Ask Me Something (The Something Series Book 2) (33 page)

Although I
didn’t mean it and knew I was making a complete mess of this in the process, I
reasoned it might be for the best if he believed that. By his own admission, I
couldn’t give him what he wanted. I stood quiet.

“You know what,
maybe I did deliberately push you out of your comfort zone and into a
relationship. In my defense, though, I did it because I’m in love with you. I’d
hoped I could convince you to feel the same.”

“You love me?” I
asked incredulously.

He nodded. “For
the last eight years.”

My heart sank
when I realized what that meant. “You don’t love me, Brian. You don’t even know
me.”

He looked like I
was talking crazy. “How can you say that?”

“Take a good
look at me. I’m not the girl you think you know.” I took a deep breath. It was
best he knew all of it to save him the energy of thinking he could love someone
like me. “I have an anxiety disorder. I’ve had it all my life, but the attacks
started when I was sixteen, and I found out I was adopted by having my crack-addict
mother come to school during lunch to ask me for money. My parents kept it from
me my whole life. Three years ago in Miami when I received that call, and we
had our almost-night: panic attack. Puking my guts up after Jamie left—You guessed
it correctly, another one.” I paused, taking in his wide eyes and shocked
expression. I was fire hosing him with my confession, but I couldn’t stop now
that the seal was broken.

“I throw up
before each and every pitch like clockwork and shake so badly afterwards that I’m
absolutely exhausted. I wear a black hair tie on my wrist to snap whenever I’m anxious,
which is All. Of. The. Fucking. Time.” I showed him my wrist since I’d worn one
to the party. “And the truth is: Maybe I’ve never told you that I miss you or
shared my feelings because I realize now that it doesn’t matter how I feel,
this relationship could never work. As much as I wish I was, I’m not the girl
that you respect or that you thought you knew. I promise if you did know me,
you wouldn’t miss me at all.”

“That’s not true.”
Scrubbing a hand over his face, he looked completely overwhelmed with the
barrage of information. “If you’d give me a chance, we can figure this out.
Have you seen a therapist about your anxiety? Maybe we could go together.”

I squeezed my
eyes shut and fought the tears. Just when I thought I’d hit my lowest point,
having him feel sorry for me was so much worse. “Stop, please.”

“Sorry, I know
I’m getting ahead of myself. We can take it slower. But I can even ask Mark for
his therapist’s name. He’s up in Connecticut, and I hear he’s really good. I
only want to help you—”

And there it
was. The unmistakable sound of what I’d tried to avoid my whole life. Someone
seeing me as broken. My utter humiliation was complete. I was officially at
rock bottom and Brian, someone I respected and who had once respected me had a
front row seat. “I know that you’d like nothing better than to help. Part of it
is because you’re a good guy, the other part may have something to do with
trying to control the circumstances. But I can’t do this.” My heart was
breaking, but a happily ever after wasn’t in my future. So I said the only
thing I could to get him to let me go: “This isn’t working for me any longer.
I’m sorry.”

“You don’t mean
that.” His voice shook with emotion.

I took an unsteady
breath and walked through the door. I needed to leave before I became selfish
and clung to him.

“Sasha, wait—”

I turned, desperately
wishing I could be the girl he thought he loved. “I’m not Sasha-B-Fierce. I
never was.”

After the cab
dropped me off at the airport, I made a beeline for the car rental counter. The
last place I wanted to go was back up to New York and ironically, the one place
that did appeal to me was home. The drive would be therapeutic, and I’d return
to New York when I was ready.

I called my
mother briefly, telling her I was on my way home. She didn’t ask why, only told
me to drive safely and that she’d see me soon. The tears didn’t start until the
halfway point into the six-hour drive from Virginia to coastal Carolina. Eight
years. How could he have thought he’d been in love with me that long?

The sound of my
phone coming over the car’s Bluetooth startled me. Brian’s number flashed, and
it was tempting to answer, but I knew I’d break down if I talked to him again
right now.

Giving up after
a couple of attempts, he left me a text message.

“Let me know
that you’re okay when you get home. Please.”

Unfortunately,
it was one more reminder about what a great guy he was and launched me into a
fresh round of tears over the fact that I’d never be good enough. I typed back
that I was okay and left it at that.

Grateful to have
the long drive behind me, I stepped through my parents’ front door, and my mom
greeted me immediately with a hug. When her arms came around me, I lost it.

My father, bless
his heart, took over while my mom went to go fix some tea. It was her answer
for anything troubling.

The big wall of
a man took a seat next to me and let me cry it all out on his shoulder. Some
fathers might have left a sobbing daughter to her mother, but not my dad. He
knew I needed both of them.

Finally, when it
subsided, I met the concerned eyes of both my parents and took a deep breath.
“I don’t know where to begin.”

My dad patted my
hand. “You start wherever you need to, baby girl.”

Over the course
of the next twenty minutes, I confessed to the couple dozen panic attacks I’d
had over the years, the continued therapy, and my need to avoid confiding in
anyone about it. I finished with my humiliation at Kenzie’s graduation party
today.

The tears in
both their eyes showed me how they felt about not having known any of it.

“Also, you
should know that my birth mother died.” I sipped my tea feeling marginally
better after telling them everything.

The look that
they shared made it obvious they’d already heard the news. More secrets, and
yet at this point, it didn’t matter. How hypocritical for me to ask that they
confide in me when I’d spent years hiding the shame of my anxiety attacks from
the world.

My father
cleared his voice and got up to pace the floor. “I’m sorry, Sasha. If we’d
known that attorney had a way of contacting you, we would’ve told you sooner
that he’d informed us as well. We didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”

I wasn’t even
angry at this omission. Considering the way I handled stress, was it any wonder
people kept things from me? Sighing, I confided what had happened three years
ago with paying for failed rehab and not returning the calls recently.

“Maybe if I’d called
him back and had given them money for rehab, she would be getting better
instead of—” Another sob broke free as the guilt slammed into me. As much as
I’d tried to tell myself she didn’t deserve my money, time, or love, the
thought of her dying alone left me devastated.

My big bear of a
dad held me like he had when I’d been sixteen and had fallen apart the first
time.

Finally, when my
eyes had gone dry, my father spoke softly. “She was in a state-run rehab when
she passed. She was getting help, but it was too late. It was her heart from
years of drug abuse. And you should know, your mother and I, we paid for a
private burial. It’s not much, but there’s a headstone in a local cemetery
outside of Raleigh.”

I pulled back
and searched their faces. “Why did you do that?”

My mom sat
beside me and stroked my hair. “We did it in case you ever wanted to go there.
Your birth mother had a troubled life that none of us could have ever saved her
from, but without her, we wouldn’t have you. She deserved that much from us.”

I hugged her
tight. Where on this earth could I have ever found better people? “Thank you.”
I sat back and wiped my eyes, slowly getting back to even ground.

My mom hesitated
but then got up and walked into the kitchen. She came back with an envelope in
her hand. “Her attorney, he gave us this to give to you. When you’re ready.”

“I’ll take it
with me, read it when I am. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this lost. I’m not
sure where to go from here.”

My father patted
my knee. “From the moment I laid eyes on you, I saw a survivor. There’s nothing
you can’t conquer if you put your mind to it. You’ve been doing it your whole
life. So you take one day at a time.”

I shook my head.
“I’m not strong, Daddy. Look at me.”

“You know, you
keep telling yourself that, and you may even start to believe it. Do you think
people who are strong get there because they’ve never had to handle adversity?”

“I suppose not.”

“I’d argue the
toughest people got there the hard way. You, baby girl, have always pushed
yourself. You could’ve chosen a lot easier path, but you didn’t. And no matter
what happened today with Brian, I could tell when that boy came here for our
party that he loves you. It was written all of his face when he looked at you.”

I smiled at the
fact that he called Brian a boy. In my Daddy’s eyes, we were both still kids. I
took a deep breath. “He thinks he does.”

“And why do you
say it like he couldn’t possibly?”

“Because he
didn’t know about any of this.” I motioned to myself. Here I was, a thirty-two-year-old
woman, sitting on the couch and crying my eyes out in front of my parents.

“Seems like he
does now,” my mother whispered.

“I fire hosed
him with it all, and I know he feels bad—” My sentence was interrupted.

“Do you think he
loves you because he feels sorry for you?” my dad asked, indignant at the very
thought.

I cracked a
smile at his disapproving tone. “No, but he saw only what I wanted him to over
the last eight years. Now he sees all of it. I can’t stand to have him look at
me like I’m broken. He deserves better than a crack-addict’s daughter who has
an anxiety disorder and the inability to handle stress.”

I was unprepared
for my mother’s anger when she shot up from her seat.

“You listen here,
Sasha Jayne Brooks. You’re not some crack-addict’s daughter, you hear me?
You’re my daughter and that of your father. We raised you, and you’re as much a
part of us as if I’d given birth to you. I don’t ever want to hear you demean
yourself like that again. You should be damn proud of yourself, because I know
we sure are.”

My brows shot up
in shock. In thirty-two years, I’d never heard my mother swear. A giggle
escaped my lips. “Did you just curse momma?”

My dad laughed,
and then my mom cracked a smile. “Damn straight I did. Should tell you how
passionate I feel about the subject.”

For once, coming
home had been the best decision.

***

While the
moonlight still shone in the windows of my childhood bedroom early Sunday
morning, I got up and took a walk on the beach. It was deserted at this early
hour and it gave me peace. Sitting down in my favorite spot, I waited until
dawn started to color the sky before I took the folded envelope out of my
pocket.

There was no
letter like I’d expected, but instead was a photograph that had seen better
days. It showed a beautiful teenage girl with a baby tucked into her arms,
smiling tiredly into the camera. On the back it simply said.

“I always loved
you Sasha.”

The tears flowed
freely and I wiped my nose on my sleeve. I’d always assumed I’d been given up
because my birth mother hadn’t loved me. But I’d never considered the kind of unselfish
love it took to give your child up in order to give them a better life. My
parents as I’d always known them provided me the life my birth mother never could
have.

Looking up, I
saw my sister approaching. She was the last person I’d have expected. She
settled beside me, putting her arm around me.

I broke the
silence after a couple of minutes. “How did you know I’d be here?”

“We came over to
the house to meet for church, and Dad told me about your birth mom passing. I
figured you’d be here. I’m really sorry by the way.”

“Thanks, but how
did you know it was here in this spot?” I was hidden away from anyone driving
by and I hadn’t parked a car.

She sighed. “After
you’d found out about being adopted, I used to follow you, back in the day,
when you’d come here. You would sit for hours, sometimes staring, sometimes
crying. I’ve always regretted that I didn’t try to comfort you.”

I swallowed hard
at that image. “You were only twelve, Addison, hardly able to know what to do.
And I didn’t know how to let anyone in at the time. Hell, I’m still working on
it.” But it seemed I was getting better by the minute.

“I was always so
in awe of you,” she whispered.

“You mean until
that day.”

She shook her
head. “No, even more so after, actually. You were so strong and so independent.
I was always intimidated by it.”

I raised an
incredulous brow. “I was barely holding it together.”

She sighed. “I
wish I would’ve known.”

We sat there in
silence as the sun came up.

Finally, I
spoke. It was the first time I’d ever confided in my sister. “Brian had a
nickname for me. It was Sasha-B-Fierce. That image came crashing down yesterday
in the form of a panic attack.”

She regarded me
for a moment before answering. “The fall always seems further when viewed with
your own eyes than it actually is. After I had Kassandra, I suffered from
postpartum depression. I was much harder on myself than everyone else
combined.”

I looked at her,
stunned.

She drew a shaky
breath before continuing. “Here I was with an amazing husband and three
beautiful children already. I should’ve been a pro. Instead, I could barely get
out of bed and would cry for no reason. Mom and Dad knew and, of course, Ryan,
but I was humiliated. I’d worked so hard to be the perfect mother and show I
could do it all, and yet I couldn’t seem to function.”

I could hardly
believe she’d been through this, and I’d been clueless. She always seemed to
have it together. “What did you do?”

“Well, I started
out telling Ryan he needed to leave me, because he was better off without
someone like me. He of course told me to shut up and that he couldn’t afford
the child support even if he wanted to.”

I grinned. “I
can see him saying that.”

She laughed. “I
got counseling. When I told my therapist he’d said that, she was appalled, but
after meeting him, she realized it’s his personality. And it’s what I’d needed,
a little laughter, instead of sympathy all of the time. I still go to a group
thing once a week and meet with other women who are going through it now.
Ironically, helping others is how I got through the feeling of inadequacy. Once
you realize everyone struggles, you stop beating yourself up so much. I guess
what I’m attempting to say is trying to be perfect is exhausting. Trying to
keep up the perception when you know you’re not is even worse. It’s like you’re
lying to yourself every day in the hopes that no one will catch on. I don’t
want my kids to grow up having this unrealistic expectation of themselves or
others. I want them to know it’s okay to make mistakes and have problems. The
best way I could do that is to be honest with my own.”

I’d never thought
about it from that perspective, and wondered if that was why Juliette hadn’t
wanted to confide in me. Had I alienated people from confiding in me because
I’d always gone out of my way to project this image that I didn’t struggle? Clearly
the answer was yes considering this was the first time Addison had ever
admitted something in her life was less than perfect.

Ironic that
admitting our faults was making me feel closer to my sister than I ever had. “I’m
sorry. I wish I would’ve known, but in saying that realize I’ve never given you
a reason to confide in me like this.”

“I wish I
would’ve known about you, too. But now that we do, we could be there for one
another.”

I swallowed
hard. “I’d like that. I love you Addison.”

Her shocked eyes
met mine. Sadly I wasn’t sure I’d ever said those words to her.

“I love you too
Sasha.”

We returned to
the house and enjoyed a family brunch. There were no snipes, no
passive-aggressive comments, and I realized the vulnerable Sasha I’d worked so
hard to hide turned out to be more likeable than the defensive version. After
my sister and family left, I went upstairs to pack, intending to return to New
York tonight.