There were good things about having mindless work sometimes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one of those days, because with music pumping into my ears while I worked at my uncle’s desk, going through paperwork, all I could think about was Brooke and how I’d left her roughly thirty-six hours earlier. Sleep-rumpled, warm against my chest when I woke at dawn and realized I needed to get to work.

Even the twins still slept when I left, having stayed quiet the entire night before, the perfect freaking little angels. We’d taken advantage too. Somewhere around two a.m., I’d turned to Brooke with greedy hands, turning her onto her side so she could bite into her pillow while I wrapped myself around her back. Just like earlier, we hadn’t exchanged a single word, so every breath she let out seemed magnified in the quiet of her room. The quiet noises out of her mouth were sounds I wanted to clutch with my hands, see how they felt between my fingers, if they’d slip across my skin like her hair did, slick and soft.

I’d stayed in a woman’s bed the entire night, something that I’d never, ever done. And I knew exactly how long it had been since I walked out the door.

“Hey,” my uncle’s voice boomed through the shop. I yanked my earbuds out and lifted my chin at him in acknowledgment. “Can you check that pile at the end and make sure that estimate for the township building is ready to mail?”

His white hair was frazzled on a good day. Given that Clara, his secretary, was on a two-week vacation, it was even more crazy than usual since he actually had to handle all of his paperwork. Hence me stepping in before shit got too much worse. He swiped a ham-sized hand through the thin white strands and they stood straight up from his perpetually tan forehead. I swallowed my smile and gave him a thumbs-up because I didn’t feel like yelling over the sound of the circular saw running in the opposite corner.

My uncle’s shop—the place he ran his general contracting company out of—was busier in the fall and winter, oddly enough. During our busiest months, we ran in and out of the shop only to grab the things we needed before heading out to the work site. But during the slow season, when guys were searching for things to do, we spent a lot of time there. Thankfully, Tristan and I never got laid off during the slow season, since we were related, but not everyone had it that good.

At the back of the property was a woodworking shop, or Tristan’s Fortress of Solitude, as most guys referred to it. He did all of our custom work, and it allowed him to stay away from people—one of his favorite activities. After I pulled the door shut to my uncle’s office, blueprints filed, and estimate ready to mail at the top of the pile, I slipped my phone out of my back pocket when I felt it vibrate.

I had a missed call and voicemail from my mom plus two texts waiting on my lock screen. The first made me smile when I saw it was Brooke, the second made me stop walking.

Irritation sprang violently in my chest, for more than one reason. I’d already been annoyed with myself that I was completely aware of how long it had been since I left Brooke’s house, so now it felt compounded by her request for a night off. A night off from me, apparently.

And that was unfair, I recognized instantly. It was unfair, and really selfish. No one would argue that responsibility had never been listed as my top positive traits, especially when it came to women, but I’d never been a selfish guy. Brooke lying about Piper being sick wasn’t something she’d do. The work I would’ve been doing that night, installing her shiplap wall would require my nail gun and saw, which probably would be disruptive if you had a sick child.

But beyond that, Kaitlyn from Star Bar’s text was a visceral reminder that I was annoyed about the fact that Brooke and I had never discussed my past. It was my fault, so the annoyance was anchored heavily in being disappointed in myself.

Rationally, I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong by spending the night with Kaitlyn when I had. But seeing the text now felt … wrong.

About a week before I’d ended up at Brooke’s for the first time, I’d gone out for drinks with a few guys from work. Chris wanted to go to Star Bar, and that’s where I saw Kaitlyn. She was tall and blonde, the kind of buttoned-up beautiful that reminded me a little bit of Garrett’s wife Rory, and the way she pretended not to notice men staring at her had fascinated me.

It was exactly the kind of thing that I loved.

When I’d mentioned it to Chris and Gavin, they bet me thirty bucks that I couldn’t get her to talk to me, let alone get her to leave with me. There hadn’t been a single guy in the bar that she’d spared a single glance to. It was the exactly the kind of challenge I thrived on. Mainly because I was damn good at it. And it had only taken me about seven minutes to get her to turn completely in her stool to face me. And when she’d turned, she’d pressed her crossed legs up against me where I stood against the bar.

The next day at work, I told them I didn’t need the thirty bucks, because I was not the kind of guy who would produce proof of a well-spent night with a woman, and that had been my night with Kaitlyn. Her buttoned-up appearance at the bar turned out to be exactly that, appearance. Underneath it—as much as I didn’t want to think about my night spent with her now—she’d turned out to be wild. My back bore the marks of her fingernails for days after she walked out my front door four hours after she’d walked through it.

Of course, that was before I ever went to Brooke’s house. It wasn’t like I’d done anything wrong by sleeping with Kaitlyn, the first woman I’d actually taken home in a handful of months. But I was bothered by the memory nonetheless, in the wake of wishing I could spend more time with Brooke.

I’d been so wrapped up in whatever Brooke and I were doing the last three and a half weeks since I started working at her house that other women hadn’t taken up a single minute of my attention. I hadn’t texted anyone. Called anyone. Met up with anyone for drinks. Definitely hadn’t slept with anyone since walking through Brooke’s front door.

And I couldn’t even say what it was that Brooke and I were doing. How crazy was that? I wasn’t remotely interested in texting Kaitlyn back because of a non-definable relationship with a woman that I probably wouldn’t mind giving a definition to.

Absently, I rubbed at my chest, because weren’t these thoughts supposed to give me a heart attack or something? Shove me down a panic spiral that would send me to the nearest bar looking for a meaningless fling with a pretty face that didn’t make me want to be tied down?

Apparently not.

I made an abrupt pivot and pushed out the back entrance of the shop, shoving my hands into the front pockets of my pants against the brisk air. The frozen grass crunched noisily underneath my boots as I strode back to the woodworking shop and the puffs of air leaving my mouth turned into steam as I huffed unnecessarily.

When I pushed the double doors open into the shop, I didn’t see Tristan right away. The heavy strains of electric guitar blared from the speakers mounted on the wall, and the low hum of the orbital sander had me turning the corner to where he did most of his finishing work. The jarring light from the panels of fluorescent lights that hung in long strips along the ceiling had me squinting a bit. Out of habit, I slid my safety glasses off the top of my head and covered my eyes with them.

Sensing my approach, Tristan glanced over his shoulder and jerked his chin up, but the sander kept going as he wore down the edges of what looked like a bedside table. I leaned against the workbench in the middle of the room and waited for him to finish. When he clicked off the sander and blew the dust off, he took a second to run his hand over the edges to make sure it was smooth. Once he seemed satisfied, he picked up a remote and turned down the volume of Metallica.

“What’s up?” he asked, sander still in hand.

I scratched the side of my face and took a deep breath. Tristan narrowed his eyes at me and then set the sander down, which made my lips curve into a slight smile. My face must have matched what-the-hell-ever was going on inside of my head.

“I don’t really sleep around,” I said firmly, straightening to my full height and meeting Tristan’s slightly worried gaze straight-on. “I know you all think I do, but I don’t. I’m no priest or anything, but in the last eight years, I’ve probably slept with less than fifteen women.”

Tristan’s face was frozen, the only movement in the slight ticking of his jaw while he stared at me. Because of the fluorescent lights, there was a small reflection in his safety glasses and I couldn’t see his right eye clearly. For the first time that I could remember, I didn’t know what my brother was thinking. There was no disbelief anywhere on his features, but he was so still that I was a little unnerved by my inability to read him.

Naturally, that meant I couldn’t keep my damn mouth shut.

“I like flirting, yes. Hell, the first time I met Julia I flirted with her.” I shifted, crossing my arms over my chest. “Women are great. I like women. I like lots of different kinds of women, and no, I’ve never had a serious girlfriend. And yes, occasionally, I’ve been attracted enough to someone who’s also unattached that I’ve gone home with them, or taken them back to our place. But just because I’ve never understood you guys and your raging desire to shackle yourself to one woman for the rest of your life doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ve actually slept with half the female population of Denver.”

Tristan pulled in a slow breath through his nose and carefully pulled the safety glasses of his face. Okay, seeing that right eye without the glare of the lights didn’t help me quite as much as I thought it would. Because when he pulled his phone out, holding my eyes the entire time, I didn’t know what the hell he was thinking. I never didn’t know what my brother was thinking.

He glanced down briefly to click on his screen and then pulled the phone up to his ear.

“Yeah,” he said evenly after someone picked up. “Can you text Garrett and Cole? Meet us at our place with beer in twenty minutes.”

I narrowed my eyes as he listened to whatever Dylan was saying on the other end of the phone. Tristan narrowed his eyes right back.

“Uh-huh,” he responded. “Tell them it’s finally happened.”

“What finally happened?” I practically shouted as he disconnected the call with Dylan.

Then, quite miraculously, Tristan’s mouth curved in a noticeable smile.

I pointed my finger at him. “No. Stop it. I don’t know what the hell you’re smiling about, but it’s freaking me out and you’re wrong.”

His smile grew. Grew to the point that he almost showed teeth. Shit, shit, shit.

“No,” I said insistently, and I hated the tinge of panic in my voice. “I’m not going to whatever freaky intervention you guys think you’re about to pull on me. I take back everything I told you. I can drink beer with other people. Nice people. People who aren’t you assholes.”

* * *

“I hate you guys,” I mumbled around the mouth of my beer bottle as my friends roared with laughter.

Garrett pretended to wipe away a tear under his eye and I flipped him off. “I’m sorry, man. This is just … seeing you not knowing what the hell to do about a woman … it’s the best moment of my life so far.”

“I’ll make a point to tell your wife that,” I told him, which only made him laugh harder.

“Rory would completely back me up on this. In fact, she’ll probably be pissed she’s not here to witness it.”

There was loud agreement to that, and I rolled my eyes. Though, not everyone was laughing. Cole was being pretty quiet, just watching me carefully as I explained my current predicament.

The recap that I’d given them was this; For years, I’d never challenged their assumptions that I slept around injudiciously. For years, I wasn’t precisely avoiding commitment as they’d thought, I’d simply never met anyone who’d made me want to pursue it. Now … I had someone who did make me want to pursue it, and I had no damn idea what she felt about me. What she felt about us.

Low point of the evening so far was their jackass condescending remarks, with Garrett’s about it being the best day of his life as a prime example. The high point, I could grudgingly admit, was that no one doubted my sincerity when I told them my sexual history wasn’t exactly what they thought it was. Even though I still thought they were being asshole-ish, I knew I had good friends.

It was easy to be my age and still have friends that were idiots, who didn’t understand what it meant to be a man. That wasn’t the case for me. After growing up with only Tristan to look up to, I’d found myself surrounded by good, honorable men. And I knew that wasn’t something that I should ever take for granted. Over the years, I’d witnessed all but Tristan struggle through their own relationship issues, find love and be able to witness how happy they were because of that love.

Maybe they were the reason that I wasn’t flipping the hell out. Or maybe it was because Brooke was my match.

Even if she didn’t realize it yet. But what was I supposed to do to make her realize it? Spill my guts and bare my soul and hope that she wouldn’t run screaming?

That was doubtful. Brooke had always been an accepting person, understanding, never making me feel like a sleaze because of what people thought about me.

“So,” I started, and the conversations they’d been having quieted, “how do I tell Brooke this? What if she doesn’t believe me?”

Nobody spoke at first, and a Dylan and Cole exchanged a quick look that I couldn’t read.

“She’ll believe you,” Tristan said. “She’s got no reason not to.”

Garrett lifted a hand to interject. “But you guys haven’t defined anything yet, right?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “No, not exactly.”

“She’s got a lot on her plate, man. I’d wait until you have a conversation with her about what your relationship is, before you unload your past onto her shoulders.”

It made sense, and no one disagreed with him. Glancing around the group, it seemed like they agreed.

“Yeah. That makes sense.”

“That’s because I’m smart,” Garrett proclaimed, taking a bow. The self-satisfied look on his face made me want to punch him.

Instead, I rolled my eyes. “Uh-huh. Now can we move on?”

They all laughed again.

“There is nothing as interesting as this,” Garrett said.

Dylan cleared his throat and we looked over at him. Please, I prayed silently. Please let this be something really good.

“I might have something,” he said, smirking a little when he noticed how relieved I looked. Dylan set his beer down on the large butcher block island in the middle of our kitchen and shook his head for a second before taking a deep breath. “I bought an engagement ring for Kat yesterday.”

“That’s great, man,” I told him truthfully, while Garrett slapped him on the back and Tristan cracked open another beer for him.

“Thanks,” Dylan said. “We’ve been together for over two years, I don’t know why it scares the shit out of me so badly to ask her.”

“Because she’s everything to you,” Cole answered easily. “It doesn’t matter how sure you are of her answer, the woman who’s everything to you will always hold the most power to hurt you.”

“I’m sure of her answer.” And Dylan looked it. His eyes were clear, his forehead smoothed of any worried wrinkles. “I just have to figure out the perfect way to ask her now.”

“No pressure,” I said. “If you do something stupid, for the rest of your lives, you’ll have to deal with the consequences every single time Kat gets asked, so, how did Dylan propose to you?”

He flipped me his middle finger and I laughed. Yes, I was relieved that the spotlight was off me, and of course, I was happy for Dylan. He and Kat were two of my favorite people in the world. But Cole’s words slipped around in my head. Every time I repeated them, they gained significance.

Is that what held me back from exposing my underbelly to Brooke? Letting her see the sides of me that no other woman had? She meant more to me than anyone before her, and that did give her a tremendous power over me.

“You look like you’re thinking hard over there,” Cole said quietly while the other guys talked and laughed with Dylan. It was the first thing he’d said to me all night. And I understood, logically, at least, that he was giving me those thoughtful, hard-eyed looks all night because he was slipping into protective brother-in-law mode.

“I am,” I told him. “You know her better than anyone in this room, besides me. And let’s face it, they’ve been worthless so far with advice.”

Cole smiled a little, taking his time to think over his answer. “What is it that worries you?”

I lifted my eyebrows in surprise. “Well … I guess that I’ll be one more thing that makes her life more complicated. She’s got so much on her plate. I don’t want to make it worse. Maybe I should just wait and see how it plays out.”

He nodded, then gave a quick look to Tristan, who wasn’t paying us any attention. “You Whitfield brothers seem to have that in common, being attracted to women with complications.”

I snorted. Yeah, Anna being married certainly qualified. In that light, Brooke’s issues with Kevin and the sheer busy-ness of her life didn’t seem like such a complication after all. And while most men might consider the twins a complication, it was pretty surprising to realize that I didn’t. At all. They were part of her, they were more her world than any man would be, and that was something about Brooke that I respected, that I would never want to change.

Hell, maybe I’d loved the twins before I realized what Brooke could be to me. The potential she had to completely decimate my life, in the best way. And all Cole could do was point out the challenge I had ahead of me.

“See,” I pointed out. “Worthless. That doesn’t help me at all.”

Cole must have seen how miserable I was, and that’s because I felt miserable. I felt helpless and exposed, and I hated it.

“Look … if you’re worried about being one more thing in her life that’s complicated, then let her behavior be your guide. Maybe that sounds worthless, but you do know Brooke. If she wants you around, if she wants you to be more in her life, you’ll know it. She’s the one who’s juggling all of these things, so she’ll make it pretty clear when she’s ready to add something else into the mix. And if she does, you’ll know she means it.”