Chapter 16
REID
The drive back to the house is silent. Blake rides shotgun, Laine in the back. My hands grip the steering wheel so hard my knuckles go white.
We pull into the driveway. The three of us walk to the front door like pallbearers.
Inside, nobody sits down. We stand in the living room in a rough triangle, and it hits me. This is where everything falls apart for good.
"Okay." I cross my arms over my chest because I don't know what else to do with them. Why the hell am I doing this to myself? It's not going to make anything better. "I want to know everything. From the beginning. How did this—"
"Reid, stop."
Laine's voice cuts through mine. She's pale but steady, and something in her face makes me shut up.
"We can do the whole explanation thing," she says. "I can tell you exactly what happened, and Blake can tell you his side, and we can pick apart every detail until we're all exhausted. But that's not going to fix anything."
"Then what will?" I don't mean for it to come out that harsh. It does anyway.
"I don't know." She wraps her arms around herself. "That's the problem. I don't know if anything can fix this."
Blake hasn't moved from his spot near the door. Like he's ready to bolt if things get ugly. Smart, probably. He fucking betrayed me. Again.
Though Laine's not mine anymore. Maybe never again.
I'm going to throw up.
"The thing is..." Laine takes a breath. "My feelings are a mess. I'm not going to stand here and tell you I don't feel something for Blake, because that would be a lie. But I don't even know what those feelings are. They're confused and complicated and honestly, they scare the heck out of me."
She has feelings for Blake. Cool. Great. Did not have that on my bingo card.
I want to ask if she still loves me. The question is sitting right there on my tongue like a live wire, and I can't make myself bite down on it because what if she says no? What if she doesn't?
"What I do know," she continues, "is that we've all been pretending this was going to work out somehow. That we could just... figure it out. Find some magical solution where nobody gets hurt."
"There's no version of this where nobody gets hurt," Blake says quietly. First words he's spoken since we got here.
"Exactly." Laine looks between us. "I've been thinking about this constantly. Running through every possible scenario. And you know what I keep coming back to?"
Neither of us answers.
"They all end badly." Her voice cracks slightly. "I can picture it so clearly. Me choosing one of you. The other one trying to be okay with it. Pretending everything's fine while resentment builds. Feelings turning into something ugly. All three of us ending up heartbroken and hating each other."
My jaw locks. I press my molars together until my teeth ache because she's not wrong.
I've imagined it too — watching Blake fall apart while Laine and I build a life right in front of him.
I ran that movie a hundred times. What I never did was flip the camera.
Me on the outside. Watching her with Blake. Day after day after day.
It would take me apart. Slow and clean, like pulling stitches.
"So maybe..." She pauses, pressing her lips together. "Maybe the smartest thing I can do is walk away. From both of you. Give you two a chance to still have each other. To still be family."
"Laine—" I start.
"No, listen to me." Her eyes are wet now. "You and Blake have so much history. You're brothers in every way that matters. I've been in your lives for what, eight, nine months? If I'm the thing that destroys what you have..."
She doesn't finish the sentence. She doesn't have to.
I look at Blake. Actually look at him — first time since the market, maybe longer. He's watching Laine with that expression I know. Same one from the first night she cooked dinner here. Like she's something he's already afraid of losing, even though he never had her.
And I'm supposed to fight for this. For her. For all of it.
My jaw works. Nothing comes out.
"The thing is," I say, and my voice is slow, too even, not reflective of the chaos raging through my body, "what you're trying to save... I don't know if it still exists."
Blake's head snaps toward me. "What?"
"Us." I gesture between us. My hand feels heavy. "What we had. I don't know if we can get back there, man."
Silence. The kind that sits on your shoulders.
"We're trying," I continue. "We're eating dinner together and watching TV and pretending everything's normal. But it's not. Trust got broken. You disappeared for three months. I stalked my ex-girlfriend for a couple months. We're both pretty fucked up right now."
Blake's jaw tightens. "So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying..." I run a hand over my face. "I don't know what I'm saying. Just that Laine walking away to save our friendship might not save anything. Because I'm not sure there's that much left to save."
The fight drains out of all of us at once. Laine sinks onto the couch. Blake drops into the armchair by the window. I end up on the opposite end of the couch from Laine, the distance between us a fucking canyon.
Nobody speaks.
The house creaks around us — that old-bones sound it always makes, like the walls are breathing. I used to love that. Right now it just sounds like the place is holding its breath with the rest of us.
I stare at Blake.
Really stare at him, and I don't know how I missed it. The bruised hollows under his eyes. The way his shoulders curl in like he's waiting for a hit he knows is coming. Three months in a war zone and somehow he came back looking worse than when he left.
And I wanted him to stay. That was my big genius plan. Keep Blake here, in this house, watching me build a life with Laine. Watching us bump around the kitchen together. Hearing us through the walls at night.
My fingers dig into the edge of the table.
God, I'm such a fucking idiot.
"I kept asking you to stay," I say. The words come slow, dragged out of somewhere deep. "Every time you tried to leave, I guilted you into staying. I never once thought about what that was doing to you."
Blake won't look at me. "Reid—"
"No, I mean it." My voice comes out scraped raw. "I was so focused on not losing you that I didn't care if staying was destroying you. That's not — that's not love. That's just selfishness."
The words hang there. Ugly and true.
Laine wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
"Maybe this is how it has to be. All of us walking away.
Starting fresh somewhere else, with someone else.
" She takes a shaky breath. "Maybe we could all find happiness eventually.
Real happiness, with people who don't come with all this baggage.
And maybe —" She looks between us. "Maybe sometime you two could find your way back to being family.
Without me in the middle complicating everything. "
Blake laughs. Low and rough, like broken glass scraping together. "That's not happening for me." He leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands hanging loose between them. "I'm not doing this again. Ever."
"Blake—"
"I know what I feel." His voice is flat, final.
"Took me thirty-seven years to feel it, and look how that turned out.
I'm not opening myself up to this again.
I can't." He shakes his head slowly. "So don't factor me into your calculations about future happiness.
That ship has sailed and sunk and is currently rusting at the bottom of the fucking ocean. "
Little tears slip down Laine's cheeks. She doesn't wipe them away this time, just lets them fall.
And Blake — Blake looks wrecked. Not angry-wrecked. Not dramatic-wrecked. Hollowed out. Like somebody reached in and took everything that made him Blake and left the rest standing there out of habit.
I lean back against the headrest, staring at the ceiling.
What if they could be happy?
The thought just — lands. No warning. No buildup. Just drops into my brain like it's been waiting in line this whole time and finally shoved its way to the front.
Not me and Laine. Not some impossible three-way situation where we all hold hands and pretend math works differently.
Just them. Blake and Laine.
I should be angry. Right? That's the correct response here.
Jealousy, rage, something with teeth. But I'm sitting here watching two people fall apart in slow motion and all I've got left is tired.
Bone-deep, scraped-out tired. The kind where you stop swinging because your arms don't work anymore, not because you decided to be the bigger person.
I drag my hand down my face.
Blake hurt her. Yeah. But he also saw things I didn't. Things I was too busy bouncing around to notice, too busy being the fun one, the easy one, the one who never pressed too hard because pressing too hard means someone might press back.
And Laine — Laine kissed him. Not to wreck me.
Not as a weapon. Because something was there.
My fingers find a loose thread on my sleeve and I pull at it. Twist it. Keep twisting.
All three of us ending up alone. That's the alternative. That's what happens if everyone just — stops. And that's not noble or tragic or whatever word makes it sound better.
That's just stupid. Sad and stupid and a waste of every good thing any of us ever had.
"What if--" I start, then stop. The words sit on my tongue like a live wire. One wrong move and this whole thing blows.
Both of them look at me.
I swallow. Hard. "What if you and Blake dated. Maybe there's enough there for both of you to be happy someday."
The words are barely out before Blake's on his feet.
"No." His voice lands like a punch. "Absolutely not."
I stand too. Close the distance. "Blake, just listen--"
"I said no." He's right in my face now, jaw locked so tight I can see the muscle jump, eyes hot enough to burn. "You don't get to do this. You don't get to sacrifice yourself on some altar of nobility and pretend it's what you want."
"Maybe it is what I want!"