Page 145 of Contentious

“I’ll fight you on that one.”

“Beckett looked into me. Talked to some of my former buddies. Dumped it all on them in the car. I can’t imagine what Ty thinks of me after hearing that.”

“What I saw when I walked into the room earlier was a woman and a child snuggled up to the man they both love.”

“They don’t love me. They haven’t known me long enough for that.”

“Wow, you’re dumber than I thought.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“She’s in love with you. He’s in love with you. You’re in love with both of them.”

“That’s not what this is.”

“Oh no?”

How would he even know?

“Let me ask you this… When you were in that car with Beckett and his gun, what was your top priority?”

“Getting Cresley and Ty out of it safely, no matter what.”

“I assume ‘no matter what’ means that even if you’d ended up dead, as long as they were safe, that’s all you cared about. Is that right?”

“More or less.”

“Do you hear yourself, Carson? You would’ve died to keep them safe. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”

“I didn’t want that.”

Julian lost it laughing—again. “And you think I did? You think I went to work that day to meet with Denny’s sister, thinking, ‘Damn, I need to fall madly in love with a recently single mom and her two very young kids’? Trust me, that was the very last thing on my mind that day. I was far more concerned about making Stacey go away than I was about falling for anyone. But then Isla came into my office and… I can’t even explain it. Nothing will ever be the same.”

“Why are they allowed to just do that to us?”

“I know, right? But once they cast their evil spell on us, there’s no going back to who we were before.”

“There’s got to be a pill we can take or something.”

“Even if there was, I wouldn’t take it,” Julian said.

“What the fuck do we know about being in functional relationships with innocent kids involved?”

“We know the wrong way to do it. Any time I face a decision about how best to proceed, I ask myself, ‘What would Dad have done?’ I do the opposite.”

“He wasn’t all bad.”

“No, but he usually thought of himself before us. They both did. My goal is to never put what’s best for me ahead of whatever Isla and the kids need. I figure if I can do that, I might just break the cycle of divorce and dysfunction and make a successful life for all of us.”

“That’s a pretty good rule to follow.”

“I think so, too. I mean… it’s only been a month. Talk to me in a couple of years. I’ll let you know how it’s going.”

“If the way Isla looks at you is any indication, you’re doing great so far.”

“You know what makes doing the right thing by them easier?”

“What’s that?”