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I squeezed my gritty eyes closed, then open. “We?”
“Yeah, we. Brothers lean on each other. We’ll find a way. Hell, maybe we can bring Maeve over with some of her baked goods. Those have been known to bring any man to heel.”
I snorted, but it hurt knowing even my Mae-Mae had to be pretty pissed at me too.
“Shit, I have a lot of fucking work to do,” I said.
“You do. But you’re not alone in this anymore. I care about Brian too. You got it? None of this hiding important stuff because you think it’s too heavy.” He poked my arm. “It might be too heavy for you, but I’m here. Hell, Santiago can lift a city bus and he’d trip over himself to share your burden. Remember when we had that terrible ultrasound with Simone and you rallied around me? What made you think we wouldn’t rally around you?”
I shrugged. I hadn’t given it much thought. It never occurred to me to ask for help. “I’m the guy who rallies people. I should be walking on my hands, making everyone laugh.”’
“And you do, but sometimes you have to sit back and let us take the brunt.”
“Okay.”
“Good, because you look like shit and smell worse. How are you going to get Brian better if you can’t even take care of yourself?”
He grinned, and for the first time in a week, I grinned back. “I took a shower yesterday, you goddamn clown.”
I felt some of the fog I’d been trapped in over the last week lifting, and once it did, the absence of Yael hurt me like a missing limb. I hadn’t gone this long without seeing her in years. Even when we were arguing and lashing out, that contact fortified me. And now that I knew what it was like to really have her, to really love her freely, I realized how stupid I’d been. I hadn’t been crumbling solely because of my dad. I’d been falling apart without her and I had to find my way back or I’d be dust.
There was no world I’d want to exist in without Yael Aronson.
