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To be able to protect your pain.
Maybe that was why he left town when he wanted to hook up. Maybe that was why he was so private about certain things.
In some ways, his choice about whether or not to keep things to himself had been taken from him.
So he wanted the ones that he could have.
“Where’s my stripper?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.
“I just need another drink, then I’m good to go,” Brody said, pretending to stretch, like he was limbering up.
“No,” they all groaned.
“Wow,” Brody said, feigning hurt. “I’ve been practicing all week.”
“No one wants to see it,” Lach said.
“There’s a lot of girls down at the bar that do.”
Leave it to Brody. He had a way of lightening everything up. Of keeping things fun, or making them fun when they shouldn’t be. He’d always been like that.
He loved his brother. But he knew that Brody’s particular pain cut deep.
Because their father had never touched Brody at all.
Their father hadlovedBrody.
And in the end, Gus sometimes figured he’d rather have been despised by the old man, just as he was.
Rather be the one he’d tried to kill.
Brody’s demons were dark, lurking beneath the surface of his laughing green eyes.
And Gus had a feeling they were no joke.
“Tomorrow you’ll be a married man,” Wolf said.
Of course, it wasn’t going to change half as much as they thought.
Really, he shouldn’t notice her at all.
He’d gotten so good at ignoring her over the years. The way that he felt about her.
And sure, the whole thing with her wanting Hunter had kind of messed him up. Then he’d made a little bit too much of it to Hunter, which he had regretted later.
But he’d beenworriedabout her. That was the thing. He might want her, but he’d never been under any illusion that she was for him.
It was a weird sort of punishment bringing her into his house. A way to torture himself. With her right there, but still out of reach.
His, but not his.
But it was just the right kind of torture.
You really are a mess.
Yeah. But he knew that.
Whether he married her or not. It didn’t change anything.
