I’d finally gotten used to my brother being gone, but Cassie leaving for New York gave me a sense of abandonment all over again. My brain knew that I was being irrational, but my heart hurt because the people I loved most kept leaving me.

Although I knew it wasn’t true—they weren’t truly gone—inside I still felt dismissed, ditched in some way.

I sent a text to Cassie, and she responded almost immediately.

 

Dean: Did you get to New York okay? How is it?

Cassie: OMG, the city is unbelievable! It feels like magic.

Cassie: You and Melis need to come visit me ASAP. :)

 

Her text made me smile, and also reassured me a little.

 

Dean: I’d love that!

Dean: I hate to ask, but how are you feeling after seeing Jack?

Cassie: :( Walking away from him was really hard, but it was the right thing to do.

Dean: Feel better! You know I love ya, sis. Chat soon.

 

After my morning classes, I texted Melissa to see if she still wanted to hang for lunch or not. Since it was just the two of us now, I wasn’t entirely sure what we were supposed to do—carry on like nothing happened, as if the two people who were our glue weren’t gone?

She responded that she did, called me a dummy, and I met her in our usual spot, elated.

“And then there were two,” she said as I sat down across from her.

“Maybe it’s us? Maybe we make people leave,” I said, biting back a smile.

“Maybe it’s you. People like me just fine.” She gave me a big grin, and I wanted to disagree just to be argumentative, but resisted the temptation.

Instead I said, “I texted with Cassie this morning.”

“Me too.” She sighed. “My apartment is quiet, boring, and lonely with her gone.”

My insides tightened. “I’ll come over anytime you want. All you have to do is ask,” I offered, hoping like hell she’d take me up on it.

“It’s not the same,” she said without meeting my gaze, and the blows to my ego continued.

“I know I’m not Cassie, but shit, aren’t I better than nothing?” I asked, wanting even a crumb from this girl.

She frowned at me. “I don’t want a boyfriend, Dean.”

Well, that came out of freaking nowhere.

“I wasn’t asking to be your boyfriend,” I spat back, annoyed. “Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? I just said I could come over if you were lonely and wanted company.”

She shrugged. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea about us.”

Although she’d said the words, I had a hard time believing them. Maybe it was the way she wouldn’t look me in the eye when she said them.

Still annoyed, I told her, “I don’t think there is an us, so you don’t have anything to worry about.”

Jack’s advice came back to me, and I remembered him telling me to ask someone else out. I wasn’t sure that I could do that when I wasn’t really interested, but I figured I might be able to fake liking someone who wasn’t Melissa just to see what she’d do. It was a stupid game, but I was willing to play it if it meant that she would have to admit to feeling something for me.

“Do you even like me? Because I think you do. I think there’s something here between us,” I said, laying my cards on the table.

“Of course I like you,” she said with a dismissive snort, and I groaned in frustration.

“Then why do you keep pushing me away?”

“Because I can’t do this with you, Dean. We’re not a good idea.”

“What? Not a good idea? We’re the best idea there is.”

She shook her head hard, as if trying to convince herself of something only she could understand. “No. Not after everything that Jack and Cassie have been through. I mean, we can’t be together when they’re not!”

“Melissa.” I shook my head, trying to make sense of her nonsense. “I was interested in you before there even was a Jack and Cassie. So that’s not fair.”

She sucked in a small breath and whispered, “I liked you back then too. We just took too long, and they got together first.”

Oh my God. I wanted to bang my head against the wall. This girl was driving me crazy.

“I don’t understand what they have to do with us,” I said stubbornly.

“Everything. They have everything to do with us.”

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not giving up.”

Melissa looked at me for a moment, her expression as soft as her voice when she finally whispered, “I don’t want you to.”

Somehow confused and elated at the same time, I yelled, “You make zero sense! None. Not an ounce.”

She let out a frustrated laugh and shrugged one shoulder. “Welcome to my brain.”

• • •

The next day I made sure that Melissa saw me walk into the student union with a pretty brunette and sit down with her for lunch. The truth was that Serena and I were study partners for one of our classes, but Melissa didn’t need to know that. A moment later, I glanced back at the table Melissa occupied and noticed it empty. Curious, I wondered what that meant.

When the following day rolled around, I joined Melissa instead of ditching her.

“Where’s your new girlfriend?” she asked, her tone snarky.

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t.” Her blue eyes narrowed as she faked a smile. “But is that what she is? Is she your girlfriend?” Her gaze darted around the room before meeting mine.

“No, but I was thinking of asking her out.”

Melissa swallowed hard as she looked everywhere but at me. “Yeah, um.” She gathered her things. “You should do that.”

Reaching for her hand, I stopped her. “Unless there’s some reason why you don’t think I should.”

Please be honest for once, I begged her with my eyes. With me, with herself.

“You can do whatever you want.” She pulled out of my grip and stalked away.

Except give up on you, obviously.

• • •

Jack was coming home today and I felt like a kid going to Disneyland, too excited to sleep. Gran was busy in the kitchen making food while Gramps pretended to relax in his recliner, but constantly looked out the front window for Jack’s car. Everyone was excited.

When my brother finally walked through the door, I was holed up in my room, trying to distract myself with homework. Gran and Gramps’s noisy excitement filtered throughout the house as the front door shut, and I headed into the living room where the conversation had already started without me. After catching up about his new workout routine and how the guys in the major leagues could not only hit Jack’s pitches, but could hit them far, we headed into the kitchen for dinner.

Jack continued to fill us in on what we’d missed since talking to him last. The annulment paperwork had been officially filed in Alabama, so he was simply waiting for Chrystle to sign it, hoping it would happen in the next day or so. I worried that she wouldn’t, but Jack seemed unconcerned, claiming that the two of them were over and she knew it, so why wouldn’t she sign?

I choked back a laugh. “Have you met her? She’s a total bitch.”

“Dean! Language!” Gran’s forehead furrowed as she shook a her fork in my direction.

“Sorry, Gran,” I said, slumping a little lower in my chair.

Jack chuckled at Gran before turning back to me. “She signed a pre-nup before we were married, so she doesn’t gain anything by not signing.”

“Except control,” I muttered.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he snapped. Apparently I’d pissed him off, but I wasn’t sure why.

Gramps cleared his throat. “How many times do we need to remind you both to watch your mouths?” He glanced at Gran, who gave him a nod of approval.

“Sorry, Gran,” Jack said with a sigh.

“I just meant that she’d have control over you if she didn’t sign the papers. She knows how badly you want out of this marriage, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she pulled a bunch of sh—” I stopped myself, throwing a frown Gran’s way, “stuff just to mess with you.”

Gran nodded. “He’s right, Jack. Chrystle’s been so evil from the very start. What’s to stop her from being difficult now?” she asked, her voice shaky.

“I don’t know,” Jack said with a shrug. “I guess I’m just hoping that she knows this is over, and there’s no point in delaying the inevitable.”

He was thoughtful for a moment, and I hoped he was considering something that I had assumed was obvious this whole time. Chrystle wasn’t a nice person, so why would she be nice about ending their marriage? She was devious and malicious, and I had a strong feeling that she would make this difficult for him just to be a bitch.

When Gramps brought up Cassie, the conversation turned lighter.

“Gramps, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a thing for my girl,” Jack joked.

“Your girl?” Gramps leaned back in mock affront.

Jack dropped his fork to his plate as if saying Game on. “Uh-huh. My girl.”

I laughed, wanting to play this game too. “Maybe I’ll make her my girl. Keep her in the family.”

If looks could kill, Jack would have murdered me. Apparently I’d gone too far. “And I’ll disown you before I kick your—”

Gramps slammed a hand on the table. “Boys, that’s enough.”

I shoved a spoonful of rice into my mouth as I grinned at my brother, mumbling around it, “You’re lucky she’s like a sister to me.”

“Yeah? I’d say you’re the lucky one. ’Cause I’d kill you if you touched her, and you know it.”

“I’m your only brother and this is how you treat me?” I laid a hand over my heart as if he’d hurt me deeply.

Gramps shook his head, holding back a smile. “You’re trying to take the man’s kitten, Dean.”

When Gran laughed, Jack mentioned Melissa, changing the subject and putting the spotlight on me, which wasn’t playing fair and he knew it. He continued to harass me, asking why we weren’t dating yet.

Finally, I exploded.

“I don’t know! She says she doesn’t want a boyfriend, but I think she just doesn’t want me as a boyfriend. Can we talk about something else now?” I begged.

“Who wouldn’t want you as a boyfriend? That’s ridiculous,” our ever-loyal Gran said with a huff.

“Can we please talk about something else? Anything else,” I pleaded, uncomfortable admitting to my entire family that this girl didn’t want me.

Jack moved the conversation back to Cassie and the fact that he’d been basically stalking her online, following her work in New York.

That revelation ignited my temper, probably because I knew how hurt Cassie had been by Jack’s silence since she moved. She would have never admitted it to me, not wanting to put me in the middle, but she told Melissa that she didn’t understand why Jack hadn’t reached out to her since his marriage was over. And, of course, Melissa told me.

Cassie assumed that he would have been fighting to get her back, and frankly, so had I. It pissed me off that Jack hadn’t reached out to her once, and I couldn’t figure out why. I knew he still loved her and wanted to be with her, so why wasn’t he trying to make it right?

When he saw the look on my face, Jack glared at me and said, “After everything Cassie and I have been through, you think my following her work online is psycho?”

“It’s a little weird, don’t you think? You won’t even talk to her in real life, but you’ll follow her online?” I snapped back.

The chair scraped against the floor as Jack shot up, breathing hard.

“Jack, sit down!” Gran said sternly. “You two are acting like little boys.”

He dropped into his chair, breathing deeply to regain control of his emotions.

After he’d calmed down, he said, “I can’t talk to her until I’m not married anymore, okay? So until then, yeah, I’ll follow everything she does online. If that magazine can give me a glimpse into how she’s seeing the world, I’ll take it. Because until I’m back in her life, that’s the only Cassie I get. And if that makes me psycho, then I don’t give a fuck. Sorry, Gran,” he said quickly before she could yell at him.

“I’m going to ground you. I don’t care how old you are,” she said, but there wasn’t much heat to it this time.

“He started it,” he said, nodding his head toward me. “Let’s talk about Melissa some more.”

I lifted my palms in the air in defeat. “I’m sorry. Truce?”

Jack and I both calmed down, much to our grandparents’ relief, and the rest of the meal was eaten in peace. Afterward, we forced them both to retire to their chairs in the living room while we cleaned up.

We stood at the sink, Jack washing while I dried. I hated drying. Washing was easier, but I knew better than to start a fight I wouldn’t win. The younger sibling never won arguments like that.

“I told Melissa that I was thinking about asking this other girl out,” I said, glancing at him while I dried the plate in my hand.

Jack smiled. “What did she say? What’d she do? If I was a betting man, and I am, I’d bet that Funsize didn’t like that too much.”

“I don’t think she did, but she told me to ask her out. She told me I could do whatever I wanted.” When I shook my head in frustration, Jack burst out into laughter.

“Of course she did. Would you expect her to say anything else?”

I stopped drying and leaned against the counter. “Yeah. I expect her to tell me not to do it.”

His brow furrowed. “Not gonna happen, little brother. She’d never tell you to not date someone because then she’d have to own up to feeling something for you. And for whatever reason, she refuses to do that.”

“Why? Why won’t she just admit it?”

“I honestly have no fucking idea.”

That was helpful. Not.

• • •

Jack being home was awesome, except for the fact that I still had school and had to work at the agency almost every day. We got the news that Chrystle refused to sign the paperwork, and while I wasn’t surprised, Jack was flipping out.

In the meantime, I’d kept pushing him to talk to Cassie, to fill her in on what he was trying to do. Every time I brought it up, he flat-out refused and threatened my life if I gave her a heads-up in any way.

Jack was always putting me in these shitty positions when it came to her, and I was growing tired of it, tired of hurting Cassie when I knew it served no purpose. Jack never specifically said that I couldn’t tell Melissa, though, and so this time I partially filled her in on what was going on, but made her promise to keep it to herself. She was a bit of a hard sell as she huffed and puffed, but eventually agreed that she would stay quiet . . . for now.

When an entire month had gone by and Chrystle still refused to sign the papers, I thought Jack might have a nervous breakdown or spontaneously combust. We talked constantly about how out of control he felt, and how by sitting in California doing nothing, he felt like he wasn’t moving his life forward in any way. He compared it to being on pause, where nothing happened; you just lived in this stagnant existence, not moving in any direction.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when he brought this topic up during dinner one night.

“Hey, Dean. Question—how long is your winter break?” he asked, knowing that it was coming up soon.

I gave him an odd look. “We go back at the end of January, why? What’s up?”

“You wanna fly out to Alabama and help me move my stuff back here?”

“Of course I’ll go,” I said without hesitation. “When?”

“After Christmas, we’ll head out. I want to get out of that state as soon as possible,” he said, his voice filled with disgust.

Gran reached out and squeezed his arm. “Did she sign the papers yet, dear?”

He shook his head, focused on his plate. “She’s still fighting it. Says I can’t prove there was fraud involved.”

“So, wait.” I wiped at my mouth with a napkin before placing it back in my lap. “Are you saying that there’s nothing you can do to fight it?”

“I’m just saying that the burden of proof is on me. And how do I prove all that?”

“I’m worried, Jack. This is taking so long. The longer it takes, the more you have to lose,” Gran pointed out, clearly talking about Cassie.

Jack sighed. “I know exactly what I have to lose.”

“Then you gotta talk to her, man. You’re wasting time, and Cassie thinks you don’t care about her. She honestly thinks that you let her walk out of your life for good. She’s confused. She’s hurt. And you’re just letting her feel that way when you could stop it.”

Hopefully something I said would get through. He needed to reach out to her in some way, whether it was a text, an e-mail, or a voice mail at her office.

Jack shook his head. “I know you don’t understand, but I can’t tell Cassie that everything is going to be fine and that I want to be with her. Not when I can’t be with her yet. Do you get that? Chrystle is a psycho who isn’t letting me go, and Cassie would get sucked into it. She’d have to deal with Chrystle too. And I don’t want her to ever have to think about that person again.”

He gave me a pointed look. “You know how Chrystle is. Would you want Cassie to deal with that?”

When I shook my head, he said, “I don’t want to put Cassie through that. I just want to reach out to her when I don’t have a single piece of baggage holding me back from being with her forever.” Studying my face, he groaned. “Does that make any sense at all, or do I sound completely insane?”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t argue. “No. I get it. I totally get what you’re saying. I just wonder if there’s a balance there. Maybe I could tell Cassie not to give up on you? Something to give her hope.”

“No,” he said, his voice resolute. “As long as she’s not dating anyone, I don’t want you to say anything, Dean.”

I swallowed. “Well, this guy from work keeps asking her out.”

Jack’s face hardened. “Has she said yes?”

“No.”

“Then we still have time.”

I bit my tongue, wondering how much of it he was willing to gamble with when it came to Cassie.