Our Bruised Bodies | Bradley Bradshaw

ACT TWO - PART EIGHT

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"How did you know..." Bradley trailed off, it was clear what he was asking as he was glancing over at Nat, who gave him a worried look. Even though she was furious with him at the same time.

"Not from you answering your phone. That's clear." Nat said, but the anger left her body soon after.

"Grace. She somehow knew." Nat admitted. "She's standing back there." She added, but Bradley didn't look over his shoulder, letting Nat know without words that whatever happened between the two of them, it was nothing good. It was fucking terrible.

"What on earth happened, Bradley?" The younger of the two wanted to know, while she wrapped her arm around Bradley's shoulder.

"Grace told you?" He asked and for a moment, she thought about lying. Yeah, of course she had. I'm just here to hear your side of the story. But that wasn't who Nat was. Even though it might have spared them a lot of tears and weeks of silent treatment.

"No. She didn't say a single word." Nat admitted honestly. The younger woman had been an enigma. Not saying a single word, her expression telling her nothing, apart from the fact, that she was highly guarded.

"She was never one to talk much about her feeling. Her father's fault, I think." Bradley admitted after another moment. He could tell Nat, could tell her about how fucked up they both were. Could tell her that he wanted the woman he grew up with as siblings, while they never were. They were always something else. Something Bradley still couldn't understand.

They were both cold assed private people. Never telling their friends much at all. Nat didn't even know that Bradley's parents were dead. She had no idea that Maverick had raised him and that they didn't speak any longer. She had no idea about Grace either. Just knew whose biological daughter she was.

He was doing this for years now. Removing himself from all the affection and love his family had hold for him once, while craving nothing more than this love, devotion and protection. Bradley pulled away from his family because they would never love him like they loved his father, like Maverick loved his father. A father he never knew, all he knew, all he was left with was grief for a person he didn't know.

Bradley ran off. So, for once when someone would look at him, he wouldn't be the wrong Bradshaw. All he wanted was the people to stop taking a minute upon seeing him to chase away his father's ghost, but they always needed a minute. His mother, Maverick, Ice. They killed him, his mother once uttered too him after a glass too much of wine. They never spoke about it after, but he knew that she thought that.

To Bradley, it didn't matter in the end. He didn't know Nick Bradshaw, but he knew Ice and Maverick. They have taken over without a questioned asked, but their gazes, it always stayed the same. He was the wrong Bradshaw, until Gracie was born.

He was two years old, as his mother took him to Uncle Maverick's place to meet the tiny human bundled in a pink blanket. Ice was holding her, a bit stiffly, as if he had no idea what to do with the baby that looked through his own eyes up at him. She always had them, those big blue eyes, just like Ice, but other than her father, there was no grief in her eyes when she looked at him. More just curiosity and wonder.

His mother had forced him to sit down on the couch, pillows on each side of him and one resting in his lap, before she took Gracie from Ice, who seemed relieved the moment the baby was out of his arms and put the baby down on the pillow in his lap, before sitting next to him and helping him decide where to put his hands.