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“If only it were so easy, B. She not only saw my studio filled with art only of her, I also told her that I hacked into her devices last April to protect her from that creepy stalker Tom. And I figured she needed to know everything as I was coming clean… so I also told her that in my need to make sure she was okay, I still tracked her here in Austin.”
“Fuck. You were still hacking into her stuff?” Brennan’s anger poured from his body as he narrowed his eyes at him.
“Well, I may have seen some text here and there in the beginning of her stay here, and I have checked on her regularly to see if she made it home all right from work or wherever she’d been.”
“How?” Brennan barked.
“I, er, I can track her phone through a GPS tracker.”
“Fuck, man. What were you thinking? You of all people should know how sick that sounds.”
Donovan emphasized his next words by slamming his beer bottle back on the coffee table. “Don’t you think I know that? Now do you understand why I said I wasn’t good enough for her? She doesn’t need to be with someone who goes crazy whenever he doesn’t know her whereabouts. Someone who has to check in with her just to know she’s safe.”
Brennan sighed. “I know that you feel responsible for Tom being able to hack into Kate’s phone so he could track Kayla to Austin—”
“Damn right I’m responsible!” Donovan bellowed.
Brennan shook his head. “Nobody is responsible for him coming at Kayla—twice I might add—except for that sick fuck. You need to let that shit go, bro. It’s not healthy.”
“I know it’s not healthy. But seeing what happened to Kayla and the thought of that asshole tracking Kate’s phone to follow them back to Austin… I don’t think I’m ever going to feel this way about anybody ever again. I need to be sure that she’s safe, Bren. Fuck, I even need to know how she’s feeling or how she’s doing. I just want to know these things. Otherwise I keep thinking about her….”
Brennan took his words in. “Normally, couples that are in a relationship, ask each other about their day. They send a text or call them. They make sure the other is happy, and if it happens to be that they’re miserable in some way, they do everything within their power to change that.”
Donovan growled his response. “How the fuck do I know how to act? I’ve never been in a relationship before and I’m thirty-four. I tried my best to stay away from her because I knew what I did was wrong on so many levels.”
He paced the room and glanced at his brother, sitting calmly on the couch with one arm stretched over the back of the sofa and an ankle placed on his knee. Like Donovan, Brennan was always in control. Normally, he was at least. Now, he felt so out of control it wasn’t even funny.
“My guess is, because this is the first time you’ve ever felt something for a girl, you were so disturbed by your feelings that you used your hacker skills to satisfy your need to know she was okay.”
“I’ve never felt anything for any girl before. And, yeah, there’d been a lot of girls—women—before Kate. But I love Kate. She makes everything right. She’s my muse, my soul mate.”
“Okay. Now over to the hard part.”
“I thought we were already at the hard part?” Donovan quipped.
Brennan scoffed. “You wish.”
Donovan took his bottle from the coffee table and sat down on the couch next to Brennan. Talking about his feelings for Kate seemed to drain all the energy from him.
“Call Dunc and see what Kate said today. Start there and we’ll come up with a plan. We always do.”
“I will. Later. Not now. I don’t want to hear those two lovebirds right now. Ugh, they make me sick sometimes.”
Brennan almost spit out his beer as he couldn’t help but laugh. “Shit, man. Tell me how you really feel.”
“Well, you tell me how you’d feel when you have to see our brother drool all over Kayla at nine in the morning when he drops her off at the office. The kissing and those longing looks… shit, man….”
“Ha ha, you’re just jealous, Don.”
Donovan opened and shut his mouth.
“See? Can’t even give me a response.” Brennan snickered.
“What about you? Now that we’re on the subject, how is Tori behaving lately? She got the message that she’s never going to break down your walls and it’s never happening between you two?”
Brennan cleared his throat and placed his beer bottle on the table. He was always so calm and collected, so to speak. Even now when Donovan knew bringing up Brennan’s nonexistent love life would hit a nerve. His brother looked him in the eye and simply shrugged.
“You know I don’t do the whole love thing. Ever since she started working at the pub, she’s been hung up on me. I never went there with her, as you know. I took one look at her and saw the same look in her eye like all the others before her. She wants to be the one, bro. She wants to change me. I guess she wants to make some kind of bubbly bartender out of me, for fuck’s sake.”
They chuckled as they both knew he would never be the type. He wasn’t going to change and let somebody in. He’d been through a lot growing up with parenting his four younger brothers when he was just barely a teenager. Sure, Pops and their dad had been there as well, but then again not really, not when it counted. Not when they needed to get to school on time, pack their lunches, work on their homework after school. His dad even missed most recitals or games because he had to work at Lucky and help Pops.
Discovering how happy and free their dad seemed at the pub while sharing his stories with the drunks at the bar and entertaining willing women in the apartment above Lucky, cut deeply. He missed so much at home but didn’t seem to mind too much as Brennan and Donovan witnessed when they were older. Brennan was to take over in a few years, but there was a lot for Brennan and their dad to discuss first.
“I don’t know. I never thought I would sit here someday with you and talk about the love of my life walking away from me. You might find someone who—”
Brennan dismissed these thoughts immediately. “Never gonna happen.”
