Dane’s brow furrows. “What?”
“She thinks she’s responsible for it, which is probably true.”
“No,” Dane growls, glaring at me. “He is. He’s the one who fucked my little sister.”
I cringe. “Can’t argue with that.”
Delacroix rolls his eyes at me. “Can you help me out a little here?”
I shrug. “I said I’d stop lying.”
“Incroyable,” Luc mutters. “Anyway. The point is you two need to figure your shit out so she doesn’t keep blaming herself.”
Dane glares. “What do you want from me? Pretend it didn’t happen? I don’t know, throw them an engagement party?”
“Fuck no.” Luc laughs.
But my brain latches onto the idea. Engagement. The thought should make me panic, but it doesn’t, not even a little.
After what happened with my ex-fiancée, I thought I was done with wanting to marry. Swore I’d never go near a ring again. Fuck, if I’m honest, the first thing I felt when she called it off was relief, and that should be telling enough. But if Alaina wanted it? If she looked at me with those stormy caramel eyes and asked?
I’d marry her in a heartbeat.
Delacroix shakes his head. “No weddings. Just understanding. She still loves him. She was in love with him for the last ten years, and don’t tell me you didn’t notice. That’s bullshit.”
Dane mutters, “Of course I knew, but she was a teenager.” Then he looks up at me, and his voice drops cold. “Did you just wait until she was old enough for it not to be a crime? You know, this shit looks a lot like grooming.”
“Are you serious?” I snap. “No. Fucking. Way. I never thought about her that way before you came back. You know me, Dane.”
“Yeah,” he mutters. “I thought I did. Thought my best friend wouldn’t have snuck around and fucked my sister behind my back.”
Luc steps in again. “You’re allowed to be pissed. You’re allowed to hate it, but Alaina is hurting badly, and she doesn’t need this right now. So can we, I don’t know, be adults?”
Dane scoffs. “You hardly count as an adult.”
“Still acting more like one than you right now,” Luc fires back. “I’m not asking you two to braid each other’s hair. Just figure out how to coexist. Without fists.”
The silence stretches between us, and I can’t hold Dane’s gaze, so I look down at my shoes.
Like the coward I apparently still am.
Delacroix sighs. “Here’s how this goes. Greer’s gonna grovel, and he’s gonna earn his way back into her good graces. And you, Dane, you’re gonna step back and let him.”
Dane explodes. “Why the hell would I let him? He doesn’t deserve her. I’m protecting her!”
“You don’t need to protect her from him. She can protect herself. Yeah, he fucked up, but she needs him, and he loves her. Don’t you?”
At Delacroix’s question, I look up and hold Dane’s gaze for the only truth I have to offer. “I do.”
Dane scoffs. “As much as your ex? You said you thought you loved her, but she just filled a hole. How do you know Alaina isn’t doing the same?”
“Because…” I say quietly, “… you and Alaina made that hole in the first place.”
That shuts him up.
His eyes narrow, not in anger this time, but like that truth lands, and maybe he finally sees that he left me, too, that he also hurt me a lot, but just in a different way.
I was the friend he abandoned first.
