Chapter Thirty-Two

Damn!” Tyler said, sitting back with a stunned look on his face. “You just continually decide to fuck up, don’t you?”

“You’re a moron, Blake. This was low, even for you …,” Byron added.

“I didn’t tell you because … hell, even when I was doing it, I knew it was wrong. I started out with the process because I was pissed and then I continued because I wanted Jewell to stay. I needed a reason for her to stay,” Blake said.

He’d never actually done something this big without speaking to his brothers. They didn’t grow sentimental very often, but they discussed everything in business and life, and this was something he should have shared with them.

Jewell had been gone for three days, and she refused to talk to him. She’d called the house and had spoken to Justin, and her brother was none the wiser about what was going on. But they weren’t going to be able to keep it from him much longer. The boy was going to wonder why Jewell wasn’t coming home. Blake could only say she was away for business for so long before the boy figured out the deceit.

“Maybe she’s relieved,” Blake told his brothers. “She’s felt so much pressure to take care of Justin, and maybe now that she knows his future is assured, she’s ecstatic and just wants to be free of the obligation.” He’d just admitted his biggest fear.

“Probably,” Byron grumbled, but even he didn’t look convinced.

“I don’t think so,” Tyler said. “She loves you, Blake, and she loves Justin. There’s no way she would walk away unless she thought she had to.”

“I don’t know what else to think,” Blake said with a heavy sigh.

Tyler started to fire off questions. “What exactly did she say? How did she act? What have you done lately? Think deeper.”

“What do you want me to say?” Blake thundered. “This isn’t helping.”

“There has to be more to this than finding out you stole her brother out from under her — though that is a big deal,” Tyler said. “But if you’re man and wife, that doesn’t matter. Because even if you legally adopted him, he’s still with her, too. I’ve seen the way Jewell looks at you, and looks at her brother. She loves you both immeasurably. For her to walk away, there has to be something else going on.” He sounded almost as if he were speaking to a child.

“Maybe you broke her,” Byron said with a sneer.

Blake stopped as he stared at his brother. “What?”

“Oh, hell, Blake, don’t get all melodramatic on me. I was just kidding,” Byron said, and he tried to look as if he didn’t care.

But Blake knew his brother cared. That thought somehow made him stop again. He thought back to the last few months, thought of all his times with Jewell, of the good and the bad, of the laughter and tears, the desperation and the peace.

“She does know that you love her, right?” Tyler asked.

“Of course she does,” Blake said, but then the wheels of his brain really started turning.

Tyler pushed. “Because you’ve told her?”

Blake paused as he thought back on their time together. Had he actually told her how much he loved her? Of course he had. But as he racked his mind, he couldn’t think of a single instance that he’d actually said so. Crap!

“Not with words,” Blake finally replied.

“You guys are being ridiculous!” Byron thundered. “Are you listening to what you are saying? Do you want to be just like our father?”

Byron stood up, his chair flying behind him, and both Blake and Tyler watched as he stormed from the room. They sat there a few more moments in stunned silence before Tyler spoke again.

“Don’t let this woman get away from you, Blake, or you’ll go back to feeling and acting like that,” he said as he looked toward the door.

“Byron is fine,” Blake said. But he couldn’t deny what Tyler had just told him. He wasn’t just like his father, but he had been just like his brother, and not too long ago — not trusting anyone, lying as easily as he spoke the truth, and treating women as nothing more than play toys whose only purpose was to please him.

He didn’t want to be that man anymore. He wanted to be the man in love with Jewell. He was the man in love with Jewell. “I haven’t said the words, Tyler, but she has to know how much I love her.”

“How can she know if you haven’t told her?” Tyler asked.

“Because I show her every single day. We make love and it’s burning in my eyes. We snuggle on the couch and I have to touch her. With everything I do, every hour of every single day, I have her in mind. She’s my world, she and Justin both, and I can’t even imagine living without them now. Is that romantic enough for you? Sensitive enough, little bro?”

“Why are you telling me this, and not her?” Tyler asked.

“I … I don’t know,” Blake said. Was he the biggest of fools? It felt like it.

“Look, she’s had a rough year, Blake, and even though you were an ass, she still managed to fall for you totally. So you get this great woman, and she has a brother she adores, a boy you’ve grown to love as well, and now you get him too, and then you don’t tell her you’ve adopted him, and you don’t tell her how much you love her. What do you think she’s thinking right now?”

“I don’t know!” Blake shouted.

“She’s thinking that she’s disposable.”

“How could she possibly think that?”

“If you ever figure out how a woman’s mind works, then please enlighten us all,” Tyler said, attempting a joke. Blake wasn’t in the mood.

“I won’t lose her, Tyler. I can’t!”

“Then go and fight for her,” Tyler told him.

“How can I fight for her if she won’t even talk to me?” Blake asked, furious that he sounded so weak right now.

“You have to prove to her that you love her,” Tyler said. “And, Blake, it won’t be easy, because now she has walls in place. So you’d better have one hell of a plan before you storm the fortress.”

When Blake left the office building, he had no idea what he was going to do. But he planned to figure it out before he went after Jewell. He’d been foolish their entire relationship. He was done with being that man. If man was really the word for what he’d been.