All Chapters of My Brother's Best Friend's Secret Baby: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

I'd convinced myself it was the right thing to do. That she deserved better than me. That pushing her away was a way of protecting her. The way she'd disappeared two weeks later. Then coming home from my deployment to find her room empty, and my father looking like a man whose house had been robbed, stripped of something too precious to put into words. The seven years that followed. When I finished talking, Dr. Garrett hadn't written a single note. His notepad still rested untouched on the coffee table. He watched me with the calm, unreadable expression of a man who listened without already planning his response. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "That story you kept telling yourself to protect her, that lie that pushing her away was for her own good... Do you still believe it?" I gave the question an honest thought. "No," I said. "I think it was for mine. I convinced myself I was protecting her, but I was really avoiding the truth. I was afraid of what I might becom

I looked at her. Sitting there with her bowl of cookies, she was watching me with a serious expression. Not the mischievous look she wore when she was about to play a prank, or the curious one she got whenever she learned something new. This was different. There was a maturity in her face that reached far beyond her six years. "What do you mean?" I asked. "At night," she said. "When I'm asleep. Sometimes you wake up. I hear you walking around. Or you turn the radio on." She broke a cookie in half. "Is that when you're lonely, Mommy?" My hands stayed on the shirt I was folding, unable to finish it. No one had ever asked me that. Not Jeffery, who'd asked if I was okay. That was different. Not Mrs. Willow, who'd known without asking and had shown up with a pot of soup. Not once in the seven years I'd spent building a life in this city. No one had ever asked me directly about those quiet hours after Lucy had fallen asleep, when the apartment was empty except for the weight I

The wall was fascinating. I was completely fascinated by that wall. Dr. Harper asked Aiden if he wanted to add anything. He said no. He said he thought it was an accurate picture. At last, Dr. Harper set down her pen. She looked at both of us, and I could feel her eyes on me even though I was still staring at the wall instead of at her.I forced myself to look back into the room. At Dr. Harper's chair, the window, the side table with her notepad. Anywhere but at Aiden. "Thank you, both of you," Dr. Harper said. "That was honest, and that was the point." She looked at me for a moment. "Rosalie, I noticed that you talked about Aiden's actions and behavior. His reliability. The way he is with Lucy. His commitment to honoring your agreement. Those are all real observations." She paused. "But you never talked about who he is as a person. That's important too." I looked down at my hands. "And Aiden," she continued. "You described Rosalie with a level of detail and precisio

"I'll make spaghetti," I said. A brief silence followed. "All right," she said. "Saturday. Six o'clock." "I'll take care of everything." She hung up. I spent far longer than necessary cleaning the apartment that Saturday. It had already been spotless. I cleaned it all over again. Then I went grocery shopping and bought everything I needed for the sauce, along with a good loaf of bread and the exact brand of apple juice Lucy had once mentioned she liked during a conversation about lunch options three weeks earlier.It was one of those details I'd filed away without really thinking about why I'd remembered it. I set the table properly. Three place settings. No candles. The overhead light was just right. Right at six o'clock, there was a knock at the door. Lucy came in first. She was so excited that she started talking before she'd even fully stepped inside. She launched into a story about the drive over and a truck she'd seen on the highway carrying other cars on its t

Something was pushing against it from the inside. I didn't want it. I understood that immediately, and I didn't want it. I knew what happened whenever I let that part of myself out of the place where I'd kept it locked away. I had proof. One summer night when I was nineteen, followed by seven years of consequences. I shoved it back down at once. I held it shut with everything I had. I kept my expression neutral as I watched Lucy and Aiden work their way through the fairy tale, between his terrible character voices and her endless corrections. I kept telling myself everything was fine. The door was still closed. Everything was exactly where it belonged. But it had cracked. I could feel the crack no matter how hard I tried to contain it. Something had already slipped through before I'd even realized it, and I couldn't put it back. By the third book, which I'd never intended to let them start and somehow hadn't managed to stop, Lucy's corrections had become less frequent