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He waited a good five minutes before he followed, hauling the saddle into the tack room and sorting out the bridle. He didn’t begrudge Quinn his happiness—or Adam, for that matter—but sometimes it sure as fuck was hard to be around them and their women. The fact that one of those women was his little cousin barely entered into it.
He headed for his truck and took the pitted dirt road leading around the edge of his parents’ property to the little house he’d built a few years ago. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it got the job done, and it was far enough outside town that most people thought twice before stopping by unannounced.
Most people not including his family.
The shower did nothing to ward off the feeling of pending doom. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Jules or Adam or Quinn or whoever the fuck else was going to be at this damn party, but he wasn’t in the partying sort of mood. Truth be told, he hadn’t been in that mood for over a decade. It was almost enough to make him call the whole thing off, but the knowledge that Jules would have no problem bringing the party to him got him moving again. Not to mention the potential intervention he needed like he needed a hole in the head.
At least if he went there, he could hang out for the appropriate amount of time, make his excuses, and slip out while everyone else was occupied. Two hours, tops.
Feeling significantly better, he pulled on a pair of his favorite old jeans and a T-shirt and grabbed his keys. It struck him as he walked out the door that he was thirty-fucking-four years old. How the hell did that happen? He shook his head. He knew damn well how that happened. One day turned into a week, a month, a year, a decade. All while he kept on keeping, the world changing around him, but never changing enough.
He glanced at his watch. “Two hours starts when I get there.”Chapter TwoDaniel figured out the entire party was a mistake ten minutes in, which was right around the time Adam and Quinn walked in the back door with a motherfucking puppy. He shook his head, backing away. “No.”
“It was this or that little hellion Mr. Winkles.”
Thinking of that asshole cat who currently resided in Jules’s cat café, Daniel cringed. Then he made the mistake of looking at the dog in Quinn’s arms. The big man dwarfed the tiny pup, which had to contribute to how cute the little fella was. He was a border collie and had big blue eyes and a patchy fur coloring that was black, brown, and white. His left ear flopped down, and if he wasn’t the cutest little thing…
Goddamn it.
“I don’t want a dog.” His heart wasn’t really in the protest, though, so when Quinn offered the pup, Daniel took him. The pup immediately scrambled up against him and licked his chin. “Though he’s cute.”
“She.”
That startled a laugh out of him. “The last thing I need in my life is a woman, and both you assholes damn well know it.”
Adam got a funny look on his face, one Daniel would have called guilty. “Yeah, well, about that. Brace yourself.”
He didn’t get a chance to ask what the fuck his friend meant by that because the front door opened behind him and Jules’s voice rang out, “Honey, I’m home.”
“Hey, sugar.” But Adam’s voice wasn’t quite right, and he was looking over Daniel’s right shoulder when Jules was clearly behind his left.
For one eternal moment, Daniel considered shouldering past his friends and walking out the back door. Whatever put that look on Quinn and Adam’s faces wasn’t something he wanted to deal with. They almost looked like they’d seen a ghost.
But his dad hadn’t raised a coward, so he took a deep breath and turned around.
And froze.
She looks the same.
He blinked, but Hope Moore didn’t disappear. She just stood in the doorway, her blond hair pulled back in an effortless ponytail, her face older than when he’d last seen her but more beautiful for the years written across it. Her body had filled out, her hips and breasts curvier than they’d been at eighteen. She didn’t look like a girl anymore. No, Hope was full woman.
And then, because he couldn’t help it, his gaze dropped to her left leg. Her skirt was too long to see the scar he knew must wind down her leg, the scar he’d put there. Knee replacements weren’t pretty, and her bones had already been mangled by the time she made it to the hospital, her entire future ruined in the space of a single heartbeat.
Because of him.
She flinched, which was answer enough. He hadn’t imagined it, and the handful of surgeries, the months and months of recovery, the loss of her cross-country scholarship, all of it, had really happened to her. What’s the ability to run compared to a brother? You fucked everything beyond recognition. He dragged his attention back to her face, determined not to look at her leg again. He’d been the one responsible—the least he could do was avoid making her feel uncomfortable.
