Jack met my eyes in the dim light, met my fury with a bravery I hadn’t expected him to possess. “I know,” he agreed. “I don’t have a right to do the protective big brother shit. To pretend to know what’s best for her.” He rubbed his arms. “I remember who she was as a little girl. So full of hope. Excitement for leaving our small town. Seeing the world.” He tapped the side of the chair, and I entertained the thought of breaking his fingers, wondering if that would be preferable to what I was hearing right now.
“In my eyes, she went from our shitty childhood straight to a shitty marriage and then … here.” He held out his hands to the backyard, to me. “Not that her life here is shitty,” he added quickly. “Quite the opposite. It’s exactly what I would want for her. What she probably wants. Safety. Security. Family. All good things. I just wonder…” He trailed off.
I wanted to tear the arms of my chair off. “Just wonder …what?” I demanded.
He shrugged, as if he weren’t pulling at threads to unravel my entire fucking world. “I just wonder if she’s ever had time to consider what she really wants. Who she really is. To remember she was a little girl who talked about backpacking around Africa.”
Backpacking around Africa? Hannah had never mentioned that. Sure, it could’ve been because you wanted to do a lot of things when you were a kid, then you grew up, changed. Or it could’ve been that she couldn’t do that now, inside the life she had with me. Us.
Acid crawled up my throat like heartburn.
“I left my wife,” Jack informed me, unaware of the fucking volcano he’d awakened. “It took me a long time to admit to myself how much damage I let her do to the people who mattered. I’m here trying to make amends, trying to be a good brother. I’m under no illusions that I’m going to save her from anything—she’s done that herself. I just want to … get to know her again. And since it seems that you’re going to be a permanent fixture in her life, I’d like to be able to visit without the death stares.”
He smiled weakly.
“Can we make a peace treaty? For Hannah?”
He held out his hand. I was only half listening. Half there. Because I was acting on instinct, I shook his hand.
“You hurt Hannah again, you answer to me,” I barked. Even deep in my panic, I could make that threat.
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Jack replied, standing.
“Now I’m going to sacrifice my manhood by going inside and getting warm. Thank you for listening.”
I nodded curtly, no longer able to speak. Not now with that fucking voice roaring in my ear.
Thanks to Jack fucking Morgan.
HANNAH
Jack left without any wreckage in his wake, and I tried to believe there was none in my future. It helped that Beau was taking me on a date.
A real-life date. Early dinner. At the fanciest restaurant in town.
“I’ve done this kind of backward,” Beau admitted sheepishly—the day my brother left. It made me wonder if Jack had tried some bullshit big brother routine that made him feel guilty. I suspected something was the case, since I’d come from putting Hannah to bed to both of them walking inside, Jack red-cheeked from the cold, Beau’s face stony and unreadable.
My stomach had lurched seeing that, wondering what Jack could’ve said to ruin everything, but Beau had assured me he was just pissed at him for being a “cowardly piece of shit.”
I should’ve wanted my brother and my boyfriend to get along, but I knew Beau’s anger toward my brother came from the intensity of his feelings toward me. He loved me, I reminded myself when my nervous system piqued with his longer-than-normal silences, the way he made love to me like he was a man going to war.
“I should’ve wined and dined you then tried to seduce you,” he muttered when he proposed the date.
I grinned at him. “Well,Iactually seducedyou,” I corrected. “Something I would’ve done a lot earlier—one green light from you and I would’ve been all over you.”
Beau shook his head, the corner of his mouth twitching. He hadn’t smiled entirely since Jack’s departure. “Thank fuck I am not a mind reader because this would’ve happened a lot sooner.”
“Would that have been bad if it happened sooner?” I asked, questioning whether it would’ve saved me some emotional bruises. I was venturing into dangerous territory, trying to rewrite the past.
“No,” Beau said carefully, noting my reaction. “But, as much as I regret the way I treated you, I liked you nurturing your relationship with Clara first. Her falling for you at the same time as me. I liked watching you, learning you.” His brows knitted. “Even if I’ve got a fuck of a lot more to learn.”
Right answer.
He cleared his throat, loudly, as if he were about to throw me on the bed there and then—I would’ve let him too—Clara was in her room listening to music. Not appropriate.
He walked into the closet instead, bringing out a garment bag.
“Calliope did all this,” he explained, setting it on the bed. He walked back to get a shoe box. Even I, not obsessed with fashion, knew the script on the shoe box and my pulse spiked.
