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Well, shit. I rub my eyes, and notice Benji and Fletch doing the same. With watery eyes, Mom kisses my cheek, Eli’s forehead, and hugs Reese. “Love you, baby,” she tells her. “You’re going to be just fine.” I can only hazard a guess as to what she means, but Reese obviously knows.

“Love you too, Maggie. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Mom disappears upstairs, and then Reese’s attention is on me. “I’m going to leave you to spend some time with him. The monitor is in your mom’s room if he wakes up, but he only cries when he’s hungry or when his diaper needs to be changed,”—she’s rambling, and damn if I don’t find it cute. Could it be that she’s nervous around me?— “and his bottles are all prepared, your mom knows what to do when it’s feeding time.”

“You don’t want to stay?” I ask. I don’t want her to leave just yet, not when being around her again is stirring up all kinds of things, both good and bad.

With a shake of her head, Reese replies, “No, that’s okay. I need to get some sleep.”

“Of course, I’ll walk you out.”

“No,” she says quickly, raising her hands, “I’ll be fine. I’ll just see you tomorrow.”

Before I can get another word in, Reese mutters “night” to the guys, and all but runs for the door. I’m too distracted by Eli, and the guys, to lament on Reese’s hasty escape, but somewhere in my mind I wonder why she fled like the hounds of Hell are on her heels.

“Man, this kid is gonna break hearts, just like his daddy, and his godfather, and his crazy-ass uncles.” Carson laughs, and just like that, the mood is lifted.

“Yeah,” I sigh, smiling down at Eli. “Welcome to the family, Elijah Thorin Decker. We’re all real happy you’re here.”

The bedside clock reads 2:00am. I’ve been staring at the ceiling for four hours, and when I can’t handle it any longer, I grab a beer from downstairs and walk out to the back deck. It overlooks the entire back-end of the property, including a massive pool, and Reese’s house. To my left is a thirty-horse stable, which Ryan had rebuilt a few years ago to expand the business, and to my right is an old, dilapidated barn. Ryan purchased a few extra acres of land, with my help, and now the ranch is a fully functioning horse breeding and training facility. I might not have had the same calling as my brother and my daddy, but I loved growing up with the horses. On weekends, before I got too busy with football, and before Ryan left for college, we spent hours on horseback, roaming the pastures, racing over the rolling hills, and swimming in the small creek at the bottom end of the property. And it was always me, Ryan and Reese. Reality hits me like a ton of cement blocks. I exhale a heavy breath, and brush a hand over my face. My brother is gone, and so is his wife. They’re never coming back. I’ve met Mel a few times, and I really liked her, knew she was good for Ryan, and I was pissed as hell when I couldn’t make their wedding because we were on tour in Europe. Looking back now, I should have been there. I shake my head. “Why, Ry? Why’d you have to go?” I ask no one. No point in asking God because He’s as able to answer me as Ryan is. My eyes travel to the bay window of Reese’s place, and the light peeping from between the curtains. I can’t see her, but I know she’s there. When Reese and I didn’t have a chance to talk (because clearly, she wanted to get as far away from me as possible after she dropped Eli off), I had Mom tell me how Ryan and Mel died, and to know Reese dealt with it all alone makes my stomach curl into itself. “I should have been here,” I mutter, taking another sip of my beer. “I should have fucking been here.”

The back door creaks open, and Benji rubs sleep from his eyes, a beer bottle in hand. “You writing a new song, or talking to yourself?”

“Asking my brother why the fuck he had to leave.”

“And beating yourself up for not being here, apparently.” He takes a sip. “For letting Reese deal with it all on her own.”

“Something like that.”

“She’s tough,” Benji notes. “Girl’s survived worse.”

He’s abso-fucking-lutely right about both. Reese is tough, and she has survived worse. “I was hoping none of you remembered that.”

Benji gives me a side-eye. “Carson and Fletch might act like they don’t remember, but they do, and so do I. I was the one who stopped you from going ape shit in the hospital, remember? You nearly clocked Reese’s mom for not letting you see her.” It’s Reese who told the nurses I wasn’t allowed in her room, but I don’t bother telling Benji that. Doesn’t matter now. “Ryan ever talk about her when he called you?”

I shake my head. “Not once. Jackass didn’t tell me she was living here, or that he’d built her a house on the property. The few times I asked, he’d shut me down, and I have no idea if that was his choice, or if she’d asked him not to talk about her with me. It stung the first few times, not gonna lie about that, but I realized Ryan was protecting her, the way I should have and didn’t.”

“You know, Thorin, at some point you’re gonna have to let that shit go. It’s in the past, and you sure as fuck can’t change that you were a class A dick.”

I snort. “You were no better, Benj. You stood by and watched all that shit happen to her, too.”

“True,” he sighs, “and I felt bad about it for years, but she wasn’t my best friend, or mine to protect. And even if I could, it’s not like Jessica would have listened to me. She barely listened to you, brother, and y’all were going steady.”

Bastard’s going straight for the jugular, and hell if I can make sense of the shit running a riot in my own head. Old feelings, new feelings, a fucking mess tangled together.

“If I could have done things differently, I would have, but you know what they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty.”

“Well,” Benji grunts, “You’re going to have to figure your shit out real fast because we’re here for the foreseeable future, and you and Reese are raising Eli together, whether you like it or not. Your life just changed, Thorin. Own your shit, and step up.”

I lean over, resting my elbows on my knees. “Say what you want to say, without beating around the fucking bush, yeah?”

“You’re going to have to make things right with her, man. You can’t take on the responsibility of raising a kid together when she can barely look you in the eye. Hell. She looked terrified being around the four of us again, like she was waiting for one of us to tease her. Fix what needs fixin’, is what I’m saying.”

“I’m not sure it’ll make a difference at this point.” What I really mean is, I don’t even know where, or how, the fuck to start.

“Yeah, maybe not, but you have someone else to think about now, not just yourself and your bandmates.”

I know he means Eli, and damn if being responsible for him isn’t weighing on me. My brother discussed what he wanted from me if anything happened to him and Mel, but I didn’t think it’d be now. Or that Mel would die giving birth to Eli. Or that my brother would be killed by a drunk driver while racing to the hospital the moment Reese called him. None of this has been expected, and I had no time to prepare for what lies ahead. I’m a rockstar, with bandmates. We travel the world and record songs for months on end, how does raising Eli fit into all of that? How does co-parenting with Reese fit into all of that? Hell, how does Reese fit into all of it?