I gripped Brody’s shirt to stop him from going. “What are you saying? You can’t do this Brody. You can’t.”

“Tim, it’s over. She’s still in love with Bryce. I can’t shake her. I don’t know if I want to anymore.” He pried my hands off him.

“Let me take her in.”

“No, Ryan is expecting me.” He placed his hand on my shoulder. “I took care of things this time. I don’t need you to clean up this mess. I made it. I’m cleaning it up.” He patted my neck and went upstairs.

I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and turned it on. I didn’t care if they could trace me to his house or not. I needed to call Ryan. I ran to the car and dialed him on the way. When it started to ring, I placed the call on speakerphone and set it on the console. I needed to get to Ryan before Brody did.

“I was wondering when you were going to call me. I must say I’m disappointed you didn’t call me when this whole fiasco started.” Ryan was like a second father to Brody, but I never felt that connection.

“You can’t do this, Ryan. Prison will kill him.” I backed out of the drive and sped to Ryan’s office. “I’m coming to talk to you. Call Brody and tell him to stay put.”

“I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that.”

“You’re the district attorney! You can do anything.”

“That woman has been through enough already. The only reason I’m allowing him to bring her in is because I don’t want her father to catch wind of it. If one of my guys pulls in, he’ll be called immediately. Then he’ll run.”

“He’s watching the house?”

“I sent a couple of people out to watch the house while Brody was telling me his incredible story. They spotted someone watching, too. I can only assume he’s one of Mosley’s guys.”

“Let’s talk about this. You’re the district attorney. You have the power to help him. I’m on my way. Just please, let’s talk about this.”

“I’m not at the office, Tim. I don’t know how things are going to work out tonight, but Brody knows what he has to do. You have to let him. I’m proud he’s facing this. You should be proud, too. There are so many other options that he could’ve done. Each of them would’ve been tragic. He’s doing the right thing.”

“You’ve made a deal with him, right? Please tell me he’s at least been smart enough to make a fucking deal!”

“He has. I can’t tell you what those conditions are just yet, but Brody knows what he needs to do. Go home, Tim. I’ll call you later.”

“I want Brody to call me later. You got that? Brody calls me.”

“Fine. I’ll have Brody call you later.”

I hung up and pounded on the steering wheel. I hated not being able to take care of it for Brody. I hated he was facing prison. He wouldn’t survive it again. He wouldn’t stay clean. I wasn’t ready to lose my brother.

I should’ve turned right. I should’ve been driving to my own apartment to wait for whatever outcome that night held. The last thing I wanted to be was alone and the only one I wanted to go to was April. She needed to hear the truth from me anyway. She deserved that much.

I pulled into her parking lot and jumped out as soon as the car stopped. I didn’t know how much time we had before it hit the news. She needed to hear it from me.

I skipped the doorbell and pounded on her door until she opened it. I wanted to collapse when I saw her, but I had to stay strong. I had to stay strong for her and for Brody and whatever hell he unleashed on himself. I got my strength from April.

I pulled her face to mine and kissed her before she said anything. I wrapped my arms around her and tried to protect her from everything I had to tell her. I had no answers for what would happen to the center or to us. We could lose it all. I could lose her. I kissed her harder.

“Tim.” She spoke when she could. “Stop.” She pushed on my chest. “Stop.”

I put my forehead to hers and tried to catch my breath. “Don’t leave me.”

She shut the door and directed me to the living room. “What is going on?”

I reached down and grabbed the remote to turn the television off. “I don’t want to watch that.” I took my phone out and turned it all the way up before placing it on the coffee table.

“You’re frightening me. I need to know what’s going on.”

“Brody’s going to call when it’s over.”

“Okay. When what’s over? The thing he’s been dealing with?”

“Yes.” I wrung my hands together and paced the room. How did I tell her what I’d been keeping from her? How did I convince her not to leave me when I admitted my role in kidnapping an innocent woman? I was fucked.

She walked over to me and held my face when she reached me. “Sweetie, I need you to start from the beginning.” She brought my face back to hers when I tried to look away. “Tim, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on. I want to help you.” She pulled me down and put her forehead to mine. “Please, baby. Please, let me help you.”

The moment I made the decision to tell her the truth, it all flowed out. I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to. Not even if she wanted to stop listening after she learned the truth. I had to tell her everything.

“Joshua Mosley hired Brody to kidnap his own daughter.” I braced myself for her to let go, but all she did was lift her head to look me in the eyes. “He didn’t like the man she fell in love with and hired Brody to treat it like an addiction. I tried to talk him out of it. I tried to get him to understand what a crazy idea it was. That you can’t just make someone fall out of love with someone because you want them to.”

I held her face. I needed her to see in my eyes what I couldn’t say. What I didn’t deserve to say. I still needed her to know. “Once your heart is filled with that one person who drives you crazy and keeps you sane at the same time, there’s no going back from that. No one else will ever be able to fill that void.”

She closed her eyes as if she knew exactly what I was saying to her and she didn’t know how to react. She walked over to her glass of wine. I had to tell her all of it before she kicked me out.

“Brody got caught up in it. He fell in love with her or what he thinks is love. He’s never allowed himself to feel what he thought she was making him feel. I told him she would never love him. I told him that. She was just trying to gain his trust to get out of that room.”

I followed her as she went to her kitchen for more wine. “Things got a little hot between them last week.” She glanced my way. “He didn’t force himself on her or anything, but he thought things were progressing in his favor. Then they had sex last night.”

April set the bottle on the counter a little harder than usual. “You went over there late last night.”

“Yeah, I was worried when he wouldn’t answer his phone.”

“Did you? No, I don’t want to know.” She shook her head and started to walk past me to the living room, but I stopped her.

“I never laid a finger on her sexually or otherwise. I never touched her.”

“No, you just sat back while your brother did all the dirty work. Is that why you turn your phone off? You don’t want to be disturbed. Isn’t that what you said?”

“I turn my phone off so they couldn’t track me there. I was trying to not give them evidence against me. I didn’t want to be involved.”

“But you are involved. It sounds like Brody had a fuck toy for all these months. What was in it for you, Tim?”

I took a step back. “Nothing. He was determined to go through with it. I couldn’t stop him.”

“Yes, you could’ve stopped it. You could’ve called the police.”

“I was worried what Joshua Mosley was going to do. He isn’t someone to fuck with.”

“No, you can just fuck with his daughter instead!” She took a drink of her wine. “You are just as guilty of kidnapping this woman. Do you even get that?” She huffed as she turned. “It doesn’t even matter now. It’s done.”

I grabbed her arm as she walked away. “I didn’t fuck with her!”

She shoved me. “You didn’t stop it. That is fucking with her!” She put the back of her hand against her mouth. I wasn’t sure if it was to stop herself from crying, talking, or vomiting. “What happens now? Where is she?”

“Brody turned himself in.”

“What did he do? Where is she?”

“When I got there last night, he was in the office watching her. She regretted sleeping with him.”

She shook her head. “What do you mean he was watching her?”

I ran my hands through my hair. “I told you he got caught up in it. He became obsessed with making her love him. He put a camera in her room and would watch her. She was on the bed, crying. She kept saying she was sorry to her fiancé.”

“Wait. He was there?”

“No. She was doing whatever she could to get out of that room.” I sighed and closed my eyes. “She slept with Brody to earn his trust. She wanted him to think she was falling for him so he would let her out. She regretted it and just kept apologizing to a man who wasn’t even there.”

“What happens now?”

“I don’t know. Brody told me he wanted to make a deal with Joshua Mosley to give her back, but he went to the District Attorney Ryan Wilcox instead. He made some deal with him to turn himself in.”

“What kind of deal?”

“I don’t know. Brody told me he was cleaning up his mess, but that’s all he would say. I talked to Ryan and he won’t tell me what’s going on, either.”

“Where is everyone now? What call are you waiting on?”

“Brody is taking Laney to Ryan. That’s all I know.”

“What happens after that?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“What happens to you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“You don’t care?” I ducked as the wine glass flew past me and shattered against her wall. “What about me, Tim? Do you care what happens to me? Do you care about me at all, or was I just a good time to you? Was I something to pass the time until you could go back over to the woman Brody had tied up?”

“Of course, I care about you.” I walked to her and tried to hold her.

She batted my hands away when I tried to touch her. “Don’t!” She took a shaky breath. “Don’t ever think of touching me again. How dare you!” She pushed me back a few steps. “How dare you come into my personal life and make me feel as though I was someone special to you.”

“You are.”

She shoved me again. “How dare you set me up for failure by entering my bed!”

“What are you talking about?”

“How dare you make me start to fall for you only to not care enough to keep yourself safe!” She started beating my chest. “What happens to us if you go to prison? Did you ever think of that?” She kept hitting me as I wrapped my arms around her. “How dare you give me us knowing it could be ripped away at any moment!” She cried into my chest the moment I held her, “How dare you.” She gripped my shirt.

I felt like a shit. She was right. I didn’t think about her or us. I thought about Brody and what I could do to protect him. I’d been protecting him all my life. I protected him from our father who hated everything about Brody. I protected him from failing school by doing his homework for him. I protected him from our mother’s ailing health by never asking him to care for her when she needed it. I made sure I was always there.

April was right to be angry with me. If by some chance she stayed with me after Brody’s latest mess was settled, I had to make her and us a priority. We had to come first. Brody needed to learn how to take care of himself.

We both looked at the phone when it rang. April stepped to the side and motioned to it. “You need to get that.”

My hand shook as I reached for the phone that displayed Ryan’s name. I blew out a breath before I answered. “You said Brody would call. Where’s Brody?”

“Tim, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“Brody’s been—”

“Don’t you fucking say it!”

“You need to come to the hospital. Brody’s been shot. It’s bad.”

“How the fuck did he get shot, Ryan? I thought you were going to take care of him. I thought you were going to protect him!”

“Come to the hospital. Brody needs you.” He hung up.

“Motherfucker!” I turned to find April, but she was already at the door with her wallet and keys in hand.