Page 62 of If This is Love

“No, sweet friend.” She pushed her hands up and over my face, wiping the droplets away, and then she pushed up and took my hands to help me sit up. “I’m just fine, and we’re going to make sure you are, too.”

I blinked and still didn’t recognize this bathroom. My mind slowly cleared, and I remembered this was Brennan’s house. That we’d all been here working on something for Skye’s organization. That Ruth hugged me without warning in the hall, and I flirted with her, and she wrinkled up her nose, and I told her how much I loved when she did that. That I’d sat on the couch next to her, and she’d put her hand on my knee.

“What happened?” I asked again.

She looked at me through eyes full of pity and trepidation, and I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t make her go through the excruciating process of recalling my own awful actions to me. I didn’t have to know specifically what I did to know that it wasbad. I hit someone or something, and I woke up lying in Brennan’s shower.

This was fuckingbad.

“Never mind,” I mumbled, shifting sideways to sit with my back against the wall. “I don’t even want to know.”

Ruth pushed herself off the floor, shutting off the shower and handing me a towel. Gunner stood and began licking the water off my face, and I reached for his neck, pressing my forehead against the side of his head, as if his big, floppy, yellow ear could hide me enough to make me disappear completely. But that was way outside of Gunner’s skill set.

Apparently, the entire episode I just thrashed through was also way outside of his skill set, and I wanted to crawl back to my house and barricade myself there permanently.

Footsteps approached on the hardwood outside the bathroom, and then Brennan’s fancy-ass, polished Oxford shoes and tailored black slacks appeared just inside the threshold. He crouched next to me, reaching to squeeze my neck, and then I saw what I’d done.

He had a fat, bleeding bottom lip, and I had a throbbing right fist, and I already knew that if I’d unraveled to the point of throwing punches, I’d said really bad shit right before that.

“Riley,” I started to say because I needed to apologize, but if I tried to say one more word right now, I might vomit or cry.

“Hey. It’s all good.” He squeezed my shoulder again. “I get it, brother. I get it. You don’t need to tell me. I already know.”

The guilt weighed about five hundred tons, and I folded underneath it, slumping forward and clasping my face. “Tell me what I did.”

He hesitated a moment, but then he did.

Emma had asked me about the worst thing I’d ever lived through, and I screamed at her, lunged at her and her husband, then screamed accusations of infidelity at Brennan and sucker-punched him.

I covered my face with the towel and hung my head below my shoulders. “I’m sorry, Riley. I’m really fucking sorry.”

He firmly rubbed back my hair, pushing out the excess water, over and over again, steadily and methodically, just like the words he kept saying.

“It’s all good, brother. I got you, brother.”

Everything was still hazy and fuzzy as my mind reoriented, and all I could process was the steady voice of my brother-in-arms, his firm palm on my head, while my loyal dog laid his head in my lap, and Ruth murmured peaceful words under her quiet breath.

“You don’t need to tell me, brother. We’re good. I got your six, brother. We’re good.”

“Everything’s good, sweet friend. We’re here for you, friend.”

Minutes passed. I eventually stood up with the help of Brennan’s hand. Ruth was leaning against a bathroom counter, soaked to the bone. Her amazing, full, bouncy hair was now flat, stringy, and twice as long from all the water dripping from it, and her arms bracketed around her middle, chills scattered all over them. Brennan slipped into a closet and reemerged a moment later, holding out a dry shirt. I hesitated before taking it, and then they both quietly slipped out of the bathroom as if giving me privacy to change.

I kept my eyes trained on my feet as I swapped out the shirts. I wrung mine out and tossed it into the wastebasket. This was already humiliating enough, and carrying my own stupid soaking-wet shirt would only make the walk of shame out of this house that much worse. Sickness and remorse clenched my gut, and then I stepped out of the bathroom and found myself face to face with Luke.

Never-fucking-mind.Thatmade the walk of shame out of this house way worse than I could even process.

The look on my baby brother’s face made me want to crawl into a hole and die.

There was a subtle expression that had always overtaken Luke’s face in the rare moments when he was biting back the urge to cry. He’d worn it on every occasion that we’d said our goodbyes before one of us shipped off. He’d worn it on the day he realized his first marriage was ending. He’d worn it on the day Brennan dragged me to the Old Point Bar after Mia left.

And he was wearing it now.

Brennan had probably explained the situation to Luke in much more torrid detail than he just did to me. And Luke clearly knew this was a new low, even with my long history of the lowest of lows.

Luke didn’t say anything. He just nodded toward the hall and held out his arm. I stalked out of the room, hand on Gunner’s head while Luke, Brennan, and Ruth followed.

When I reached the living room, Skye darted to me and threw her arms around my waist, hugging me tightly with her cheek pressed against my chest. “It’s okay, Gabe. It’s all okay. We’re here for you, and it’s all okay.”

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