Page 130 of Wait for Him

I stop so fast Michael nearly walks into me and turn on him.

"Yes! Yes, Michael, that's exactly what I've been doing. You know what else I've been doing? Running to New York to save Meridian. Helping Blaire salvage her life and get her settlement. Running point on every press release that mentioned your cock. Emotionally bleeding from scars you will never understand because I would never allow you to."

My voice is bouncing off the hallway walls now, louder than I intended and getting louder by the second, but I don't have enough left in me to care who hears. At least there’s some anger. It’s more emotion than I’ve felt in weeks.

"I have carried this family on my back for years without setting it down once. Every disaster. Every headline. Every bad decision. Every time something went wrong, I fixed it because that's what I do and because somewhere along the way everybody got very comfortable with the idea that I always would."

Michael's face changes.

Maybe he finally hears me.

"I need a fucking minute."

Doors are starting to open farther down the hall, neighbors drawn out by the yelling, so I turn and keep walking toward my apartment. Michael and Jackson follow, but at least now they're quiet.

I unlock the door and step inside.

I hear the gasp behind me almost immediately.

The movers took the bed this morning, the last of it. The apartment is stripped bare now. No couch. No television. No dishes. No books stacked on the coffee table, no stupid throw blanket Michael bought me because he said the old one made the place look like a dentist's office. Nothing that suggests a woman lived a whole life here.

Just clean floors, bare walls and my luggage waiting beside the door like the punchline to a joke nobody's laughing at.

Michael and Jackson stop just inside.

They take it in slowly.

The empty room.

The bags.

Me.

Then each other.

I watch them do the math on how long this has been in motion, how thoroughly I've planned it, how far past the point of talking me out of it they've arrived.

Michael recovers first.

He crosses the empty room and pulls me into his arms, and he holds on longer than he has since we were kids.

"I'm sorry. You're right." His voice is thick against my hair. "Do whatever you need. And you call me, day or night, I don't care where you are or what time zone. You call me."

I wish I could feel this.

I know it's love. I can identify it the way you identify a landmark through fog. I know exactly what it is. I just can't reach it from where I am.

He lets me go, and his eyes are glassy when he steps back.

Jackson steps into me next.

One hand cradles the back of my head while the other wraps around my waist, and his hold is tight. Tight like memorizing. Tight like a man taking one last inventory of something he's lost the deed to.

"I love you, Rose," he whispers into my hair. "Take care of yourself."

"You too, Marcus."

His breath catches quick.