Ryan

I fumed the rest of the way back to my place, my feelings growing and twisting in perfect time with each pound of my feet against the pavement.

Thump. She’s wrong about me.

Thump. Maybe she has a point.

Thump. Am I good enough to be in a kid’s life?

Thump. Of course I am.

Thump. Right?

It was only once I got home that I realized how hard I’d been running. Sweat dripped down my face, burning my eyes. My T-shirt was soaked, clinging to my chest and arms like a second skin. I tried to slow down my heart rate by sucking in long breaths and walking up and down the street in front of my place at a moderate pace.

I stretched for a moment to cool down my body before heading inside and upstairs to shower. Too bad none of it had had any effect on my emotions, which were still running on overdrive.

My anger mingled with the steam, heating the bathroom as I scrubbed myself clean. Disappointment rained like water down my back. Confusion made my emotions swing back and forth. But when my hard-on betrayed me, wanting her when it was supposed to hate her the same way I did, I got pissed off all over again, refusing to even touch it if it was going to betray me like that.

Annoyed with myself, I dried off and got ready for work. It was earlier than I needed to be at the bar, but I didn’t have anywhere else to be, and I was too pissed off to sit still. I closed my eyes and groaned as I imagined Frank giving me crap, calling me a princess for being so emotional, but I refused to let that stop me.

I wanted to talk to my brothers, needed to know that I wasn’t wrong for being this upset. Despite the shit they both loved to give me, there was no one I trusted more.

Okay, except for my mom. But I’d call her later if I needed to, once I sorted this all out my head and had a little clarity.

• • •

“You’re early.”

Frank’s voice boomed out the second I walked through the back door of our bar. It was like he sensed my arrival before he could even see it was me. Then again, only employees used that entrance, so I guessed it made sense.

“I was bored,” I lied, and he narrowed his green eyes at me. I tried to avoid his scrutiny by looking past him at the handful of customers.

“You’re never bored,” he shot back.

Ignoring him, I slipped behind the bar, hoping to work on some new cocktails before we got too busy. After gathering a lemon, a bitters liquor, apple brandy, and maple syrup, I measured ingredients and added them one by one into the glass, taking a small sip after each addition.

“What’s the matter?” Frank asked from behind me as I focused on the cocktail.

“Why do you think something’s wrong?”

“Because I know you. And you have that look.”

I stopped stirring and turned to face him. “What look?”

“That one.” He waved his finger at my face. “It’s the one that tells me when something’s bothering you. Plus, you get two little lines right here,” he tapped me between my eyes and I jerked back, “whenever you’re upset.”

I smoothed my expression, trying to make any possible lines go away, but all Frank did was laugh. No one had ever told me that before, but then again, maybe no one knew me well enough to know that about me.

“Where’s Nick?” I sipped the concoction I’d just made before pushing it toward Frank, who still hadn’t moved. “Try this.”

“He’ll be here later. Wanna wait until we’re both here so you don’t tell the same story twice?” Not waiting for my answer, he took a sip. “Shit, this is good.”

I nodded, because it was. “I’m going to add it to the board tonight. We’ll see how it sells.”

“What are you calling it?”

“Bad Apple,” I said without thinking.

“Bad Apple? You’re usually more creative than that,” he teased, even though he hated most of my drink names.

“It fits the drink and my mood.”

Frank’s eyes widened. “Forget waiting for Nick. Talk to me.” He dropped his notepad and pen on the counter and leaned back against the bar. “Is it the girl?”

Squeezing my eyes closed, I pinched the bridge of my nose while I thought about how exactly to say it. “It’s the girl,” I said, but then stopped.

“What about her? What happened?” When I didn’t answer right away, he said, “Look, I know I give you a bunch of shit all the time about being sensitive and girlie, but I don’t mean it. Well, you are sensitive and girlie, but I just like to tease you about it. If I thought it really bothered you, I’d stop, you know?”

I nodded because I knew it was the truth, and Frank went on.

“You and Nick helped me a lot with my situation when I didn’t think I wanted any help. But I needed it. I don’t know how I would have gotten through everything without you two.”

“But that’s what brothers do,” I said.

“Exactly.” Frank gave my shoulder a light punch. “That’s what brothers do. So, talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Sofia has a kid,” I blurted, then waited for Frank to wince or look horrified, have some sort of reaction, but he seemed unmoved.

“So?”

“So, she didn’t tell me.”

“Okay . . .” He dragged out the word, still not catching on as to why I was so upset.

“She didn’t tell me she had a kid because she doesn’t think I’m good enough to be around him.” There. I’d spelled it out for him plainly.

Frank’s face pinched into a pissed-off expression. “She said that?”

Now we were getting somewhere. I wanted someone else to be pissed off like I was. I needed my brother to get mad with me. Or at least tell me I had a right to be mad.

“She told me that I’m not the kind of guy she wants in her life. Said I’m not the type of man she’s looking for. Can you believe that?” I asked, resisting the urge clutch my stomach. Repeating her words out loud was like a knife to the guts.

Frank stayed quiet, processing what I’d just said. Being the most levelheaded and rational of the three of us, he rarely spoke without thinking first.

But his silence gave my self-doubt enough time to rear its destructive head again. What if Sofia had been right?

“I’m sorry, little brother. It’s clear that she doesn’t know you,” Frank said with a slight shake of his head. “Because anyone who would say something like that about you can’t know you. Out of the three of us, you’d absolutely be the one who would date someone with a kid. Hands down. I can even picture it in my head.”

“Then why couldn’t she?”

Frank lowered his voice, his words slow. “Because she doesn’t know you, Ryan.”

“She didn’t even try.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Is that why you’re upset? Because she didn’t give you a chance, or because she misjudged you?”

Scratching the back of my head, I pulled at it, cracking my neck. “I’m pissed that she made the decision for me without even asking. I had no say at all. I kept pursuing her, begging her to go out with me, and it was stupid. She was never going to say yes. And she was never going to tell me why, either.”

“It’s a little messed up, to be honest.”

“Which part?”

Frank sighed. “All of it, I guess. I have no idea what it’s like to be a parent, so I can’t know what she was thinking, but it’s her loss, man. It’s totally her loss.”

I knew that. Somewhere deep down in me, I knew that was true. But why didn’t it feel like it? Why did it feel like I was the one losing somehow?

“I’m just so fucking mad,” I admitted.

Frank stepped close and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “I would be too. I’d be pissed. Especially if I knew she was dead wrong. That’s the worst part, how absolutely off base she is.”

“The worst part for me is how much more I wanted her after learning she has a son, you know?” I swallowed, my throat feeling thick. “It was like a switch flipped on inside me, and everything made sense.”

“What made sense?”

“How she pushed me away all the time and didn’t want me to get close. At first, I thought it was a defense mechanism. Then I realized it was because she didn’t think I’d be good enough for her son.”

“Did you tell her that?”

“I told her a lot of things.” I winced slightly as I thought back on what I’d said.

“How’d she take it? What’d she have to say about it?”

“I might have run off,” I said, bracing for Frank’s reaction.

He laughed. “You ran away from her?”

“It was either leave or end up fighting someone. I was kinda riled up.” Then I remembered the encounter that brought me to Sofia in the first place. “Oh, I almost forgot.”

“Hold that thought,” Frank said before greeting a couple who had walked in.

While I waited, I whipped up a few Bad Apples and poured them into sample glasses. Walking around the bar, I handed them out to our customers to try—on the house, of course—before I made my way back to Frank, who was free again.

“Go on.” He circled a hand in the air, encouraging me to get it all out. We were running out of time to have a serious discussion before the bar got busy.

“The whole reason I even saw her today was because she was fighting with some guy. He was threatening her. She seemed really upset.”

“Who was it?”

“Her kid’s father, apparently.”

Frank shrugged. “Maybe you dodged a bullet with that one. Sounds like there’s a lot of drama there, and that’s the last thing any of us need.”

I couldn’t help but agree with that assessment, but something still didn’t sit right with me. Their interaction hadn’t seemed cordial at all. It had been strained, uncomfortable, and confrontational.

“What’s with the face, sourpuss?”

Grant’s gruff voice snagged my attention, and I smiled for what felt like the first time all day. Turning to face him, I put on a straight face so I could give him shit.

“Who let you in, old man?”

“Who’s gonna try and stop me?”

I drew him a beer like he usually ordered, but when I slid it to him, Grant grimaced.

“Maybe I wanted whiskey.”

I pushed it closer. “Drink this first.”

“Gonna tell me what’s eating you?” he asked, but Nick arrived before I could respond.

“The best-looking Fisher brother has finally arrived,” Nick called out, but his smug expression quickly faded when he saw my face. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been asking him the same thing since I sat down,” Grant said with a harrumph, and Nick gave me a quick once-over.

“You’ve been here for two seconds.” I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Tell us,” Nick insisted, and Grant huffed out an agreeing sound.

“Not now. Later.” I wanted to put Nick at ease, but he wouldn’t give up that easily. My little brother was nothing if not persistent. He reminded me of someone else I knew.

Nick raised an eyebrow at me. “Don’t make me wait until we close. I’ll die of curiosity before then, and I’ll create a hundred crazy scenarios in my head. At least give me the CliffsNotes version.”

I couldn’t help but smirk as I led him out of the customers’ earshot. “I found out Sofia has a son, and that’s why she wanted nothing to do with me. Because she thought I wasn’t good for her or him. The end.”

“No way. She has a son? How old is he?”

Odd first question. “Eight.”

“And she thought you’d be, what, a bad influence on him or something?” Nick sounded sincerely perplexed as he dropped his keys in the drawer and then adjusted the baseball hat on his head.

My jaw worked back and forth. “I guess.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling marginally better for the support.

“No, really. I mean it. She wasn’t obligated to tell you she has a kid, but for her to honestly think that you’d be a bad influence on him is ridiculous.”

A thought hit me, and I walked back toward Grant’s seat at the bar. “Did you know, old man?”

“Did I know what?” He sipped his beer, his attitude surly.

“That she had a kid.”

“Who has a—” He paused midsentence as the dots must have connected in his head. “Sofia has a kid?”

“You didn’t know?”

“I had no idea.”

“I guess the whole bartender thing isn’t what she’s looking for in a baby daddy,” Frank said, and I stopped myself from chuckling at the words baby daddy coming out of his mouth.

“Or maybe it is.” Nick jerked his chin toward the front entrance, and the three of us turned in time to see Sofia walk in, scanning the bar.

For me.