and cursed it, I know that.

Then motherly instinct took over and she piled Matthew into the car and drove up to San Francisco to see the man she tried to pretend never existed.

I know she only came for the money, though she tells me that wasn’t the case. She said it was about seeing me through new eyes. I was successful and ambitious and, more than that, I was virtuous now. I was the opposite of the man she hated. I had proven that I could get my life on track and actually make a difference in other people’s lives, not just my own.

And maybe that’s true. But at the moment, I’m not making that much difference. I still have the same tenants in my building, the same ones who can’t afford to live anywhere else, the ones that need me. I’ve got all but two…the most important ones.

Nicola moved out the next day, true to her word. I tried to stop her. I tried everything. She wouldn’t have any of it. I’d never seen her so headstrong, so vicious, and I know I deserved it but it hurt more than anything else. She was protecting Ava more than she was protecting herself and when I caught a glimpse of that little girl crying in the halls, well…I lost it that day.

I lost plenty that day.

And the loss is still with me. It’s building, not easing. Every morning, I wake up to an empty bed and it’s like another fucking black brick is cemented into my chest. Nicola has absolutely no idea what she meant to me – what she still means to me – and what hurts the most is that she’ll never see my pain.

I need her to see it, to feel it, to know it.

I’ve lost the magic in my life.

“You’re a good man, Bram,” Taylor says.

I let out a dry laugh and raise my brow at her. “Are you sure there isn’t a splash of booze in your coffee?”

She gives me a quick smile. “You’re a good man now. And maybe you were back then, deep down. I certainly thought so. You know I was madly in love with you, Bram. Madly. That’s why it hurt so much.”

I nod. “As I said. Karma.” I pause. “I loved you too, you know.”

She shakes her head. “No. That wasn’t love Bram. You don’t…do things like that to someone you love. I have no doubt you felt what you thought was love, but when you have love, you don’t throw it away. You don’t give up on it. You don’t run, even when it scares you. And if you do, then it wasn’t love.”

I chew on my lip for a moment. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“It is that simple. Human beings are complicated. Love is simple.”

“Well,” I say, having a hard time arguing with that. I sip my tea, which is growing cold. “Whatever it was that I felt for you, I thought it was love. And I believed it was for the longest time.”

“Until you met her.”

I meet her eyes but I can’t hide the wince. “Yeah. Until her.”

“So now you know. What you had for me and what you have for her, they aren’t the same.”

I can’t help but notice her use of the present tense.

She gives me a knowing smile. “No use in pretending you’re not still madly in love with her, Bram.”

“Well,” I start, not sure if I should tell her that I didn’t even know I had been in love with Nicola until now.

But she’s right.

Because all along, I was in love with her. It was too simple to know. I was expecting something more drawn-out and complicated than it already was. When really, she had my heart for a while.

Just that realization on its own is enough to knock me off my chair.

And to think, when she told me she loved me, I could have told her in return. I could have said anything at all instead of what I did. I didn’t have to already break her heart before I broke it again.

“Listen,” Taylor says to me. “When I saw you on the news, I didn’t go up there to mess up your life. I didn’t want you to tell me you still loved me, because I know we have both moved on. And you’ve been more than gracious to put the two of us up for this last month. It all couldn’t have been better timing, with me being between jobs and Matthew really needing a father figure right now. All I wanted from you was for him to know you and for you to know him and so far, that’s what he’s gotten. He now knows the man behind the socks.” She smiles to herself and twirls the coffee cup around in her hands. “The last thing I want is to ruin what you had. If you love her still, you need to go after her. You need to tell her and you need to fight for her.”

I swallow misery down my throat. “It’s a bit too late for that.”

She blinks at me surprised. “It’s never too late,” she says adamantly. “What did I just say about love? It’s simple. It doesn’t just go away. If she was in love with you before, and judging by the heartache on that poor girl’s face, she was in deep, then she’s still in love with you now. Believe me, please, I’ve been there. Anger doesn’t erase love. Pain doesn’t erase love. Crying doesn’t erase love. Only time does. Lots and lots and lots of time.” She flicks her finger at me. “And take it from me, time has barely moved on for the both of you. It’s been just over a month. She’s going to love you for a lot longer than that. I hate to admit this, but until three years ago, if you had showed up at my door again with one more attempt to win me over, it would have worked.”

“And our lives would be completely different,” I note, leaning back in my chair. The volume of the song goes up and I recognize Garbage’s “The Trick is to Keep Breathing,” and I think Shirley Manson’s right about a lot of things.

“Different, yes,” Taylor says. “But you know what, I don’t regret a thing.”

I look at her sharply. “What was that?”

“I said I don’t regret it. I don’t believe in regrets anyway. It’s no way to go through life. Whatever happens, happens and it shapes us all to the here and now, where we are supposed to be.”

Nicola’s motto. It’s all too much.

Taylor reaches over and touches my hand. “We were never supposed to be together, Bram. And Matthew wasn’t supposed to know his father until now. Because we’ve been okay, him and I. We’re a team. Because of you, the checks, he’s never wanted for everything. And it’s made me stronger. It’s made me realize what I want. Sure, no one asks to be a single mom but it’s not the end of the world either. It’s just life. You deal with it and keep moving.”