Page 73 of Falling For My Ex's Older Brother

"I'm done with that. Not with Logan specifically — with the whole pattern. If this is real then it deserves real words. And if it isn't, I need to know that."

Maggie nods slowly. She doesn't say anything else. She doesn't need to.

We sit together in the quiet of the apartment, the city outside going about its evening, and I hold the decision I've just made with both hands. It is terrifying, but it is absolutely necessary. It is the most clear-headed I've felt in months.

Tomorrow I'll find the moment. I'll find the words. Tonight I sit with the courage it's going to take to say them.

Chapter Nineteen

Logan

The texts comes through my phone at 6:47 in the evening.

Caleb: I'm outside.

I've been expecting it. Not tonight specifically — but I've known since my mother called after New York that the clock was running. I read it standing at my kitchen window with a glass of scotch I've barely touched. I set the glass down. I go to the door and I open it.

He's in the hallway with his jaw set and his hands shoved in his pockets and the specific energy of a man who has been building toward something for days and has finally arrived at the door where it happens. He looks like our father when he's angry — the same jaw, the same stillness that isn't actually stillness, the same controlled surface over something that is not controlled at all.

"Come in," I say.

He comes in. He looks around the apartment the way people look at spaces they've never been in — taking inventory, cataloging. He turns to face me.

"How long," he says. Not a question. A demand.

"Caleb—"

“—How long has it been going on with Sutton." His voice is tight.

"Don't manage me right now. Just answer."

"I’m not sure exactly…but it’s been about four or five months," I say.

The number lands. I watch it move through him — the jaw tightening further, something flashing behind his eyes that he forces back down.

"Four or five months." He repeats it slowly.

"And at no point in four or five months did you think to pick up the phone?" He takes a step further into the room.

"Not one call. Not one text. Hey Caleb, by the way—"

"You ended the relationship," I say.

"Over the phone. During her lunch break." I keep my voice level.

"You don't get to stand in my home acting like the aggrieved party."

"She was mine—"

“—She was a person you walked away from without the decency of a real conversation." I hold his gaze.

"Don't rewrite that."

His eyes flash. "You don't know anything about ourrelationship."

"I know you ended it in under five minutes while she was standing on a sidewalk." I pause.

"That's enough."