My protective instinct came raging to the surface. “I didn’t mind looking after you. You were my baby sister; it was my job.”
She looked across her shoulder at me with a sad smile. “No it wasn’t. It was hers, and she failed with both of us. Epically.”
I remained quiet at that, the silence all the confirmation she needed to know I agreed with her. Carley Hendrix had failed both her children so astoundingly, she’d have gotten all the medals if bad parenting was an Olympic sport.
“She wore you so thin and used you up that by the time you were an adult, you were over it. I understand that, Stone. Maybe I didn’t get it when I was a kid, but I get it now. Because you spent nineteen years of your life taking care of her, cleaning up her messes and owning up to her responsibilities, your well ran dry. I can’t say it didn’t hurt when you left, but, looking back, I understand now. You never had a life of your own. You had to live hers because she gave you no choice. You needed to leave so you could attempt to carve out something for yourself.”
The fact that I’d hurt my baby sister, even if she’d forgiven me for it, even if she’d moved past it, still burned like a red-hot brand against my skin.
“I’ll regret hurting you until the day I die.”
“Don’t,” she whispered fiercely. “I don’t want you to do that. You carried too much damn weight on your shoulders when you were a kid, and you’re still doing it today. I’m not saying any of this because I want an apology. You gave that to me a long time ago, even though you didn’t have to, and I gladly accepted it. Let that go, bro. I’m telling you all this now in the hopes of helping you pull your head out of your ass.”
I snorted into my beer as I took another pull. “Shane Rose, the self-help guru.”
She knocked into me playfully. “Hey, I’m damn good at it. If you’d just listen to me, I could fix your life in like two seconds.”
I arched my brow and gave her a crooked grin. “That right? Okay, oh wise one. Hit me with it. What have you got?”
“Well, first of all, you need to stop thinking all relationships are like the ones you saw Carley spiral through when you were younger. Her dating life was a hotbed of crap because she was a shitty person who picked shitty men. I’m convinced it was a conscious decision on her part because she got off on all that fighting. But you look at every woman who crosses your path as a potential Carley when you have better examples all around you. You’re just too stubborn to pay attention.
“Scooter and Caroline have been together since they were teenagers. Sure, Jensen and I had a bit of a rough patch”—she smiled when I shot her a dark look at how she’d downplayed what had gone down between them—“but look at us now. Look at all our friends. Cannon and Farah. Poppy and Jase. Lark and Clay. You have shining examples all around you that love isn’t an albatross around a person’s neck, slowly choking the life out of them, but you refuse to pay attention.
“No one said love was easy. It’s hard as hell, but it’s so worth it, Gavin.” Her use of my given name wasn’t sarcastic this time. She was using it as a way to drive her point home. “It’s not a responsibility. It’s a partnership. If you love someone, and they love you back, they carry half that load you’ve been dragging around. It may still weigh a ton from time to time, but that’s okay, because the other person is there to take over and give you a break when it gets too heavy. That’s what you’ve been missing out on, big brother. That’s what I want for you. You’ve been dragging that weight behind you all this time. Don’t you want someone to step in and give you a hand?”
“Christ,” I grunted, clearing my throat in an attempt to dislodge the lump that had taken up residence there. “When the hell did you get so wise?”
She shrugged, a self-satisfied grin on her smug face. “One of us had to be the brains in the family. Lord knows it wasn’t gonna be you.”
I tipped one corner of my mouth up. “True. I got the looks, after all.”
Her hand flew out, giving my arm a stinging slap. “If the decisions you’ve been making are anything to go by, all you got was the brawn. I’m the brains and the looks, asshole.”
I chuckled as I rubbed at my sore skin. “Jesus, you’re vicious.”
“And don’t forget that.”
My sister might have been a pain in the ass, but she had a gift for being able to read me, and as though she sensed I needed a while to take in the heaviness of everything she’d just said, she kept quiet, standing beside me in companionable silence.
Finally, I spoke, asking the question that had been weighing on my mind for a while now. “How do you know when you love someone?”
She stared off like she was giving that some consideration while she pulled in a deep breath. “I’m not sure there’s a definitive answer for that. It’s something that can be different for everyone. I think you know you love someone when you look at them and feel a happiness you’ve never experienced before. When you think of them out of nowhere and can’t stop from smiling. But I think, at the end of the day, you know when you realize you want to do everything you can to make them happy, that your sole purpose for being in their lives is to make each day better than the one before.”
I silently finished off my beer while I thought on that, feeling something strange and foreign in my chest.
She’d struck that chord again, this time making it ring through my skull.
There was something so damn familiar with everything she’d just described, and now I knew there was no way in hell those feelings vibrating inside me were going away.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Willow
It had been a long day. If I had to guess, this day would go down in the history books as the Monday-est Monday ever.
I used to brush it off as a joke when the guys at work would tease me that they couldn’t function without me. I was just a receptionist after all. Sure I did some paperwork and handled most of the filing, but it wasn’t like I was performing brain surgery or something. It had always been nice to hear them say that, but I never really believed it.
Then I got to work this morning and realized they hadn’t been exaggerating. Lark had done what she could in my absence, but she had her own responsibilities. The filing was an absolute disaster, and there were countless voicemails on my personal extension from unhappy clients. As shy as I was, I’d always been pretty good over the phone. Not having to see the person I was talking to face to face had made it easier, and apparently, our clients would much rather deal with me than the men who did the actual work they contracted Elite Security for.
I’d always liked Jensen, Laeth, and Gage, but I had to admit, when it came to bedside manner, the men were a bit lacking. They preferred to get the details of the job, do it, bill the client, and move on. Who knew that I was the rosy go-between that kept everything moving fluidly?
When the guys walked in earlier that morning and saw me sitting behind my desk, I’d almost thought Laeth was going to burst into tears of relief. “Thank fucking God,” he’d whispered, his eyes growing a little misty.