Callum chuckled but shook his head. “I’m taking them snowboarding after the holidays, but it’s a surprise and it turns out that it’s not that easy to keep that from him. I just needed a couple hours to prepare myself, is all. I’m not staying long.”
“Well, what about you?” Jameson turned the spotlight on me. “What’s your deal? I know you keep insisting Aurelia is only a friend, but youarealso engaged to her, so shouldn’t you be spending your time planning a wedding or something?”
My heart slammed against my ribs at the mention of the wedding. Callum was right about it not being easy to keep a surprise secret. In an attempt to appear nonchalant, I shrugged and took a sip of my coffee to buy myself a second.
My brothers were often like mind readers, especially Jameson. This had to come out right, or he’d know immediately that something was up. “We spend a ton of time together. I justwanted to come in to make sure we could hit the ground running in January, is all.”
“Uh-huh.” Jameson arched an eyebrow at me, those eyes sweeping across my face like he was searching for a sign of a lie. He must’ve found it, too. “You’re still insisting you’re just friends, huh?”
“Wearefriends,” I reiterated, because we really were. It just wasn’t all we were anymore, but I wasn’t trying to talk to them about our relationship. Just the memory of her in that white dress would give me away if I didn’t change the topic soon. “Why are you so hung up on this?”
“Because I think you’re underselling it.” He grinned like a shark. “Sadie and I were friends once too, and I was in love with her for so fucking long before I finally told her. I should’ve done it earlier, though. It would’ve made things a lot easier for us if I’d just pulled my head out of my ass and said it.”
I blinked a few times, realizing that I hadn’t told Aurelia that I loved her yet. Not because I didn’t feel it. I absolutely did, but because we’d been looking at this whole thing more through the lens of friendship until now. Friends with benefits, maybe, but it was so much more than that now.
Isn’t it? Holy shit. I’m in love with her.
The realization shocked me, but not to my core. Deep down, I suspected I’d known it for a while. I just hadn’t consciously confronted it yet.
Jameson lifted his soda can in mock salute, oblivious to the storm he’d just unleashed inside me. “That was us, though. I’m sure it’s different for you two, so here’s to you and yourfriend. May she keep you in line and make you realize sooner rather than later that you’re full of shit with this friendship spiel.”
Callum laughed, clinking his soda against Jameson’s. I sipped my coffee, rolling my eyes at them, but there wassuddenly a rock in the pit of my stomach. My brother, for all his faults, knew a thing or two about waiting almost too long.
Hell, Sadie had even gotten on a plane with another man because she’d doubted his feelings for her so deeply. Maybe things were different for Aurelia and me, for so many reasons, but that didn’t change the fact that I never wanted her to doubt me.
As if that wouldn’t have been enough, Callum leaned forward, his elbows braced on the table after he crumbled up the paper his sandwich had been in. A grin tugged at his mouth, softer than I was used to seeing from him.
“I should’ve told Maisie back in college that I was in love with her,” he said after a brief pause. “It would’ve changed my entire fucking life from that point forward if I had. I would’ve gotten to be there when Brody was born. We never would’ve lost so much time together.”
He let out a soft bark of laughter and pumped his eyebrows at me. “Owning up to the fact that I couldn’t live without her wasn’t easy, though. Even now. It’s a damn big thing to get your head wrapped around, that you’d literally take a bullet for another person rather than lose them.”
Jameson nodded emphatically. “Amen to that, brother. The thought of having to admit the truth had killed me. It kind of goes against the grain until you’ve actually just accepted it.”
“At which point, everything suddenly becomes easier,” Callum agreed, laughing before taking another sip of his soda. “I was in love with her for so long before I was ready to admit it. It seems stupid in retrospect, but it felt like telling her would change what we had. Somehow, I failed to consider that the change might be for thebetter.”
Jameson said something else and Callum responded. Their voices carried on as I sat there, cracked wide open after everything they’d just shared. Because it was all true for me, too.I didn’t quite know how or when it had happened, but Aurelia had become an essential part of my life.
Suddenly, I couldn’t just sit there anymore. I muttered an excuse about answering emails and raced out of the conference room with their laughter trailing after me. I was sure they knew I wasn’t running toward work right now.
Some part of me was running from the realization that they were right. That I was in love and that not saying it didn’t protect me. It just left the words lodged in my throat, choking me with the enormity of them.
By the time I pulled up in front of my house, the sky was washed gray again, more rain seemingly rolling in. Across the street, lights from Aurelia’s apartment building glowed warm against the chill.
I didn’t even think twice before I parked, jumped out of the car, and crossed the street. While she was essentially living with me now, she still had an office set up at her apartment and I knew she’d been planning on taking care of some last-minute wedding details over there.
My heart pounded in the elevator on the way up, a strange energy coursing through me. I couldn’t even remember the last time my hands had shook or my palms had been this sweaty, but it sure was happening now.
I burst into her apartment without knocking, walking through the meticulously neat living room and directly to her office. She was at her desk, her blonde hair up in a messy knot and an oversized pajama top hanging slightly off her shoulder.
She was completely absorbed in whatever she was doing, papers and color-coded tabs spread across the table. When the door clicked shut behind me, she turned, wide-eyed, and then she smiled in that way that made my stomach drop straight through the floor.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she teased, tilting her head. “What’s your deal?”
I stood there right inside the doorway, staring at her and wondering how the hell three little words could feel scarier than anything else I’d ever faced. Instead of answering her right away, I crossed the room, slid my hands to the back of her chair, and gave it a sharp tug. The wheels squeaked across the hardwood floor.
“Harrison!” she gasped and then burst into laughter, clutching the arms while I spun her toward me. “What are you doing?”
She managed the words between giggles, her ocean-blue eyes wide as she stared up at me. My voice came out rough, probably because this wasn’t a game. I wasn’t messing around or trying to be silly.
