Chapter 20
Twenty
Jace
“And then,” I say after draining the dredges of my beer and setting the bottle onto the counter with a clink , “I wake up in the morning and the fucking woman is just gone. Gone!”
Brooks lips twitch and I don’t refuse the fresh beer he passes over. “Women are complicated.”
I scowl, something I’ve been doing a lot since Marie hijacked my Lyft. “They make things unnecessarily complicated,” I mutter.
“This is true,” he agrees, taking a swig of his own bottle.
“So, I’ve got the patent shit and a visit from the fucking FBI, and I know that the funds I finally got the board to earmark for the women’s health division are going to be shifted away to handle the legal fallout of that shit, which means that we’re not going to have enough data to launch the endometrioses treatment this year.”
Brooks stills. “Fuck,” he says. “Really?”
“Yup.” I sigh, buzzed, but not buzzed enough to be optimistic. “And without the patent and the funds it will bring, we can’t afford the funding for smaller trials. Which we need in order to go for FDA approval in the fourth quarter.”
“Damn, that sucks.” He nudges my foot with his. “Really. I’m sorry.”
“I know you are.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Have any ins with the FDA or patent office?”
He screws up his face. “Unfortunately, not. Security systems and biomedical haven’t exactly formed the perfect crossover yet.”
“What? Retinal scans don’t require labs full of eyeballs?” I ask lightly, going for a lame joke.
Because lame is all I have right now—humor or otherwise.
Brooks throws me a pity chuckle, and then silence falls between us.
“I’ll ask around,” he says to break it. “Let you know if I hear anything helpful.”
“Appreciated,” I mutter.
The silence falls again.
And this time I’m the one to break it. “Do you…” My eyes cut to his and then away, focusing on the top of my bottle. “Do you think about her?”
I feel the tension in him like a punch to the gut, hard and intense and so strong it steals the breath from my lungs.
I expect him to tell me to fuck off, to shut up, to never talk about Briar, the woman he left at the altar, years ago now.
He grows quiet, stays that way for long enough that I think he’s not going to answer.
But then he surprises the shit out of me by saying, “Yeah.” A beat. “All the fucking time.”
“I—”
He bumps my foot again, this time harder, his voice taking on more urgency than I’ve ever heard from him before. “If she really means something to you, don’t be a fucking moron like I was?—”
“You said that you had to leave because?—”
“I thought I had to,” he says. “I even believed it at the time. But it was all bullshit, man.”
“The threats weren’t real?”
“No, the threats were there. Allowing them to drive us apart was the biggest mistake of my life. I could have done so many things differently, could have…” He closes his eyes, taps the top of the beer bottle against his forehead. “I could have made it work—kept her safe and not break her heart, kept her safe and loved her like she deserved.” A long blip of quiet before he sighs and sets the bottle on the counter, eyes opening, gaze connecting with mine. “I didn’t. And I lost her, which was fucking awful, but it’s worse knowing I broke her?—”
His voice cracks, eyes sliding from mine.
Fuck.
“Breakups are hard on both parties,” I say, trying to soften the regret in every single line of his body. “I’m sure she’s?—”
“I visited her.”
That has me sitting up straight in my stool, worry churning through my stomach. “You?—”
“A couple years back. It was the anniversary of that day. I figured I’d find her out with her girlfriends, living it up.” His voice drops. “Either that or married, having popped out the kids she wanted to so badly have.”
“She didn’t do either of those?”
A shake of his head. “No.” The word sounds as though it was torn out of him. “She was sitting on her bed, her wedding dress laid out on the mattress beside her, and she was—” Another crack in that armor, the regret heavy in the words, the remorse spiking sharply through his eyes. “She was crying, man. She was holding it and crying, and I knew I fucked up. I knew I hurt her. But in that moment, I knew it was more than just hurt and tears. I broke her, and if we ever existed in a world where we could go back in time, I would go back and fix that, go back and make sure nothing ever touched her again—no matter the cost.”
Christ, the thought of sweet personified Briar Ellis sitting on her bed, surrounded by her dress, crying …
I absently rub at the ache in my chest.
And I liked her, but I wasn’t Brooks. I didn’t love her, didn’t worship her, didn’t want to make her mine.
For my friend to have seen that…
I hate that for him.
For them.
“When something beautiful lands in your lap,” he says, voice fierce now, eyes intense, grief tucked deep, deep down again, “don’t fucking waste it.”
“I won’t,” I promise him.
But even as the words cross my lips, I wonder if they’re true. If I can really go there with Marie.
A heartbeat later, the memory of her sparkling green eyes, her bouncing brown curls, her razor-sharp wit flooding my mind…and I know I don’t really have a choice in the matter.
The universe seems to have decided otherwise.
“So, you’ll figure out a way to get your girl to stick around?” His smile is lame, approaching my lame attempt at a joke a few minutes ago.
I lean into that.
“Even if I have to handcuff us together.”
“Kinky,” he says on a chuckle that thankfully, almost sounds real.
I cling to that. “I learn from the master.”
He rolls his eyes then changes the subject to the Eagles and how their season is going (spoiler alert: it’s going much better since they fired their asshole of a head coach last year).
But even though the topic shifts and he turns back into my pain-in-the-ass best friend again, I don’t forget what he told me.
And I promise myself that if the opportunity arises, I’m going to help him get Briar back.