I don’t move an inch as Oakley gets into his truck, the man pulling down the drive before long, dust kicking up behind his vehicle.
How the fuck does it hurt him, what we are? How is my not dating other men a reason to end things? Because…
Because I’m holding him back?
Because we’re onlyfucking around, as he said, and if Oakley is with me, he can’t find the person he wants to build a life with?
The person who, apparently, isn’t me.
Fuck.
“Law.” Remi’s voice is gentle. I turn, finding my youngest brother standing on the porch, the door open behind him. “You all right?”
“I… I don’t understand what just happened,” I admit, my chest so tight I can barely breathe.
“Colton’s an ass. That’s what.”
I huff a laugh entirely devoid of humor, scrubbing a hand over my face. “It’s not Colton’s fault. I don’t think.”
Remi seems to weigh his words as I glance out toward the dust in the driveway that’s yet to settle. “You really don’t feel that way about him?”
“Feel what way about who?”
He cocks his head when I look back at him. “You and Oakley. We all thought… Well, we all thought y’all were dating already. Except maybe Colt. Like I said, he’s an ass.”
That leaves me entirely confused. “What are you talking about? Colton didn’t ask me about dating Oakley. Heasked…”
I fall silent as the implication of my own words tumbles into place.
Remi blinks at me, shock on his face. “Law… Don’t you think Oakley would have taken what you said to mean you didn’t want to datehimeither?”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I bite out, having come to the same conclusion myself. “That sonofabitch.”
“Holy shit,” my brother whispers. “The swearing.”
“I gotta go. Where the fuck are my keys?”
“Here,” Jackson says, tossing my keyring through the open front door. “Go get ’im, brother.”
I take a step before remembering I’m not wearing any shoes. Jackson tosses my boots out the door, Remi laughing as I shove my feet hastily inside.
“What’s happening?” Colton calls, but I’m already stomping down the porch stairs, and I don’t stop.
Remi’s voice is light as he answers. “Lawson’s on his way to get his man.”
“Wait…” Colton says. “Lawson has a man?”
Jackson grumbles out a, “Good Lord,” and I leave my brothers to it, my mind firmly on Oakley and his incorrect assumptions.
The drive to his house feels endless. I pull the old acorn Oakley gave me when we were kids out from the center console, cradling it in my palm, my thumb rolling over the cap as I curse a good dozen times inside my head.
He thought, after everything that’s changed between us, after everything that hasn’t changed at all, he could end things that easily? He thought I wouldn’t care? That I’d just let him go? That I don’t want him with every fiber of my being?
I can tell even before I park that Oakley isn’t home. His truck is missing, the living room dark. Bell saunters over frombehind the house, looking at me through the fence, her tail swishing.
Frustrated, angry, and real damn hurt that Oakley wouldn’t fight harder for me, tokeepme, I turn my truck around and get back on the road. I call my best friend before I’ve even left the gravel of his drive.
It rings and rings before going to voicemail.
