Page 95 of Hero for the Holidays

“Hell. I get that. I do. But I just... I feel bad that I didn’t realize.”

“Back then what could anybody realize except what our dad wanted? We weren’t trained to pay attention to each other. Look at poor Arizona. She had a whole heartbreak we all missed. None of us knew how bad that accident affected her. In a lot of ways it was very similar to what was happening with me. I just kept it to myself. It was easiest. And I knew it would be easy to keep it to myself when we were all trained to just...view our lives as survival of the fittest.”

Denver nodded. “I mean I guess Fia had a whole pregnancy.”

He snorted. “Yeah. So whatever was going on in the Sullivan house was hardly better than ours. Different. But painful in its own way. Very painful.”

“I really didn’t think you’d ever had a thing with her.”

“You didn’t? Why did you think we had issues with each other?”

Denver shrugged. “Didn’t really think about it, to be honest.”

“You’re hilarious, Denver.”

Denver shrugged. “Listen, as a man who has his own life and his own resources, I get it. Sometimes living in a place like this, it feels better to keep a little bit to yourself.”

“We wouldn’t know how to do anything but keep things to ourselves,” said Landry.

“Well. True enough.”

“It’s weird,” said Landry. “Inside, I made a lot of my identity about what I lost. About what I couldn’t have. And now that isn’t the case. I have a family. I have my daughter. And there’s Fia...”

“You going to marry her?” Denver asked.

“No,” said Landry. “It hasn’t even...”

“Why?”

His brother asked that question like Landry was a dumbass. Like marrying her would be the clear and obvious choice.

“What the hell does marriage mean, Denver? It didn’t keep her parents together, it didn’t keep them here. Sure as hell didn’t help our mom and dad.”

“True. But there’s something to be said for... I don’t know. Bringing her into King’s Crest. Making her part of everything.”

“Who would that leave at Sullivan’s Point? The place is Fia’s. Alaina is with the McClouds. Quinn and Rory moved off campus. They have their own homes. Fia has always had a tough situation. She is the matriarch of Sullivan’s Point. If she’s not there, it’s nothing.”

“All the better,” said Denver. “We could absorb it.”

He wanted to punch his brother for that.

“You know that can’t happen. Anyway. Even if she did consent to marrying me...” He shook his head. “No. Look, there’s no reason to do that. No reason to put marriage on the table. She and I aren’t even in a relationship. We sure as hell don’t even know how to have a functional one.”

“But isn’t it tempting? To simplify things?”

“Let me ask you something, Denver.”

“Shoot.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

He didn’t even pause. “No.”

“There you have it. You’ve never been in love. You ever thought about getting married?”

“Also no. I made a little something of myself, but I fail to see how that could be complemented by marriage. Which frankly just sounds kind of torturous to me. But then, I also don’t have a kid.”

“That you know of,” said Landry.

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