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No, Eli hadn’t shared. Sharing meant admitting he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. No sense in being humiliated as well as devastated. His heart and home felt empty. His head was fuzzy. His arms were lonely without Isa in them.
Here he’d thought he was a sorry sack of shit when he’d been discharged. His and Isa’s breakup was in the running for first place.
He didn’t know if it was the tequila or the rare opportunity to have time alone with his brothers, but one of the two made him say, “She loves me.”
There was a distinct pause.
“Like…she can’t resist you?” Tag asked. “Or like she literally loves you and you don’t know what the fuck to do about it?”
Eli gave him a wry glance. “The last one.”
Tag rested both his elbows on the countertop and raised his eyebrows. Waiting. Reese, arms folded over his chest, head tilted to the side, waited too.
“Change isn’t easy for me,” Eli grumbled.
“This comes as a shock to no one,” Reese said.
“I have a track record at not giving women what they want—what they really want.”
Tag shook his head. “Change isn’t easy for any of us, E.”
“What is it that Isa really wants?” Reese asked.
I want a future with you. I want to see who we can be when you’re not holding back.
“More than I can give her,” Eli said. “She needs someone ready. I’m not ready.”
Reese mumbled something that sounded like, Your funeral.
“You think I was ready to go after Rachel?” Tag asked with an incredulous chuckle. “Lucas’s wife had to practically brain me over the head to get me to realize I was being stubborn. I could’ve lost her altogether.” His face contorted as if the possibility made him physically ill. “Don’t be that stubborn, E.”
“Gwyneth was the one who flushed me out of my hotel suite,” Reese put in. “Cranes have a knack for head-up-the-ass mentality.”
“Look, I didn’t mean for this to turn into an intervention.” Eli started to leave the kitchen but then Reese spoke and stopped Eli in his tracks.
“It’s not an intervention. If you’re not ready, you’re not ready. She deserves more than you on the fence. Even if going to her would pull her back in for a short while. She was honest with you, and I assume you were honest back.”
“That was the problem,” Eli muttered.
“Then maybe it was never meant to be.” Reese held Eli’s glare, interrupting with a patient blink.
Eli hated when Reese was right. Problem was, he was right a lot. About a lot of things. There was a reason he’d always looked up to his older brother. And now that Eli had manned up in more than just a business sense, it was harder to dismiss Reese or what he knew about life…and love.
“By the way, I proposed to Rachel last night.”
Reese and Eli snapped their heads in Tag’s direction. Tag folded his hands where he leaned on the counter and smiled.
“No shit?” Reese asked. Then a smile graced his mouth. “Congratulations.”
“Sorry, E. Didn’t mean to be insensitive. She’ll be here any minute wearing a rock the size of your car, so I thought it was better you know before you saw it.”
“How’d you do it?” Reese asked.
“Brought back a jar of sand from Maui, from the site of the new Crane hotel. She said the jar wasn’t ‘pretty enough’”—he mimed air quotes—“to preserve my first new build. We picked out a glass container at an antique shop after dinner one night, and when we arrived home, she insisted in pouring the sand into the new container, and”—he spread his hands—“out came the ring.”
Tag’s grin widened. A man in love. A man who knew how to love. Eli envied his younger brother more than ever before.
“Damn.” Reese frowned. “That was better than my first proposal.”
