Rule number one: We need her to remember you for the man you were, not”—Cole gave Brant an antagonizing look and shoved him toward the meditation tent—“the jackass you are.”
“I’m not a jackass.”
“Denial won’t help you.”
Brant clenched his teeth. “I’m only an ass to you.”
“You slept with her and abandoned her, and that was yesterday,” Cole pointed out. “You wrote her up, threatened to fire her, have been—“
“Fine, I get it, I’m an ass.” Brant held up his hand to get Cole to stop talking.
They walked toward the tent near the back of the resort. Outside of the tent, Brock, Bentley, and his grandfather all sat around a campfire with nothing on but shorts. Sweat poured down their backs, and Brock had just spit out an insane amount of water only to take another swig and glare at Bentley.
Cole rolled his eyes as both men approached the group sitting out by the fire. “So, how’s the Zen program?”
Brock shot daggers in Cole’s direction. “Bentley saw a bright light, then asked Jesus to take the wheel, all the while shoving Grandfather, aka the wheel in this scenario, toward the flames. All in all, it’s been a great start to our afternoon. Sad you missed it.”
Bentley dumped water over his head and cursed. “It was hot as hell in there.”
“Behold!” Grandfather held out his arms to Brant. “Your future, should you choose not to take your head out of your ass. Hell.” He pointed to the tent. “But I think the real thing is a lot hotter.”
“Yeah, I’m going to have to pass.” Brant tried turning around but Cole blocked his every move. “Seriously, man?”
“You need all the help you can get, and you need people who actually put up with you on your side. I don’t count since I’m still on her team.”
“I like him,” Bentley piped up.
Brock patted the wooden seat next to him.
“You may enter the circle.” Grandfather spread his arms wide. “How’s the resort business? Nadine says you’ve managed this place quite well.”
“Let’s talk business later.” Cole eyed Brant.
With a grimace, Brant sat next to his grandfather and waited. The flames licked higher and higher, and with the intensity of the heat, Brant wanted nothing more than to back away.
He hated fires. Nothing good ever came from fires. They burned. They destroyed.
“So what brings you out here, then?” Grandfather interrupted Brant’s dark thoughts. Already Brant wanted to bolt; each flame licked higher and higher, reminding him of things he’d rather forget. “So far, the Zen program has been quite enlightening. We spent the last half hour in meditation sweating our asses off and came out here for a quick break before going back in.”
“You go right ahead,” Brock grumbled.
“Actually,” Cole said, glowered in Brant’s direction, “I need your help, all of you.”
Brant wasn’t entirely sure he liked where this conversation was going or the way his grandfather’s eyes twinkled at the request.
“Oh?” Grandfather rubbed his hands together. “Anything. Name it.”
“Brant”—Cole said his name with a hiss—“is trying to learn how to properly woo a lady.”
“Oh, dear God.”
“Whoosh.” Bentley swiped his hand in the air. “Oh look, the floodgates of hell just opened. Run along, Grandfather—”
“Shut up and let an old man speak, Bentley.” Grandfather hesitated a minute then started smiling. Brant wasn’t sure if he should plug his ears or make a run for it. Judging by Brock’s and Bentley’s matching nervous expressions, he’d be smart to do both. “You live by example—and use words if you must.”
Brock spit out his water.
Bentley’s jaw dropped.
And Brant couldn’t look away from his grandfather if he tried. “What did you just say?”
“Actions always speak louder than words.” Grandfather chugged out of his water bottle and placed it back on the wooden stump. “Words have the power to hurt, people remember words first, you can’t take them back. But actions, well, actions can be excused, justified, that’s why they call it a knee-jerk reaction. So, my advice, if you really want to stop being yourself”—there the snide remark was—“you need to prove to her that your actions mean something. Words are easy, actions are hard.”
“Like his head,” Bentley just had to add.
“And if actions aren’t enough?” Brant asked. “Then what?”
Grandfather frowned. “Then you’re doing it wrong.”
Brock chuckled and shrugged in Brant’s direction. “The man has a point.”
Cole’s smug grin wasn’t helping, either.
A flame hissed in Brant’s direction. He jerked backward and nearly fell off the log.
“Son…” Grandfather stared into the orange flames. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
There it was, the pain, burning through his chest, demanding to be dealt with. “You knew there was a fire.”
“Yes. I knew there was a fire. I also had no idea that your wife was nearly killed in it or that she lost her sight because of it. The minute you separated, you told me that I finally got my way. That the universe was against you just like your own family.”
Brant sucked in a painful breath of air. Those words. He’d said those words. To his own grandfather. They had been spoken out of pain, regret, hatred for the cards he’d been dealt. “And you turned into a different man. A man, I don’t even think you recognized anymore.”
“Because it was easier,” Brant found himself saying. “Ignoring the past, walking away, doing the easy thing that I wrongly assumed she wanted me to do. She said things”—he quickly glanced at Cole and then back at the ground—“things that at the time made me so angry, so sick to my stomach, so…broken, that I didn’t think I had any other choice. I thought if I stopped hurting her, it would stop hurting me. We’d already lost so much, I was holding on by a thread and then the thread snapped. I walked away. I did the easy thing, the thing that hurt less, or at least I thought it would hurt less. When you get cut you stop the bleeding. That was my way of stopping the bleeding. I just didn’t know at the time that every single day was a new cut, a new reminder of the past, and you can’t run from it. It’s exhausting, and eventually it catches up to you even when you’re as careful as I’ve been.”
Brant looked around. “Now look at me. I’m sitting outside a meditation tent with my half-naked grandfather, a stranger who wants to sleep with Nikki, and my brothers who keep looking at me like I have two heads. And Nikki, it brought me back to Nikki. Full circle.” Brant tossed a stick into the fire. “Running just got me back to my original state, only now I’m exhausted, confused, still angry, and”—his voice cracked—“it was a setup. All of this.” Brant sighed. “Working for Nadine, seeing Nikki again.”
“Noooo,” Brock said in a no shit voice.
Grandfather eyed him sadly. “The question is: What action will you take because of it?”
“That’s not an easy answer.”
“Then I guess you better decide if you want easy or hard.” Cole stood. “And I’d make my decision pretty damn fast, because I’ll be only too happy to sweep her off her feet once you’re done destroying the stability beneath them.”
Brock pointed back at Cole. “Seriously. I really like this guy.”
“Speaks jackass fluently. It’s incredible,” Bentley agreed.
Brant stood on shaky legs and scowled at Cole. “Any other advice?”
“Baby steps.”
“Huh?”
“Up until a few hours ago you’ve been a complete jackass, so now you need to do something nice—and when I say nice, I mean something that doesn’t make her yell at you or cry or run away.”
“Easy.”
“Hah!” Cole shook his head. “If it was easy, you would have already done it. Let’s go.”
“God, you’re like the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
Cole shuddered. “Hate that movie, especially the Disney version.”
“I couldn’t knock on doors for months. I was always afraid they would come alive and swallow me,” Brant agreed.
Cole smiled and then his stern expression was back. “All right, you’ve got a girl to win back.”
“And you’re still doing this out of the goodness of your heart?”
“Hell, no. I just want to be there to watch you fail,” he said in a serious voice. “Also, I may have told Annie to add in an extra five hundred dollars to the bet if you get the black eye next.”
“You’re going to punch me?”
“Not me.” Shaking his head, Cole grinned. “But I wouldn’t put it past Nik. And let’s be honest—they never specified who had to punch you.”
“Some friend you are.”
“More like enemy with a vested interest in the next black eye you get.”