Page 53 of Breathless

“Then what?”

Noah sighed. “My surgeries could take a year, maybe more. Recovery could take longer. I’ve got no desire to go back to our old job. I’m done as a firefighter, Wyatt. I won’t do that to Zach. My old life doesn’t fit my new skin.”

Wyatt nodded, taking that in. “I had a feeling about work. But that’s no reason to push me away. Not a good enough reason, anyway.”

Noah turned his head away. “Maybe I’m beating you to the punch. You ditched me after Zach was born. Was that a good enough reason? You didn’t talk to me for months because you resented me for growing up and taking responsibility.”

Wyatt flinched. “So this is payback? You know what? That’s fair. I was being childish. But you didn’t talk to me about it or factor me into the equation at all. We were roommates, we worked together, and you’re my best friend, and yet you acted like letting me know didn’t matter. Like I didn’t matter.”

And now Fiona had done the same thing with his baby. What the fuck was it about him that made people see him as an afterthought?

“We’re grown men, Wyatt. We’re not connected at the hip. We make our own decisions, and I had a child to consider.”

“You know, that might wash if you hadn’t just done it to me again. You shut me out, refused to talk to me for a whole god-damned month—”

“Language,” Mrs. Laurence called from the patio.

“Sorry, Mrs. Laurence,” Wyatt said, automatically lowering his voice. “You made me nothing more than an issue to be dealt with by the family when you refused to talk to me about not coming back to my own home to recuperate. Does what I feel even matter to you, Noah?”

His throat ached with the effort it took to get those words out.

“Of course you matter,” Noah said roughly.

“I do? Because right now, I feel like I might have been a handy wingman and convenient babysitter. And now that you don’t need either, I’m expendable.” Wyatt was being harsh, he knew, but it was the only way he knew to get through to him. And he needed to get through to him.

Finally, his brother looked at him again, and Wyatt looked back, taking in every ridge and pore. Every scar. He hated the pain they implied. Hated what Noah was going through. But he was going to look until he never flinched again.

Noah would hate it if he flinched.

“I’m sorry, Wyatt,” he said thickly. “I swear to God, I am. I should have said it the day Younger wheeled you in, but I knew it was my fault.”

“What?”

“I’d acted like a hothead and nearly cost both of us our lives. The guilt was too much. I couldn’t look at you without feeling it. And then I looked in a mirror and was too caught up in my personal pity party to consider anyone else’s feelings. So now I’m ugly and a dick.”

Wyatt kept studying his face, but the tension and hurt he’d been wearing for weeks started to dissipate. Thank God. “Apology accepted. Dick.”

Noah reached out his hand to grab Wyatt’s. “Don’t let me off that easily. You matter, Wyatt. I’m sorry I had any part in making you think you don’t. You’ve saved my life more times, and in more ways, than I can count. I’m the impulsive one. You’re slow and steady stick-to-it guy, remember? I don’t work without you, and I’m not the only person you matter to, either.”

Wyatt finally looked away as fresh pain bloomed in that open wound in his chest. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

“That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Fiona? I couldn’t believe it when you said you’d moved in with her and Thoreau. What were you thinking?”

“Well, first I was thinking I didn’t want to stay in Seamus and Bellamy’s Brady Bunch sex mansion,” he started, not joking even a little.

Noah snorted.

“But then I was thinking that a near-death experience was a great time to get over some of my hang-ups and to start worrying about what Fiona needs.” He clasped his palms together and resting his head on them. “I thought I was owning that new lease on life thing.”

“Until what?”

Wyatt reached into his pocket and handed Noah the crumpled image. “Until I found this in the back of her car just now.”

Noah whistled long and low as he studied the sonogram. “You didn’t know?”

Wyatt gave him a withering look.

“Sorry, stupid question.” He hesitated and then asked neutrally, “Yours?”

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