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I didn’t know what Walker had wanted. I knew Mack had wanted to focus on his studies and opening his restaurant. He’d also started their kink community after meeting Reese Tenley at a party.
Last but not least, I knew that Macklin had slept with Walker’s brother just a few days ago, which he felt bad about. A drunken one-night stand, he called it.
There was a lot to unpack with Macklin McKenna, and that included a fuck-ton of moping around. He felt bad about so much, and I didn’t see the point. I wasn’t sure he did either—or he wasn’t forthcoming about it—because he always insisted on being happy-go-lucky around other people.
“Corey mentioned Walker yesterday,” I admitted to Mack. “He asked what happened to the auction date Walker won.”
He lifted a shoulder in a light shrug. “I covered the cost myself and sent him a message, telling him to go fuck himself.”
That might bring comfort to some. To me, it did the opposite. How deep could feelings run? After four years apart, shouldn’t they have moved on? Shouldn’t they be allowed to fuck each other’s brothers and possibly invite a boyfriend to a drunken night of wild sex?
I wanted to know more.
The plane sped up rapidly until we lifted off the ground, and I squeezed my water bottle into the pocket on the back of the seat in front of me.
“Did he hurt you?” I had to ask.
He raked his teeth over his lip, then shook his head. “He didn’t cheat, if that’s what you’re asking. It was nothing like that. We just… This is gonna sound like such a cliché, but we burned too brightly. We never really landed. It was one major event after another.”
“What do you mean?”
I could sense the reluctance rolling off his shoulders, but I could also sense that I’d caught him at a good time. He was gonna tell me.
“It was a combination of things,” he said. “School, culinary institutes, moving in together, he was promoted at work, then he was headhunted by another company, I was trying to figure out where I fit into the BDSM lifestyle, he was kinky as fuck, I decided to open my own restaurant, I had to apply for loans with his help, I started Mclean House with the friends I’d made, his mother fell ill and died, I was constantly stressed out, having just started my own business, he worked way too much and nearly crashed…” He swallowed hard and dropped his gaze to his lap. “I can’t remember a single moment we just stopped and looked at each other and asked, hey, are you okay? We were always on the go.”
I got anxious just hearing about all that.
“By the time we neared the end, we barely knew each other,” he said. “I accused him of not being there for me when I struggled with my business—which wasn’t fair. He did a lot for me. He threw back in my face that I hadn’t been there for him when he was on antidepressants. And you know what? I didn’t even fucking know he was on medication.”
I swallowed hard.
The grief in his eyes was clear as day.
“My own husband barely had the energy to get out of bed in the morning,” he said, “and I was pissed because he was canceling yet another kink event.”
Ouch.
I knew a thing or two about missing things that were right in front of me. I tended to live in my head. I was easily distracted and felt awful every time others pointed out something supposedly obvious.
“That guilt is never going away,” he admitted. “Nor is the anger, ’cause fuck me, he knew how to swing back just as hard.”
I pressed forward carefully. “Are you thinking about anything in particular?”
He nodded slightly. “He called me heartless for not being there when his mother died. Mind you, I took two weeks off work to help him with the funeral and the aftermath. I played caterer to seventy people by myself. We stayed in the house he’d grown up in outside Knoxville. I was there every step of the way—but I had to fly home, you know? I had the restaurant. Meanwhile, he wanted to stay ‘another month or so’ and couldn’t believe I was leaving him.”
Yeah, that was…yeah.
“I was too young to be what he needed,” he finished.
I grimaced. “I don’t think it’s reasonable at any age to demand that you leave work behind for two weeks after a family member dies. Bills don’t take breaks.”
“They definitely don’t.” He released a breath and slumped lower in his seat. “Even so. I was trying to build my own life.”
Nothing wrong with that.
“He’s significantly older, right?” I guessed.
“Seventeen years,” he confirmed. “We were on a collision course regardless, though. Losing his mother really wrecked him. She was all he had growing up, and they were sort of a team—them and, um, Walker’s older brother.”
