The past few weeks had been hell on fucking Earth.

Erika was gone, out of reach, and our past, my past, specifically, had clearly convinced her that I wasn’t worth her time or energy. Her love.

Fuck it, the normal Noah would’ve blown this off as nothing important, an inevitability, but this Noah? This Noah couldn’t brush it off. I’d fucking committed. I’d made this choice with my eyes wide open, and I’d paid for it with a punch to the gut.

My phone trilled in my pocket, and I snapped back to the present, to my living room where I sat, holding a glass of scotch in one hand and a cigar in the other. The Christmas tree was gone, all hints of who she’d been while she was under my roof missing.

Erika was the ghost of my past now.

I dug my cell out of my pocket and swiped my thumb across the screen, didn’t bother noting the Caller ID.

“This is Dr. Cox,” I said in the bland, gray voice that’d come on two weeks ago and never left.

“Noah.”

I sat up straighter, raised my eyebrows, swishing the scotch against the crystal tumbler. “This is unexpected,” I said.

“No one expected I’d call you less than me.”

“I believe that.” All the muscles in my body tensed, and I placed the tumbler on my coffee table, trembling out of frustration now. It would’ve been better not to do this, not to talk. Just to cut all ties to both of them. Easier for me, worse in the long run, no doubt. “What do you want?”

Marc sighed into the phone. My once-best friend was clearly less keen to be on this call than I was.

We weren’t best friends. We were brothers, and I broke my promise. “Marc?”

“I want to talk,” he said. “I need to see you, face to face. No bullshit. No yelling. There are some things you don’t know that you need to. Are you free?”

I eyed the scotch glass, a half-grimace, half-grin twisting my features. “You could say that.”

“I’ll be over in half an hour. I’ll bring Chinese.”

“All right,” I replied, because what else could I say to this? It was beyond weird that Marc, who’d sworn me off completely, would go back on his word and come over with fucking takeout instead. What was this, a slumber party? A chance to reconcile? I didn’t buy it.

“All right,” Marc echoed me, then hung up.

I got up and paced back and forth in front of my coffee table. Over the years, Marc and I had grown closer than blood brothers ever could. We’d been friends but never competitors. We’d been supportive of each other, and when times had gotten tough, we’d helped each other out.

It had been the epitome of a good friendship, a real one, and not inhibited by any bullshit.

Except the one secret I’d carried with me since the first day I’d encountered Marc and his sister. That one goddamn secret I’d kept so well and for too long until I just couldn’t keep it anymore.

“Fuck,” I muttered and scratched the stubble along my chin. The rasp of it under my fingernails was a comfort. Kept me in the present, not thinking about Erika.

Half an hour later, right on cue, the intercom buzzed.

“Yes?” I answered.

“Good evening, Dr. Cox. I’m calling from the front desk. I’ve got a visitor here for you—a Mr. Gray?”

“Send him up,” I replied.

“As you say, sir.”

I clicked off the line and walked through to the hall, my hands in my pockets. The elevator doors pinged open a few seconds later, and Marc stepped through them, holding a bag of Chinese, greasy at the bottom. He stopped just inside and tilted his head toward me, studying me from underneath his brow.

“Noah,” he said.

“You don’t say,” I replied. “Come on in. You sure you’re not in the mood to tackle me or some shit? Don’t feel like having a chow-mein-scented apartment.”

“Funny. Real funny.”

We walked through to the living room in silence, that frustration building in my gut and surely in his. What was he doing here? Why the fuck would he come now?

Marc set the food down on the table next to my now empty tumbler. I lifted it and tilted it toward him. “Drink?”

“Sure.”

I fixed him one, and one for myself, then returned as he unpacked the boxes of takeout. The scent should’ve made me hungry—fuck, I’d barely eaten a thing all day—but I couldn’t latch on to it.

I was fixated on this fucking scenario.

“Why are you here, Marc?” I asked. “Real talk. You wanted me out of your life not so long ago, and now you’re here with Chinese food and drinking my scotch?”

“I told you, we need to talk,” he replied, and opened one of the boxes. He broke apart a pair of chopsticks then tucked in to some orange chicken. “And I haven’t eaten all damn day.”

“So?” I took a sip of my drink, folded one arm across my chest. “Talk.”

Marc sighed, set down the chopsticks. “Really? Not gonna eat first? Fine. Fucking fine. I was trying to make this pleasant, or a little pleasant, at least. Seems like you’re not interested in making the conversation comfortable.”

“You’re damn right I’m not,” I replied and pressed the side of the glass to my jaw. “What the fuck’s up?”

“It’s Erika,” he replied, and picked up his scotch too. He drained the glass in one, then set it back down again.

My pulse rate picked up, but I kept my expression calm, impassive. Had to. Didn’t need Marc knowing just how fucking much I cared about her. About everything that had happened between us.

“It’s about you too, if I’m honest,” Marc continued. “About the way you’re both behaving. Noah, I might be an asshole, but I’m not blind. I know you’ve had a crush on her for a long time. I get that, but the truth is, I just can’t see you with her, now more so than ever.”

So he’d come to metaphorically kick me when I was down? But something in what he’d said caught my focus. “What do you mean? Why now?” The questions were demands.

Marc inhaled, sharply. “Things have changed. Drastically.”

“Spill it.”

This time, my ex-best friend exhaled. He cleared his throat. “I hate to do this, Noah, but—fuck it, we didn’t leave things on the best terms and I wanted to reach out and show you that I still give a shit about our friendship, even after everything that happened.”

This was like a comedian vamping the crowd before the main act came out. I waited, impatiently, tapping a finger against the side of my glass.

“A week after what happened in the hotel happened—” Marc started.

“You mean, a week after you attacked me and tried to prohibit your sister from seeing me?”

“Yes, that,” Marc replied. “A week after that, Erika started seeing her ex again.”

Ice descended on me. Torrents of it, entire waterfalls. Bullshit. I call bullshit on that. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked, on autopilot.

“Because you deserve to know the truth. I owe you that much at least. Owe you a chance to move past whatever it was you two thought you had.” Marc shrugged, unapologetic at the disdain in his tone. This was a whole new side to him. A side I’d never seen, simply because I’d never broken that damn promise, in all the years we’d been friends.

I tap-tap-tapped on the tumbler, waiting for whatever bullshit he’d feed me next.

“She started seeing him again,” Marc continued, “and today she contacted me and told me that she’s pregnant with his baby. That she’s happy. She—uh, she won’t listen to sense, and she told me if I can’t accept that she’s happy to be pregnant, that she’s happy with Jason, not to bother calling her again.”

“And so?” I asked, strangely immune to his words. To the meaning behind them. Like he’d spoken to me through a fucking dream, rather than across the room from me, twiddling those chopsticks, their tips stained. “What the hell do you want me to do about it? Talk to her?” My heart clenched like an iron fist.

“No!” Marc said, quickly. “No. I just wanted to let you know that whatever you had is over. Give you the providence to move on from what happened.”

“Thanks,” I said, stiffly. I didn’t move my drink, didn’t dare in case I spilled it everywhere. I shook like a motherfucking leaf during a hurricane. “I didn’t need to know any of this.”

“I know, but I owe you one, Noah. I owe you one.”

“I see.” None of it made sense. Jason had had a heavily pregnant fiancée at that restaurant, he’d been mocking her, and what was more, Erika couldn’t fucking get pregnant. She’d wept about it in my arms.

In my arms.

“I’m sorry,” Marc said, and lifted one of the boxes. “Spring roll?”

“I don’t believe it,” I replied.

Marc shut his eyes, shook his head. “Dude. Why would I lie to you? What purpose would I have to do that? Erika hasn’t spoken to you in four damn weeks, man, so why would I lie to you now when there’s nothing for me to gain from it? Or lose from it.”

I stared at him, unspeaking.

Memories of Erika rushed back.

Of me admitting I felt for her. That I loved her. Of tasting her and holding her. Of her pink nose in Central Park as the snow filtered down from the heavens and landed in her blonde hair. God, she’d filled the apartment with life. With Christmas spirit. With food. With her own special scent, and now it was gone.

In part due to my lies, and in part due to pressure from her brother.

“I just want what’s best for you and for her,” Marc said.

“And Jason is what’s best for her? That jackass is what’s best for her?”

“No,” Marc said, and put down the spring rolls, “but neither are you. All of this is out of my hands now.” Since when did he feel that way? “That’s all I came here to say.”

“Then you can leave,” I snapped.

“Noah—”

The rage I’d been holding back since he’d turned up here screamed into the forefront, and I burned red hot. “You heard me,” I said. “Get the fuck out. Leave. You said what you needed to say, you did whatever the hell you needed to do, now get out.”

Marc rose from the sofa, dropped the chopsticks on the coffee table, and shrugged. “Fine,” he said. “Fine. I’ll leave, but Noah—”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

Marc withered beneath my gaze. He took two sideways steps, like a crab scuttling back to its hole, then turned and walked for the exit. He disappeared from sight, and a few moments later, the elevator doors clicked closed.

I lowered myself to the armchair, digging my fingers into the upholstery. My ass hit the fabric and I launched myself up again—couldn’t sit. Couldn’t think.

She was with Jason again? She’d do that to herself after everything that had happened?

And she was pregnant, somehow, fucking miraculously, with his child. I couldn’t stand it. Made my skin crawl. Made me regret every damn second I’d given to her. Every longing thought.

“Fuck,” I yelled, and lifted the coffee table, tipped the food out onto the carpet. “Fuck!” I kicked spring rolls across the carpet, stormed for the hall and toward the elevator.

I reached the doors and stopped short.

What could I do? Go after her? Chase a woman who didn’t want what I had to offer?

That would never be me.

This was over. Finally, after all these damn years, it was over.

I punched the wall so hard my knuckles split.