Chapter Thirty Three – Leah

“Huh? What?” I mutter as I feel a bright light trying to creep into my eyes. “Where am I?”

I rack my brains, trying to think of the last thing that I can remember, but it’s all very blurry. We were at the café… there was a lot of yelling… then we went outside and it’s pretty much blank. I don’t think I felt very good, but that’s about it. I certainly don’t know how I ended up in bed, or wherever I am.

“Hello?” I say raspingly as I try to push myself into a sitting position. My body is weak, my arms don’t seem to have the strength to push me upright. My throat is bone dry as well. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Oh, woah, don’t try to sit up until you’re ready.” Zane is by my side in a heart beat. “Just be careful.”

I look up at him with truly loving eyes. All of a sudden it doesn’t matter so much what happened, I’m just glad that I can be with him. He stares at me like I’m the most precious thing in the world and he honestly makes me feel like I am. I just wish that Brandon could see that… wait, they were fighting! Weren’t they? I seem to have a vague memory of that, but as I look at Zane’s face I can’t see any signs of injury at all.

“Yeah, you don’t want to push yourself before you are ready.” I’m utterly stunned to hear my brother’s voice. Especially when it’s filled with warmth and not yelling at me for a change. “You’ll only end up hurting yourself.”

I need to know what I’ve missed, clearly, it’s something huge. One minute, everything is hell and I’m worried that we’ll never be able to get things back to how they were again, and the next… well, now I don’t know what’s going on. It’s all very confusing. Zane hands me some water and I suck it back readily. I hope that by giving my body some liquid the missing pieces in my brain will all end up coming back together.

“Are you okay?” Zane asks me. “Do you need anything? Whatever it is, I’ll get it for you.”

“I just want to sit,” I insist, because right now all I need to do is see things properly.

Once Zane has me sitting up and my head has stopped spinning, I glance my eyes between Brandon and Zane curiously. Neither of them has hate in their eyes anymore, which has to be a good sign. When they don’t immediately give me anything, I look to Jenny. But all she does is giggle knowingly at me.

“Okay, just tell me,” I groan. “This is painful. All I can remember is standing outside the café…”

“You fainted,” Zane answers, focusing on the wrong thing. “I think it was the stress and exhaustion.”

“I gathered that much.” I roll my eyes, irritated at him. “I mean what happened here.”

Brandon and Zane smile at each other. This is what I wanted, this is exactly what I’ve been trying to achieve but it makes me uneasy that I have no idea how it came to be. It scares me that something bad might come next.

“We had a talk,” Brandon finally admits. “After what happened to you, we decided to stop damn well yelling at each other for a moment and have the adult discussion that both you and Jenny wanted us to have. We sat down and we talked one by one, both listening to and acknowledging one another’s sides of things.”

I try to picture it, I want to visualize this conversation happening so that it can make some more sense to me, but I just can’t make that image come to life in my brain. I can’t see them doing this without supervision. But it only takes one glance at Jenny to realize that somehow, the unthinkable has happened, and that this is the truth.

“I understand now that you aren’t just a fling to Zane and that you really do love each other. Maybe if I hadn’t freaked out so much in the first place and I’d actually listened to you, all of this could have been avoided.”

It’s so hard not to shout ‘I told you so’, but since the boys have had such a mature discussion, I suppose I can be grown up about things too. I nod along silently, simply listening to Brandon as he opens up.

“I’ve spent too long trying to take over the role that Dad left behind because that’s what I thought we all needed. Maybe in the beginning, we did, but now things have changed and it’s time for me to adapt with it. I honestly really don’t want to interfere with your job or whatever college course that you do, and it isn’t my place to say who you date either. You need to do whatever it is that makes you happy.” He gives Zane a happy smile. “I might have freaked out at first when I heard that person was my best friend, but I think I can be okay with it.”

Tears fill my eyes, but this time they’re happy tears. If Brandon can be happy for me and Zane, then there’s hope that anyone can. Maybe, in the end, even Mom will be able to see that this isn’t the worst idea.

“Are you sure?” I ask my brother. “I never meant to go behind your back and betray you, that wasn’t ever my intension. Neither of us wanted to hurt you, we just couldn’t help falling in love with one another.”

“It’s strange, I’ll admit that, and it might take me a while to get used to it, but if you make each other happy then that’s all I care about. And I really think you do. I’m sorry for ever doubting you.”

Jenny wraps her arms around Brandon’s back and she places a gentle loving kiss on his cheek. He grabs her hands and rests them on his stomach embracing his own happiness for a moment. Maybe I didn’t intend to create this wonderful moment by passing out, but if that’s what it took then I would happily do it over again.

“The next thing that we need to think about is Mom,” Brandon continues, suddenly looking more serious. “It’s going to be hard for me to persuade her that this is a good idea because she thinks that Zane is in a motorcycle gang. Now, she thinks you’re his moll, which isn’t ideal. I can talk to her, if that helps, but I can’t make any promises. I’ll just tell her what I know and hope that she stops being too protective.”

I nod slowly, feeling gladder than ever that this happened. I know that I could be the one to talk to Mom, and I will in the end, but Brandon is the perfect person to soften the blow. He just has this way of convincing her of things. Something about his manner really wins her around. Maybe he reminds her of Dad…

“Thank you, Brandon, that means a lot to me,” I say seriously. “That’s really kind of you.”

A thick silence clings to the air for a couple of moments, but it isn’t an awkward one. I get the impression that we’re all just looking at one another in a brand new light and accepting where our new places are. I know that it’ll take Brandon a whole to fully adjust to what’s going on with me and Zane, but we’re on the first rung of that ladder now. I’m sure that soon it’ll become natural. We’ll all forget that these fights ever happened.

“I’m going to get us some beers,” Zane finally pipes up. “Then I think that you should tell Brandon about your creative writing. He’s really interested, and I couldn’t explain it as well as you can.”

I give Brandon a knowing look. We are both acutely aware that he doesn’t think this is a smart path for me, but to my surprise he actually looks like he does want to hear it. There isn’t a scrap of judgement in his face.

“I want to hear about it too,” Jenny joins in. “It sounds really interesting. I just had a look at some of your text books and it looks fascinating. You must be really enjoying it though, am I right?”

I open up a little, my enthusiasm growing as I talk about what I’ve been studying. It feels great to share it with someone else. I know that Zane loves hearing about it, but I don’t ever want to bore him with details so I don’t go on about it all the time, only when I’m really excited about something, and to be fair as I talk it seems like Brandon and Jenny really approve. Even if it’s just because they can see how happy it makes me, that’s a start.

I have a funny feeling that this might really be the start of something new, a genuinely amazing friendship between all of us, and to be honest that’s the best thing in the world to me. I don’t want anything more.

***

“I don’t know what happened earlier on, but my God, I’m glad,” I tell Zane as we lie in his bed – our bed, I need to remember that I live here now too – a little later on in the evening once my brother and Jenny have gone. “It’s amazing how quickly things got better, isn’t it? Honestly, it was unbelievable.”

“Oh, I know. The talk that me and Brandon had was just amazing. I mean, we really got everything off our chests and clearer the air. I just hope that he can do the same with your mom.”

I don’t know if either of us hold out too much when it comes to my mom because she’s so determined to stick to her guns with this one. Of course, I’ll be very sad if she can’t ever accept me and Zane, it’ll be really hard to come to terms with, but if that’s a sacrifice that I have to make for love then so be it. This man is worth it.

I turn onto my side and kiss him, before stroking his gorgeous face. There’s nothing that I love more than caressing his cheeks and staring at him to remind me that he belongs to me now. This man is mine.

“Now we just have one more person to tell,” I say softly. “And she might just be the worst one of all.”

“Oh God,” Zane groans. “Who is it? I don’t think that I can go through all of that again.”

I pause for dramatic effect trying to wind him up. “Mandi,” I eventually reply with a smirk. “In all the madness, I just haven’t had time to see her and tell her yet. That’s going to be an interesting conversation.”

“Please tell me that she doesn’t hate me as well? What could I possibly have done to offend her?”

“Actually, she’s always been a big supporter of me and you. Especially since you came back and you told me to break up with Patrick because you would be much better for me. She sure as hell liked that because she was the one who kept telling me the same thing. I mean, about Patrick, not about you.”

“I never said that,” he yells jokingly. “I can’t believe that you would say such lies…” He tickles me, making me squeal. “But I was right though, wasn’t I? You are much happier with me.”

My chest fills with a warmth as the truth of that hits me. “This is the happiest that I’ve ever been. I love you, Zane. You coming back was the best thing for me. You might have changed everything, but for the best.”

“And you know that I love you too.” He kisses me tenderly on the lips giving me butterflies in my stomach. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world other than here with you right now. Me and you against the world, baby.”