Best Friend's Brother #3 (Best Friend's Brother Romance Series - Book #3) Read Free Page B

Can I come in?” My dad was knocking on my bedroom door for the third time that
day. I was still in bed. I hardly got out of bed anymore. I was so focused on
feeling sorry for myself that I hadn’t thought about what I was doing to him.
The poor thing, I was such a mess and he was so worried about me. I felt
terrible, but I didn’t know how to shake this unrelenting pain. I don’t even
think anyone who hadn’t experienced it would understand that this kind of
emotional pain is real, physical pain.
    “Yeah Dad, come on in.”
    He pushed open the door and stood there for a minute
while his eyes adjusted to the dim light. The sun was still out, but I had
pulled the drapes so none of it was allowed to filter in. It had begun to piss
me off that it dared to still shine while Emma lay in a cold, dark hole in the
ground.
    “Alexa,” he said as he came towards the bed. “I’ve
been thinking a lot about how to help you. Baby you haven’t gotten out of bed
for days and you’ve hardly eaten a bite of anything. I had a thought I wanted
to talk to you about and honey I know you’re probably going to say no, but hear
me out…”
    “Dad, I’m really okay. I wish that you wouldn’t
worry.”
    “How am I not supposed to worry? You’re wasting away
in here.”
    “I’m grieving, Daddy. It’ll get better…I think.”
    “Not if you stay in this bed all the time. I think
we should take you to see a doctor.”
    “A doctor? Daddy, I don’t need to see a doctor. I’m not sick.”
    “Maybe you just need something to help you until the
grief passes.”
    “Something like what?”
    “Something for the depression or anxiety or whatever
is holding you back from being able to live your life.”
    He thought I needed to be put on meds for my
depression. “No Dad! I’m not crazy. I’m not taking pills. I can cope with this.
I just need time and I need to do it in my own way.”
    “I just want what’s best for you, baby. You’re
nineteen years old and you’ve made a virtual prisoner of yourself in your room.
It’s just not healthy and it can’t keep going on.”
    I felt the tears coming again. I tried to swallow
them, but lately they had a mind of their own. “I just don’t understand, Daddy.
Why her? Why did she leave me?” I dissolved into a torrent of tears. He sat
down next to me and gently held me like he used to
when I was a little girl. I cried until the front of his shirt was soaked. When
I was finally able to stop, I felt exhausted. Who knew that crying took so much
out of you? I pulled back and said, “I’m sorry. I know I’ve been acting like
such a big baby…”
    “Don’t say that and don’t apologize. Nineteen year
olds are not supposed to have to see their best friends buried. I’m so sorry
about that and I wish that I knew why myself. But you and I were just talking
about how full of life she was and how happy she was. Emma wouldn’t want this
life for you, baby. She wouldn’t have wanted to be the cause of this.”
    He was right. Emma would have kicked my ass right
out of bed. But Emma wasn’t here…I could get up, but then what? Now that I told
Ian I didn’t want to see him again, there was nobody in my life that truly
understood. Dad was trying, bless his heart, but he didn’t really get it. Emma
was one of a kind and you had to know her the way we did to understand why we
loved her so much. I felt like every day that passed without bringing up her
name with someone or talking about a memory, made her that much more gone…if
that made any sense. I missed her and if I was being honest, I missed Ian too.
I’d been laying here thinking about him a lot. I wondered if I had been too
hasty…too judgmental. I did have a habit of that. It was one of a handful of
things I could thank by mother for.
    “Hey Dad?”
    “Yeah honey?”
    “Do you think people can change?”
    “What do you mean, like their personality?”
    “Yeah, or their morals and values. If a person makes decisions that are