Free Tied in Knots: A Tied Together Novella by Z.B. Heller Page A

the letter from my mother.
    I closed my eyes for a second, hoping this was a bad dream. Sean stood and rubbed the side of his face where Ryan had hit him. I kept my eyes on Ryan as I spoke to Sean. “What the hell is the matter with you? I thought we were friends, and then you pull this shit? Get the fuck out of here and don’t ever come into my office again.”
    Sean started toward the door. “Whatever. You’re probably a shitty lay anyway.”
    Ryan turned and went after Sean again. Sean dashed through the door and out of the office as I grabbed Ryan’s arm and held him in place. “Don’t.”
    He turned back to me, eyes wide. “What the fuck, Brandon? So you’ve been staying at the hospital to play doctor with Nurse McSteamy?”
    “I wouldn’t ever do anything to jeopardize our marriage. I would never cheat, and you know that!” I yelled.
    “Maybe so, but what about this? Why the hell haven’t you told me that you got a letter from your psychotic mother?”
    “I wasn’t ready to tell you. I needed time.”
    “You’ve certainly had a lot of it, staying here and avoiding coming home to me. I thought we were a unit, Brandon. I thought we shared everything—the good, bad, and the ugly.” Ryan threw the letter at my chest and then crossed his arms. “I feel like I’ve had to be a single dad to our son while you fucking stew in your office. I get that you want to be a great doctor to your patients. But what about us, Brandon? What about being a great dad and an amazing husband to us?”
    “That’s bullshit. I love you and Ethan more than anything in this world. I’ve been working my ass off so we can have the life we always talked about. How could I tell you this when I knew you’d jump to your judgmental conclusions before we could even talk it out? She may be a horrible person, Ryan, but she’s still my mother. And she’s dying.”
    Ryan shook his head. “You didn’t even give me a chance. You just assumed one thing and did your typical keep-everything-locked-up Brandon thing. You know what? Fuck you for not trusting me. All it would have taken is for you to open up and tell me. Instead, you wallowed at the hospital and talked to people who don’t know or care about you as much as I do. So go ahead, Brandon. Sit and fucking wallow by yourself. I’m going home to be with our son, and when you figure out that the world doesn’t revolve around just you, I’ll be waiting.”
    Ryan turned around, stomped out of the office, and slammed the door behind him.

9
Brandon
    T he house was dark when I got home. Ryan was already in bed, and even though I knew he wasn’t sleeping, I didn’t want to start another fight by trying to talk to him. I quietly crawled into bed, knowing that sleep wouldn’t come to me. The next day I called in a favor to a friend of ours who had a cabin by Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Then I called Moxie to see if she and Miles would watch Ethan while I took Ryan for a much-needed getaway.
    The ride up to the cabin was mostly silent with the occasional spoken turn-by-turn direction of the car’s GPS we’d named Betty. Ethan had come up with that name for the female voice. I asked him why the name Betty, and he said it reminded him of his friend Thomas’s grandma, who was very bossy, just like the navigator. The kid had a point; it did cop an attitude when it told you to make a U-turn after fucking up the directions. I quickly took my eyes from the road to look over at Ryan. He was gazing out the window, watching the city buildings pass by. I wanted to ask him what was on his mind, but there was still a lot of tension between us and we still hadn’t talked things through.
    After I had made the arrangements, I called Dr. Fredricks to explain what had happened and if he had any ideas on how to reconnect. He emailed me an assignment to do when we got there. I checked over the assignment to make sure it didn’t include something like, “Take a screwdriver and gouge Brandon’s eyeballs