My Future Husband

Chapter 62

“Brie! Will you slow the fuck down!” Brie and Steve never argue, and even when they do it’s usually solved with orgasms rather than a screaming match, but Brie looks more ready to kill him than I’ve ever seen before as she marches straight past me and up to my apartment. “Brie!”

“Cover the counter. Tell them we’re not taking new orders.” Heather nods, before I slam both my hands into Steve’s chest to stop him following her upstairs. “What did you do?”

“Nothing!”

“Well clearly you’ve done fucking something! You know she never gets pissed at you! She looked hurt, Steve!” Whatever anger he was feeling quickly slips away, just guilt on his handsome face.

“I thought I was helping. She can’t keep ignoring this.” For fucks sake.

“Did you try to force her to face her ‘Papa don’t preach’ problem?” He nods, so I give him the slap my sister probably owes him, before storming upstairs. “Brie?”

“If he’s with you, tell him I’m going to cut his balls off and choke him with them if he comes anywhere near me!” It’s really hard not to laugh at her when she’s like this, she only makes threats against his manhood when she’s super resentful. I’m pretty sure if Steve dies first, she actually has plans to have it removed and preserved for her to continue her personal gratification.

I give it three days before Charlie steals it.

“It's just me. You okay?” I walk in slowly, making sure to assess my surroundings for any sharp implements she could use, but my heart shatters into little pieces when I find her completely broken, crumbled on my bedroom floor with one of my memory boxes on her lap.

“He's an asshole.”

“You still love him.”

“Doesn't stop him being an asshole.”

Marriage is weird.

I sink down onto the floor at her side, taking her hand and just holding it. There’s no point trying to push with Brie, you've got to wait for her to be ready to talk. Anything else and she’ll just shut you out. Steve knows that better than anyone, I don’t know what he was thinking here.

We don’t say a word, we just sit, completely silent with her hand in mine, until finally she sighs and throws her head back against my bed.

“His company got that cyber security contract at the hospital, so he has access to almost all the data there now.” She begins, tapping her nails on the box. “They store everything, even all the paper files have been transferred to digital now. He went through the hospital records the day I was born, trying to look for all the visitors that came onto the ward and see if he could narrow it down until he found...”

“Your dad?”

“Don't fucking call him that.” She snaps. “Anyone with a dick can be a father, you've actually got to show up for your kid to be a dad.” She's so angry.

The worst part is, she was never like this before I found that photograph. When she thought she was just the result of Anna getting freaky at house party, she was good with never knowing who he was, because she assumed that he didn't know about her either.

She never wanted any parents, she wasn’t like me. When I was little I used to draw picture after picture of this perfect family home; tiny May, her mum and dad, one of those nice houses with a big yard and a swing, but that was never Brie. All her childhood paintings are just her, standing front and centre, on her own two feet. She never wanted anything from anyone, she was going to do it herself.