Broken Vows

Chapter 18

Erin spent most of her evening and a good portion of the early night alternating between anger and tears. She was angry at Tyler for all he had done to get her to this point. She was angry at Brody for pushing her to forgive him. Most of all she was angry at herself for telling Brody to leave.

In the moments that the anger ebbed it opened the gates for heartache and tears to rush forth, leaving her in a crying heap. Her head throbbed from all the crying and she knew she needed to calm down or she’d be adding a migraine to her list of woes.

Eventually, in the wee hours of the morning, she pulled herself from her bed to find the pain killers in her medicine cabinet. She blinked against the sudden illumination of the overhead light, squinting as she searched the bottles. Finally finding the one she wanted she dumped two pills into her hand and tossed them onto her tongue, washing them down with a handful of water from the sink.

Her entire body ached, though the pounding in her head took precedence. She sank onto the edge of her bathtub, burying her face in her hands, unable to believe this broken woman was her. After her divorce she swore to never be this person again. She would never allow a man to break her the way Tyler had done. Yet here she was, more broken than before.

This time the blame lay with her.

How could it be that she felt like the bad guy when Tyler was the one who had the affair?

Brody’s words echoed in her mind, out of order and running together. She had tried over and over again to think about them rationally, to step back and be objective, but that felt impossible. His insistence that it was time for her to let Tyler go sounded vaguely familiar and as she waited for the medicine to take effect she searched her memory. Where had she heard that before?

She looked up, meeting the eyes of her reflection as it came to her.

Brad. Not just once, but twice, at least. The first time she remembered had been at Kelly’s wedding reception, the second after a morning run.

She closed her eyes and groaned. How many other people thought the same thing but weren’t brave enough to tell her? 

Her tears at bay for the moment, she let her mind wander over the past four years, replaying all the interaction she had with Tyler since the divorce. The more she thought, the more she saw their point.

As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she had been hanging on to Tyler as much as he’d been hanging on to her. It had merely been in opposite ways. She had tried to move on, to make a life without him and become her own person, but she had also hung on to the anger, determined to take it out on Tyler and hurt him as much as she could. While she had probably managed to hurt him to some extent, she now saw she was hurting herself even more. What’s worse is that she would have continued to do it if Brody hadn’t entered her life and loved her enough to confront her.

He had warned her that he wasn’t the passive type, didn’t sweep problems under the rug. She never imagined it would evidence itself like this.

She glanced at her reflection again, still feeling lost and clueless. “Now what?” she asked, wishing the Erin in the mirror could give her the answer.

Admitting Brody was right was only part of the solution. She had to put her past with Tyler to rest, once and for all. But how did one go about forgiving someone who had hurt you so much? How did she let go of all that anger after carrying it around for so long?

The bigger question gnawing at her gut was if Brody would be willing to forgive her. She had been so hurt, thinking he was blaming her, and then asking her to do the impossible. She didn’t know what to say or how to react. So she’d thrown him out.