Always Only You (Bergman Brothers, #2)

by Chloe Liese

I mean, Coach would kill me for eating this, but goddamn, there is nothing better than a double cheeseburger after a long day. I don’t care what my carbon footprint is. Kill that cow and get it in my belly.”

What a terrifying possibility, to find yourself so attracted to someone you can’t help but love them. I try to smile to show her I’m okay, but I’m incapable of an involuntarily grin. Every time I try, I end up giving the impression that I’m about to throw up. Willa laughs. “You look like I just told you that’s dog shit between your hamburger bun.” Bingo.

Ren honestly doesn’t see himself how everyone else does. He isn’t feigning humility or fishing for a compliment. He really means what he says when he expresses self-doubt. If anyone can empathize with seeing yourself one way and being perceived so dissonantly from that, it’s this mostly invisibly ill, autistic woman right here.

I throw open my car door, which I know will end this conversation, at least for now, because Ren is hell-bent on chivalry. He all but sprints to my side, holding open the door and offering me a hand, like he does every time we descend the travel bus and he’s ahead of me. Not because he thinks I’m fragile or I can’t do it on my own, but because Ren should have been born two hundred years ago, when men stood as women entered a room, and courtship was stolen kisses in moonlit gardens.

My therapist says, show people who you really are, and you get the absolute thrill of knowing they love you for you. That’s why the friends I do have aren’t many, but they know and love the real me.”

I tune back into the audiobook, willing myself to focus on the story, but Elinor and her damn restraint when it comes to Edward just heaps annoyance on annoyance as I drive, until I’m idling in front of Lorena’s apartment building, yelling, “Just fucking tell him you love him already!” Ren taps my window, and I startle so violently, I nearly shit myself. Once I can breathe again, I press the button until the window is lowered. He leans his arms on the ledge and smiles, glancing from my dashboard with the pictured audiobook title to me. “Never seen Austen incense a person like that.” I turn off the engine and nudge open the door, making him take a step back. “Clearly, you haven’t read Sense and fucking Sensibility.” “Huh.” He shuts the door behind me, following as I step onto the curb. “I didn’t know the title included such profanity. Must be the unabridged version.” “It doesn’t,” I grumble. “But it should.”

It’s been so long since I embraced the part of myself that aches to come to life when Ren’s near. The one that laughs and jokes, that hugs hard and kisses deeply. The one that cries at sappy movies and throws open her heart for those she loves. The one that believes someone could love her without one day resenting her, without seeing her laundry list of needs and hurdles as burdens but rather as beautiful parts of what make her her.

Frankie cuts straight to the heart of love’s vulnerability. And while most of us like to comfort ourselves with the delusion that love is bliss, it’s not called falling in love for nothing. We love, entranced by the breathtaking view, and we fall, not knowing where we’ll land.

When you live with chronic pain, you get used to living through it. You just do life, until you collapse. Then you pick yourself up, change around the meds, and try again.

I’ve never handled thanks well. It makes me feel put on the spot, topped off with a splash of imposter syndrome. Wouldn’t anyone do what I did when the opportunity presented itself? Being thanked for doing the decent thing feels weird.

“No, you will never know if he’s going to hurt you, not definitively. Guess what, Frankie? Nobody knows if love’s going to hurt them. You simply have to take a chance.”

“Some days I do feel cynical. Other days I’m optimistic. I think that on hard days, when everything hurts and everything feels difficult, I don’t find myself very lovable. And I know it’s not true that I’m not allowed to struggle, that I’m not lovable when I do, but it feels . . . real.”

“Ren,” she says, cupping my cheek. “You are weird.” We both break down laughing as she strokes my beard and steals a kiss. “And so am I. But not everyone has to love us, just the people who matter. That’s what I told you, but you showed me: be yourself, and let those who are lucky enough to love you, love you for who you are.”