Her car was gone down street before I shoved Tristan away from me.

“Get the hell off me,” I yelled. “Why didn’t you let me talk to her?”

“Talk to her? Talk to her?” he yelled right back, his volume so much louder than I’d ever heard it that I actually stepped back. “What do you think you would’ve accomplished? Other than getting yourself slapped, which you deserve right now.”

“I didn’t do anything, Tristan.” I held my hands up. “I swear. She showed up at the door, and I was so pissed that I let her in, but I knew it was a mistake.” Looking up into the dark sky, I yelled a string of curse words that had never left my mouth in a single unending string.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“No. No, I don’t.” I smacked my hand on the cab of his truck, the sting of my skin a welcome relief. My muscles wanted a release, and I wondered what would happen if I punched the window out.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said with unnerving clarity of what was running through my head. We locked eyes, and he took a step closer to me. “You want to punch something?”

Then he spread his arms out.

“What?” I shook my head. “I’m not going to punch you.”

“You don’t think it would make you feel better?” Tristan set his jaw and refused to yield his stance. “Come on, little brother. Hit me.”

“No,” I said instantly.

He moved his face even closer and just when I thought he’d shove me, goad me further, he dropped his arms. “You wanna know why you wouldn’t feel better? Because you’re the one who needs his ass kicked.”

“I can still take you up on your offer,” I said dryly, even as my fingers curled into a fist.

“Get inside,” Tristan muttered in disgust. Without waiting for me, he went into our house. For a brief moment, I thought about what would happen if I ran after Brooke. If I showed up at her house with feet bloody from the trek, would it prove something to her?

Shame coated my skin like sticky, black tar, and feeling like it would never go away, no matter how I tried to rid it from me. All I’d managed to do was prove to Brooke that I was exactly what she’d seen me as. Instead of baptism by fire, shoving myself into the flames to try and dislodge her hold on me, I only moved deeper into it. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eye sockets, like it could rid me of the way she looked when I ran at her, desperate to explain away what she’d seen.

The stark hurt, the betrayal in her eyes would keep me up all night. The raw anger in her voice.

“Jealousy,” I said quietly. Had I ever felt anything like that? Had I ever looked at another man and hated him for having something that I thought was mine?

The closest I’d ever come was that first night that Kevin showed up at the door, with my hand on Brooke’s neck. I hated that he’d ever had his hands on her, that he’d ever felt a moment of ownership over someone that was so clearly above him in every way.

If she’d asked me to leave instead of him, how would I have felt?

Like she flayed me alive.

With one hand gripping the back of my neck, I walked slowly into the house. Tristan was standing over the kitchen island, hands spread out in front of him on the surface, like a judge waiting to hand down my punishment.

“You know,” I said slowly, “if Brooke were any other woman, I think her jealousy would make me feel better.”

He raised his eyebrows slowly, worry stamped over his face.

“I’m not crazy. Well, maybe I am. She was hurt. Seeing Kaitlyn pissed her off to the point that she wouldn’t even let me talk to her.” I paced the kitchen, the adrenaline from the entire day leaching from my body in heavy waves. Suddenly I was exhausted. “She wouldn’t even let me talk to her. And believe me, her temper is pretty intimidating.”

“Sit down,” he grumbled.

Numbly, I did and dropped my head into my hands. “Nothing happened, Tristan. I swear.”

Wordlessly, he slid me a bottle of water. I gave it a dry look, because alcohol sounded much better at the moment, but I drank it all the same. Maybe the clear liquid will fill me up, make me feel less like there was a gaping hole inside of me, even if it was a poor substitute for Brooke.

“It’s good she was jealous,” he said after I set the half-empty bottle back down.

I looked over at him, surprised he was admitting it.

“But,” he continued, “it’s not good that you’ll have to overcome it. If you want to, that is.”

“Of course, I want to,” I said instantly. There wasn’t a single part of me that didn’t. Whatever I’d have to do in order to make it right with Brooke would be worth it. I groaned. “This sucks.”

One side of his mouth hooked up. “It does sometimes. It won’t always, though.”

I straightened in my seat and angled toward him. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

His smile looked sad now, his eyes zeroing in on a random spot in the kitchen. “I pretty much have to.”

I guess it could be worse. I could be Tristan, and be in love with a married woman. Of course, he probably didn’t realize that all of us knew it, except maybe Anna. Before, I thought he was insane for carrying a torch for her for so many years, but that steadfast nature, that immovable belief in what was right, was something I couldn’t help but admire now.

If Brooke never spoke to me after this, how often would I think of her and wonder what could have been? Would I worry about her, about the twins, even if she never stood in front of me again?

Every single day. That’s how often I’d think of her. Of all three of them.

“So now what?” I asked, and Tristan blinked back over at me, his eyes clearing of whatever had been in his head.

“Now you learn to be patient.”

“Screw that.” I stood from my chair. “I need to talk to her.”

“I didn’t think you’d actually like that advice.” He stood and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Do you want to see if Dylan and Kat are home? She’ll have better advice for you.”

“Why not Cole and Julia? They know Brooke better.”

Tristan half-smiled again. “Because Cole will rip your balls off for hurting his sister-in-law.”

I grimaced.

“And what do you think Julia will do?” he continued, smiling even wider now.

Unconsciously, I covered my balls with both hands, hating that he was basically using the same threat on me that I used on Kevin earlier. He wasn’t wrong either. Julia was sweet and kind, until she wasn’t.

“Besides, Julia probably already knows.” He looked out the window with feigned interest. “She could be on her way over right now with a really big knife.”

“I hate it when you try to be funny. That’s my job.” I grabbed my coat and tossed him his. “Let’s go to casa de Steadman. Kat will be nice to me.”

* * *

“You did what?” Kat yelled at me from across her and Dylan’s kitchen. For such a little person, she certainly got good volume when she tried.

I wiggled a finger in my ear to stop the ringing. Garrett and Rory were over, and for once, he didn’t make a joke about something I’d managed to screw up. His arm was over Rory’s shoulders where she sat next to him on the couch, and she was giving me a considering look.

“Nothing happened,” I said for the millionth time that evening.

“You didn’t touch her?” Kat asked ominously, her normally happy eyes narrowed in my direction. “Like not even at all?”

“Not even at all.” I rubbed at my temples. “She had one drink, and when I told her I shouldn’t have let her in, I told her about Brooke. Everything. She was a little disappointed at first, but I swear, I didn’t lay a finger on her. Not even to help her put her coat back on.”

“Good,” Kat said. Her arms crossed over her chest, she walked around the island and then flicked me on the forehead.

“Ouch.”

Dylan was quiet, but smiled at his not-yet-fiancee, given that her ring finger was still empty. They’d lived together for a couple years, which is why Kat was the unofficial matriarch of our little group. Normally she gave the supportive pep talks, unvarnished advice, but she didn’t usually flick foreheads or yell.

“He doesn’t need a sermon,” Tristan said from the other side of the room. “He’s punishing himself enough already.”

Kat held her hands up and went to stand next to Dylan, who wrapped an arm around her. As soon as she finished smiling up at him, she still sent a baby glare in my direction. So I gave her one right back, which made her grin.

Rory shifted on the couch and patted Garrett’s thigh before giving me a smile so full of pity that I wanted to snarl. Great. I was the cautionary tale now. Hey, look at Michael, he finally screwed up beyond what he knows how to fix.

Garrett started first, and I braced myself for him to mock me endlessly. But he didn’t. “Listen, we’ve all had our moments of sheer idiocy to varying degrees. But believe me when I tell you that the easy part of moving forward with Brooke will be explaining away the chick leaving your house.”

Rory glanced at him with surprise, just like the rest of us did.

“What do you mean by that?”

He shrugged. “Just what I said. That’s the easy part. The hard part is what happened before you left. She’s stubborn, she’s had to be the person in control of all the decisions for herself and two little kids. So when you stepped in, that made her feel out of control, which is probably really uncomfortable for her. Brooke is a strong woman, and let me tell you from experience that loving a strong woman doesn’t mean that you have to be the loudest guy in the room, waving the biggest stick and detracting the attention from her.” He gave Rory a smile so nauseatingly full of love that I almost rolled my eyes. “Sometimes it means you stand silently next to her until she needs you to step in and fight with her. Not fight in place of her, you’re fighting by her side.”

I hated when he made sense. And as he said the words, I knew he was right.

We all processed what he’d said in silence. Well, except Rory, who leaned in and gave him a full-on tongue kiss and then whispered something in his ear that made him laugh under his breath. After that, it seemed like advice time was over, which was fine by me. They got up to leave, both giving me hugs, and Tristan and I walked back to our place shortly after.

While Tristan unlocked the door, and had his back to me, I finally gave voice to the thing that had been gnawing at me most of all.

“You know what I hate the most?” I let out a deep breath, thankful that he wasn’t responding. “I hate that she’s probably sitting at home right now and hating me, hating me for proving her right about what kind of person I am. And I hate that I never had the balls to just be honest with her. That she made me feel completely out of my element, and I loved it. So, I hate that all this time, she probably thought I didn’t care about her.”

We walked back in the darkened interior of our house, and Tristan sighed as he flicked on the under-cabinet lights.

“So, tell her.” He leaned against the counter and held my eyes. “Tell her all of it.”

“What if,” I swallowed roughly, “what if it doesn’t change how she feels?”

Tristan nodded slowly, like he knew exactly what I was feeling, the abject terror of that particular possibility. “Then you’ll know, and you can choose whether or not you want to move on.”

I stared at him for a second and then huffed a laugh. “You’re the worst pep talk giver in the world, brother.”

He grinned so briefly that I almost didn’t see it, because he turned away. “I know.”

“If I do this,” I paused and stared at a random spot over his shoulder, “I’m not going half-ass. It’s gotta be big.”

The look Tristan gave me was full of warning, but not surprise.

“Just be careful. If you don’t give her some heads-up, she may kill you where you stand.”

Gulp. I rubbed at my chest, because wrong he was not.

After Tristan walked back to his room and left me alone in the kitchen, I walked into the family room and fell heavily into the couch. It was hard to remember that all of this had happened in one day. It was no wonder that my skin was heavy and fatigued, that I felt such a bone-deep exhaustion that I probably wouldn’t be able to relax enough to fall asleep.

An entire night of staring at the ceiling lay ahead of me, and it felt like exactly what I deserved. That I deserved to be in this exact position, of pining for someone who was likely too good for me. Too strong, too brave and too beautiful. And that was all of what made up Brooke on the inside. That had nothing to do with how she looked.

But for the first time, I was so miserable at the thought of not having a woman in my life, that standing before her and giving her the option of what she wanted to do with my heart sounded like the best possible option. Even if she decided to run it through the meat grinder.

Tristan told me earlier that I needed to learn patience. Standing back and waiting for Brooke to come to me when she was ready felt unacceptable. Felt impossible, actually.

But she would need some time to breathe, to work through how she did feel about me, given what she saw earlier. So, I could let her breathe, all that did was give me proper time to plan.