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“Please don’t punish him. I…” My jaw moved. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He was just trying to help.” If anything, I needed to talk to him.
Ramses nodded, but his own tense expression didn’t lighten. “And we didn’t know Bru felt that way about the party. We can cancel that too if he’d like, but this gathering is for him equally. Even if we weren’t celebrating his birthday, it would be. I told you how important both of you are to this family, and I mean that. We mean it.”
He exchanged a look with Brielle, and I did know they both meant that.
I ended up telling them both I’d talk to my brother, but the party needed to continue. Bru wouldn’t want them to cancel it and definitely not because of him. He was just going through things right now.
I did excuse myself to go talk to him but didn’t make it past the stairs. Ares sat there, and despite sitting several steps up, his feet still touched the floor with his long legs.
His curly head popped up when I entered the foyer, and I sat beside him.
“I’m sorry I was so hard on you,” I cut in first, my hands on my knees. “I overreacted, and it wasn’t cool. You did try to help.”
“I heard.” He rubbed his hands, and I wondered how much he had heard. Probably the whole thing. He leaned back, elbows touching the stairs. “But I overreacted too. Poorly.”
We both had, and I shook my head again.
Ares swung his head in my direction. “I’m not asking you to choose between Bru and me, or us and him.” His lips thinned, his expression tight. “I’m not stupid. I know we’d all lose, and it’s not fair for any of us to put you in that position anyway.”
I winced. He was being so honest with me, and that was one good thing about my twin brother. When he was honest, he was to a fault.
My twin brother.
I think that was the first time my thoughts actually did that, things between Ares and I so different lately, and I wasn’t sure he was so right about what he’d said. Honestly, I wouldn’t even let my thoughts go there, a choice between Bru and him…
And everyone else.
“I’m trying to be strong, little.”
I glanced his way, his expression hard.
He rubbed his jaw. “But this shit is hard, and I’m fighting natural instincts every day. Ones to step up, be there for you above all else.” His throat jumped. “Be there for the kid when I got my own shit. When I’m here and in this too.” He touched his mouth to his fists. “I’m not asking you to choose, but I am asking you to be patient with me. I’m trying to figure out this shit too and how to work my head around it.”
Because he was my brother as well, and he’d been being one to not just me. He had, but Bru and I definitely hadn’t been supporting him.
I hadn’t been.
Ares had been a way better brother than I’d been a sister to him, but before I could apologize for that, he got up.
“I’m going to take a walk,” he said, and I let him because I knew he needed that. The front door closed, and I immediately rerouted on the stairwell. I found Bru in his bedroom, but he was talking on the phone when I came inside. I knocked but he didn’t answer. Probably because he was on the phone.
“Hey, uh, I gotta go,” he said, sitting up on his bed. We had the same setup, full entertainment system and connecting bathrooms. Ramses and Brielle had been really good to us. He stared at me. “It’s Sloane.”
My eyebrow lifted slow, my shoulder closing the door. Bru hung up his phone, then tossed it on the bed. I cocked my head. “Who was that?”
Bru closed the book on his bed, a textbook. At some point, he must have been trying to study. His back touched the headboard. “Does it matter?” he asked, and my brow lifted. He shook his head. “I just don’t think you knowing will make this particular situation better. What happened downstairs and today.”
I sat on the bed, my arms crossed, and Bru rubbed his hands.
“Callum,” he said. “And before you say anything about that, you told me it wasn’t a problem to talk to him, which I have been.” He paused, nodding. “For a while now. I have been.”
My mouth parted, really not clear on what to say.
Or what to think.
I just knew my body had a physical reaction to what he’d said, and it was one that got my throat tight a little. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
