Page 173 of My Three Billionaire Rockstars

Progress.

I push the door open anyway.

The studio office smells faintly of coffee and cedarwood, the buzz of equipment vibrating through the walls from somewhere deeper in the compound. Outside the windows, rain rolls steadily over the grounds, turning the trees beyond the gates dark and blurred.

Xander doesn’t look at me.

“We need to talk.”

“We already did.”

Not technically true. Yelling isn’t talking. It’s just louder avoidance.

I shut the door behind me carefully. “You’ve been avoiding me for two days. The only time we crossed paths is when we went to the bridge⁠—”

Maybe not the best time to bring that up, but I need him to talk to me.

His jaw flexes once. “You went behind my back.”

I lean against the opposite desk, folding my arms. “Dylan reached out because he wants help.”

“He reached out to you because he knew I’d tell him no.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”

Finally, Xander looks up, his eyes flat and emotionless. “He slept with my fiancée.”

I hold his stare evenly. “I’m aware.”

“And you still thought bringing him here was a good idea?”

“No,” I reply calmly. “I thought keeping one of the biggest rock bands of the last decade away from a label we’re trying to build was a bad business decision.”

His laugh is humorless. “Christ, Gabe.”

I let the silence settle before answering. Because this is the part people misunderstand about me. I don’t rush emotion; I wait it out until it stops clouding the real issue.

“You think I’m dismissing what he did,” I say. “I’m not.”

“Sure feels like it.”

“I’m saying your brother struggling helps no one. Not him. Not us. Not you.”

His expression hardens further. “This isn’t your problem to solve.”

No. It isn’t. But I look at the exhausted tension sitting permanently in his shoulders lately, the grief he carries around like a second spine, and the answer forms anyway.

“It became my problem when it started destroying you.”

That lands harder than he expects. I can tell because his fingers stop moving entirely.

Xander exhales and leans back in the chair, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “You don’t get it.”

“No,” I admit. “Probably not completely.”

Because grief changes shape depending on who’s carrying it, and Xander carries enough for three lifetimes.

But before I can continue, my phone buzzes in my pocket.