Page 156 of My Brother’s Best Friends Entanglement

I wait for the follow-up, the argument, whatever question she's been practicing in her head, but they don't come. She just stands there, chest still heaving, looking at me like I've done something she'll never understand.

She doesn't have to.

“You need to let them finish the review. You'll be cleared, I know you will. You can't just leave. You love this job.” Her voice is full of pleading. “Rhys, I only worked with you for a few months, and I can already see how good you are at your job.”

“I'll find something else I'm good at. Something else I like even more.” I shrug. “It's just a job.” I look at her, the fatigue lining her eyes. “Have you not been sleeping again?”

She rubs her eyes, as if only just remembering she's tired, now that I've mentioned it. “I've been studying. It's only...”

“Ten days until your defence,” I finish for her. “You're going to do brilliantly. I know you will.”

She smiles a little, as if my remembering has touched her. “How do you know I will?”

“I'm good at my job, remember?” I give her a small smile. “Was good at my job. Which means I know exactly how good you are at yours.”

She swallows. “Why did you actually resign, Rhys? Can't you just tell me? It doesn't make any sense to me.”

“Because sometimes you have to know when it's time to let something go.”

Her face crumples.

I step in and press a kiss to her cheek, soft. “You're going to achieve everything you've ever dreamed of. I have never believed in anyone the way I believe in you.”

I drive away, watching her in the rear-view mirror the whole way, getting smaller, until the turn takes her out of frame, and the weight sitting in my chest is so vast there's room for nothing else.

Marcus

I am, by any reasonable measure, extremely drunk, and I am doing it at my own desk, at two p.m. on a Tuesday, which honestly feels like as good a time as any.

“And her laugh,” I tell Hunter, who is sitting across from me with his feet up on my desk, nursing the same beer from an hour ago. “Nobody laughs like that. It's not a girly, polite laugh. It's a real one. All throaty and chesty.” I sigh. “And speaking of her chest...”

“I... don't think we were, mate,” Hunter argues. But all I hear is profound agreement.

“Perfect chest. An' she reads with her finger tracing under the line. Like a kid. Grown woman, practically a doctor, sits all curled up in a chair reading like a kid. It's so fucking cute, I would die to see it again for just five minutes. I would actually die, Hunt.”

“Wouldn't recommend it,” Hunter says. “Bit permanent.”

Jack knocks and lets himself in before I can tell him not to, holding out a tablet with a paint swatch glowing on it, something he needs signed off on ASAP.

“Sorry, quick one, Boss. Which shade did the designer want for the Henley Street facade? Driftwood or Coastal Fog?”

I look at the swatch for a long moment, deeply, genuinely moved by it.

Such pretty colours.

“Who cares what the designer wants. Paint the whole street tha' colour. Paint the whole suburb. S'the exact colour of her eyes in the morning, before she's properly awake.”

Jack blinks. “Er, so... Coastal Fog?”

Hunter snorts and just shakes his head. “Can this wait until tomorrow? I think we might give your mighty leader a break from making any decisions today,” Hunter says, already steering Jack back out by the shoulder. “You're gonna be doing this every night now, aren't you,” he says, dropping back into the chair.

I glower at him as I reach for another beer. “What would you know about it?”

“Right, yeah. Heartbroken over a woman you were sharing with your brothers, the kind you'd drink yourself into a stupor over for weeks. What would I possibly know about that?” For a moment we both sink into the memory of us just like this a few months ago when he was half dead from his heartbreak over Aria.

“Shut up.” I try to point at him, and it takes my finger a full second longer than it should to actually land on him. “Why didn't you warn me this was gonna happen. You knew. You knew, and you let me walk right into it like an idiot.”

“Pfffft. Pretty sure I did warn you. Repeatedly. I told you the moment she was back that you were going to be fucked. That first day, you nailed your fucking shoe to the plank, remember? I knew you were going to be so fucking screwed.”