Page 66 of Snow Storm

Harley: So you have my number too.

He got an immediate heart in response, and he let the feeling sink into his chest before he summoned the courage to open the rest of his text messages. Most of them were from Wes, and he knew what they were going to be about.

Wes: You were supposed to be recovering? Who’s this guy, now?

Wes: Answer me.

Wes: Is this a joke? Are you trying to piss off your ex?

Wes: I know what Darren wrote was fucked up but you don’t need to make shit up on the internet.

Wes: Okay I recognize that guy. He’s the resort owner. This isn’t funny at all.

Wes: Harley!

He skipped the rest. There was no point in reading his brother’s increasingly frantic rants about Claude. He debated about answering him at all because he didn’t think Wes wasgoing to understand. Or, at the very least, he wasn’t going to believe this was real. He never did trust Harley with his own mind or his own heart.

Just like their mother, Wes saw him as a complete disaster.

And he refused to be defined by that any longer. Enough was enough.

He hit Wes’s contact and listened to it ring. For a moment, he thought it was going to voicemail, but then his brother picked up, breathless like he’d been running.

“So you’re not under duress?”

Harley sighed. “A cozy photo by a Christmas tree makes you think I’m under duress?”

“Considering you were there to recover from a nervous breakdown…”

“I was here in hiding because I was sexually harassed by a reader onstage, and my agent berated me in front of a crowd of people, and I snapped. Like most reasonable, rational people would do. I did not have a nervous breakdown.”

“Is that what everyone is telling you?” Wes demanded.

Harley winced. “Does it make you feel good to be cruel?”

“I…look, Harley, I don’t mean to?—”

“Yes, you do,” he interrupted, not willing to hear any more of his brother’s excuses for the way he treated Harley. “Youdomean to imply that I’m a hot mess who has no business being loved by anyone. Mom always hated that I was gay. I learned my first slurs from her, in fact. And you always loved it because that made you the favorite. I have a feeling you’re enjoying the fact that my relationship fell apart, too, because it proves your fucked-up assumptions about me were right. Even though they’re not.”

Wes was quiet for a very long time. “Is that what you think?”

“That’s what you’ve shown me over and over. And no, Wes. No one is sitting here feeding me bullshit about you and Mom.I’ve had a lot of quiet time to think about how unbearable my life has been over the years. I’ve been able to realize that Darren leaving me wounded my pride, not my heart, because I never loved that man. And I’ve been able to realize that I deserve better—and the one person who knew that is gone.”

“I miss him too,” Wes said softly.

Harley felt rage bubble in his chest. “Fuck you. You were just as cruel to him as you were to me. You don’t get to claim that.”

“I know. I deserve that. I’ve been wracked with guilt over leaving you at that place when shit hit the fan. I know I’m a garbage brother, okay? And I know I was a terrible son.”

Harley froze. “Did you hit your head?”

Wes scoffed, and Harley heard him flop down on his mom’s favorite leather sofa. “No. I had a moment.”

“Explain.”

“We were having dinner two nights ago, and I was telling Mom how bad I felt for just dropping you off on the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere?—”

“In a posh resort that costs a grand a night,” Harley corrected.

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