I sat in a chair in the living room with my eyes locked onto the wall. I heard Clay in the other room talking, and by the way he was talking I figured he was on the phone with our Public Relations department. He should’ve been on the phone with the damn police, trying to figure out where the hell Callie had gotten off to. She’d been gone for four solid hours and the sun was beginning to sink too low beyond the trees for my liking. I wanted to call her. To try and get her on the phone just to make sure she was all right. But I knew Callie, and if she ran off and needed space, then I needed to give that to her.

It didn’t stop me from wanting to get her on the phone, though.

“We’re only going to be reactive at this point. If he goes to the media, we’ll respond. But if nothing else is incited, then we won’t escalate the fight. Uh huh. Yep. That’s exactly what I told him. Prepare a statement just in case he fires off, but I don’t want anything else in the hands of the press unless Matthew opens his mouth first.”

I smoothed my finger across my lips as my chin sat against my thumb. I heard Clay hang up the phone before his foosteps backtracked into the room, and when he saw me he sat as far away from me as he could. I knew he was worried about Callie as well. It was honestly the only thing keeping him from ripping my head off. I knew my brother well. And I knew that look in his eye. He was ready to dig my grave next to Cathy’s in the cemetary, and I knew the only thing holding him back was Callie.

The same thing that kept me held behind that same line drawn in the sand.

My eyes kept falling to my watch, and every once in a while I felt Clay dart his gaze over to me. I wanted to address it. I wanted to start the conversation and fucking get it over with. Callie didn’t need to come back into this house with the kind of tension that had filled it since her abrupt leave. But if I opened up that can of worms, Clay would attack, and he wouldn’t stop until I was bleeding again on the floor. If there was one person he didn’t play around with, it was Callie.

My best bet was to let him come to me whenever the urge to kill me subsided.

I lost myself in my own mind. I allowed it to spiral as the minutes ticked on. All those things Callie said on the porch? I wanted all of it to be true. I wanted her to have wanted that between us. Hell, I wanted her to keep wanting it. Hearing her say it filled my chest with a hope I never thought I’d get when it came to her, and I prayed to every God that might have existed that she was speaking the truth. Not simply wanting to diffuse a tense situation.

Then again, there were things that didn’t add up. Despite the residual anger revolving around Matthew and him fucking showing up at the house, I was almost certain Callie knew he had been coming over. Had he been right? Had Callie actually invited him to come? And if so, why wouldn’t she tell me about something like that? Did she not trust me? Callie had never hidden anything from me before. If anything, I was the one she came to talk with in order to bypass the emotional reaction of her father. Of Clay. There wasn’t a thing about Callie’s life I didn’t know. There was nothing she went through as a teenager or a young adult that surprised me because she always called when she needed a sounding board.

Inviting that asshole over to this house was a monumental decision. And the first decision she ever hid from me.

“Did you ever touch her as a teenager?”

My brother’s voice ripped me from my trance and I slowly panned my eyes over to meet his.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Behind all those closed doors when she was younger. Did you ever touch her?” he asked.

I locked my gaze hard with his as my mind came to a static halt.

“Never,” I said.

“Did you ever think about it?”

“No. I didn’t have feelings for Callie then. Not even remotely.”

Clay scoffed and shook his head. A reaction that shot a dagger through my stomach.

“Do you really think I’d be attracted to a child, Clay?”

“You slept with one,” he said.

“Callie’s twenty-six years old. She’s hardly a child.”

“She’s my child.”

“Doesn’t mean she’s a child.”

“So, when did you start developing these feelings for your niece?” he asked sarcastically

I bit down onto the tip of my tongue to keep from correcting him. She was technically my niece. Technically, the only two in this scenario that were blood-related were myself and Clay. But I understood the barrier that had been thrown up in his mind. I understood the confusion he was experiencing. The mental block he was attempting to escape.

It was a mental block that had kept me away from Callie for years.

“The first time she came home from college,” I said.

“That was a rhetorical question, Colt.”

“It didn’t sound rhetorical.”

“Well, it was,” he said.

“You still deserved an honest answer anyway.”

“Chivalry and honesty aren’t going to get you anywhere right now.”

“I’m not trying to get anywhere. I’m simply trying to be honest with you about where I’m sitting and how I’m feeling,” I said.

“Well, do you honestly see how screwed up this is?” he asked.

“Every damn day of my life.”

And for a split second, I saw my brother’s gaze soften.

“But the truth is, it didn’t stop me from falling in love with Callie.”

“What?” Clay asked.

“Even though I fought myself when she came home after her freshman year and even though I harbored growing emotions towards her every day since, it didn’t stop me from falling in love with Callie, Clay.”

“You can’t be serious,” he said.

“With every fiber of my being, I am.”

His nostrils flared and his eyes widened. But as he slowly got out of his chair and parted his lips to speak, I heard the sound of tires rolling across the pavement. I shot up from my chair and my head whipped over to the door, and suddenly the tension fell from between my brother and I. It seemed we did a lot of that nowadays. Waiting for Callie to pull up. And I knew that was because we both loved her. We both cherished her. We both respected her.

Just in different ways.

I had to find a way to get my brother to see that. I had to find a way to get him to understand that I loved Callie. Truly. In the way a real man should love a woman. Our age? It wasn't an issue. Not to me, at least. The fact that I helped raise her? It was only a stepping stone to the trust we had between one another.

Well, the trust I thought Callie and I had.

When it came down to it, we weren’t related. Not by blood. Only by circumstance. Cathy fused all of us together. Callie’s mother had been the hub of our wheel. She united us into a familial unit. And in some ways, that made our bond stronger. We weren’t connected or bound by any mysterious societal norm that stated we had to respect and love one another because we shared DNA. We were all connected simply because we chose to be. We got to choose our family, and we chose Cathy and Callie. Just as they chose us. Just as Cathy chose to marry Clay and just as I chose to love Callie. And in some ways, that bond was tighter than anything related to blood.

And I had to find a way to get Clay to see that.