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“He’s just not the guy for you,” Broderick barked before I could add the crucial caveat to the end of the lineup.
Duh. But he might be the guy for Max. Instead of saying that, I yanked my eyes off the ticker and trained them on his face, nearly staggering under the seething weight of his gaze on me. If Broderick wanted to have an opinion on who I was or wasn’t dating, or to act like some jealous neanderthal, he should have made a move in the last fourteen fucking years I’d been an adult. Hell, he should make a move now. Fucking own up to this thing we both knew had always been lying dormant between us.
Giving him one last chance to grow a pair, I lifted my chin defiantly, tone cold as steel, and demanded, “Then who is?”
He held my glare, the pinch in his brows not easing as his eyes roamed my face. Jaw ticking, he just stared back.
Disappointment crashed through me, any last shred of fool’s hope dissolving into resentment as the doors finally whooshed open. “Exactly. If a successful, beautiful man actually has the balls to pursue love and risk the vulnerability that entails, he might stand a chance at being happy.”
As I rushed past him for the freedom of the hallway, my teeth ground together and I decided I no longer gave a shit what Broderick Allen wanted.
NINE
BRODERICK
Foot meet mouth. Seriously. Could that have gone any worse? Rubbing a hand over the back of my neck, I sucked down air and wondered what in the hell had climbed up my ass, because in no universe did anything that happened in the last ten minutes make any sense. Never once had Elora ever leaned on her older siblings for her success, and insinuating as much was like lighting a match in a pool of gasoline and not expecting to turn into a human torch.
I knew that Sarah got in my head, but holy fucking shit, El was as far to the opposite side of the spectrum as a woman could get. It was a damn cheap shot, and her grabbing her backpack and slamming the door on the way out of our room just hammered that final nail in my coffin.
It was irrational. Hell, even as I said it, some part of my brain knew I was being an idiot, but I couldn’t stop this slimy constricting sensation in my chest, the ugly head of jealousy suddenly alive, well, and rearing. Pacing the length of the room, I scowled at my phone where it lay discarded on the bed. This was the stuff I would normally talk to Rhyett about. But El and the girls had always been, and would always be, firmly off limits. I’d made a damn promise. And as ancient as it might have been, I was a man of my word. Always had been. It’s how Dad raised me.
The value of a man is rooted in his fortitude and integrity.
That’s what he told me as a kid. Some boys get bedtime stories, others grow up on superheroes. Robert Allen raised me on life lessons and parables—no doubt planting the seeds of my obsession with morality. But our word was as good as law—a hill worth living and dying on.
Phone as heavy as a dumbbell, I stared at my favorites screen, both of her brothers looking back at me from their tiny icons. But it was the names beneath them that my eye traced one too many times. Noel McShane. Brexley Rhodes.
Treasonous. This idea. Hell, I’d probably be better off calling Max or my father. But that knowledge didn’t stop my thumb from tapping the selfie of my three favorite blondes—Brex, Rhyett and Quinn, all boasting broad, cheesy grins.
Oh, fuck me, this is a horrible idea. I was just dropping the phone from my ear, my stomach in absolute knots, when the line clicked to life and a familiar—albeit breathless—voice broke the silence.
“Broderick?”
“Hey, Brex, how’s it going?”
A little giggle was audible in the background, a smile breaking through my anxiety. “Good! Just chasing Quinny around. She’s quite the scooter these days, but she pulls herself up on anything and everything, so it’s a twenty-four-seven game of catch the baby over here these days.”
That explained her lack of oxygen. “Ahh,” I grunted lamely. “Where’s Rhy?”
“At the bar, he got an order this afternoon.”
“Makes sense,” I said, nodding as my throat thickened. “And you? How you doing, pretty mama? Rhy said you’ve got a book on a deadline?”
“Yes,” she exhaled in a whoosh, as if she collapsed into the nearest chair. “The sequel to my fantasy is due next Wednesday. I’m just about there—I think. I mean, it could be absolute trash. It probably is trash. Actually, now that I’m thinking about it?—”
Laughing, I cut her off, “It is not trash, Brex. It’s going to be great. I loved the pages you sent me.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“I’m not,” I insisted, chuckling. “I think the sequel will be even stronger than the first book.”
“You really think so?” she asked, a strangled note of hope underlying her anxiety. I loved Brex, and honestly, she was one of few people in my life who could relate to the suffocating uncertainty of a mind that ran in circles until the body collapsed in a sweaty pool of panic.
“I really think so,” I echoed back. A relieved exhale was punctuated by another baby giggle that her mama immediately echoed.
When my throat tightened and the silence lingered for a beat too long, Brex softly asked, “You okay, Allen?”
Smiling at the endearment she put in my last name, I blew out a breath. “Can I, uh…talk to you about something?”
