36. Tyler
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
tyler
I’m still awake at five-thirty, turning my head toward every sound without meaning to, half-expecting to hear Darcy moving around upstairs.
Instead, I’m met with cold stillness—no Taylor Swift bleeding through the ceiling while she cleans, no water swishing through the pipes overhead, no waking up with Darcy tucked between us with her hair swept across her face.
It’s been four days since she stood on the stoop trying to hold it together while Brett talked to her like she was a kid who couldn’t be trusted to make her own decisions. Four days since my idiot brother somehow picked the worst possible thing to say at the worst possible moment.
Four days since Darcy texted us that she was staying with her parents, and I’ve replayed Saturday enough times that I don’t even have to think about what everybody said anymore. My brain’s got the whole damn conversation memorized.
Thing is, I know exactly what Mack meant. And that just pisses me off even more.
Mack’s never been the kind of person to let the first thing that pops into his head come out of his mouth. He’ll bite his tongue if he needs to, wait people out, pick his moment until everybody else has run out of things to say.
Hell, half the reason we’ve made it thirty-two years without killing each other is because he’s always known when an argument needs a last word and when it doesn’t.
So of everybody standing on that stoop Saturday night, he was the last person I expected to hand Darcy the one sentence she was guaranteed to hear the wrong way.
I’ve spent every minute ever since trying not to choke him out.
Then, because apparently there’s enough self-loathing to go around for everyone in this house, my memory helpfully reminds me that I was standing right there watching Darcy’s face fall.
I watched her look between us like she was waiting for somebody—either one of us—to stop her before she disappeared into her own head. And I just stood there.
Which is pretty fucking impressive in retrospect.
Two trained emergency responders…zero successful emotional interventions.
My pillow still smells like her shampoo—that floral stuff—and the vanilla body spray she wears, and I’ve reached the point where I can’t catch either one without feeling like a weight is sitting on my chest.
I make it until six-fifteen before giving up on sleep.
The kitchen light’s already on by the time I come downstairs, which doesn’t surprise me. Mack’s usually up before I am.
Finding him fully dressed with his duffel bag by the front door as he pours coffee into two travel mugs does.
“What’s going on?”
“We leave in twenty.”
He screws the lid onto one of the travel mugs and slides it across the counter toward me without looking up. I pull out the stool.
“Leave for where?”
He finally looks at me.
“Go get ready.”
I stare at him another second.
“…How long’ve you been up?”
He shrugs.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
My eyes drift back to the duffel.
“…You packed.”
“Sunday.”
Sunday.
She probably hadn’t even hit New Jersey yet.
“You were just gonna go.”
“Thought about it.”
“Without me?”
That finally gets him to look up.
“...No.”
He holds my gaze just long enough that I know he’s telling the truth.
While I was sitting around convincing myself we were giving her space, Mack was upstairs stuffing clothes into a duffel bag. He’d already decided. The only thing he was leaving up to me was whether I came with him.
“I’m still pissed at you.”
“I’m pissed at myself.”
“I’ve spent four days wanting to punch you.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“Yeah, well, lucky you, every time I get myself worked up enough to think you deserve it, I remember I was standing right there too.” I scrub a hand over my face. “Hard to decide which one of us deserves the black eye.”
“Still not denying it.”
Mack leans both hands against the counter and drops his head before he speaks again.
“She believed it.”
I look up.
“What?”
“When I said…” His jaw works once before he finishes. “…we’re not trying to keep you. What she heard wasn’t what I meant.”
“I know that.”
“But she believed it.”
“Clearly.”
He rubs a hand through his damp hair and lets out a slow breath.
“It doesn’t matter.”
I don’t argue with him, because I know exactly what he means.
“I keep thinking…” He stares past me for a second before he finally says it. “What if she doesn’t come back?”
My grip tightens around the travel mug.
I’ve spent the last four days refusing to look at that thought. It’s easier to tell myself she just needs a few days with her parents, enough time to scrape Brett out of her head and remember Boston’s home now. That we’re home now.
Except I know Darcy.
By now she’s probably replayed every conversation we’ve had since February until they stopped sounding like the conversations we actually had. She’ll find one sentence that doesn’t fit and keep pulling at it until everything else comes loose with it.
“I don’t wanna think about that.”
“Neither do I.”
He shakes his head.
“But if she comes back—”
His voice catches just enough that I barely hear it.
“If she only wants one of us...”
For a second I can’t even look at him. We’d managed to dance around that sentence for four days without either of us being stupid enough to say it out loud, and somehow hearing it makes all three futures I’d been trying not to think about show up at once.
The first one’s so selfish I almost hate myself for it.
What if she picks me?
The thought barely has time to settle before something uglier crashes straight into it.
What if she only picks me because Mack said the wrong thing?
I try to physically shake the thought from my head, but it doesn’t stop my brain from chasing the rest of it.
How the hell am I supposed to build a life on top of that?
Wake up next to the woman we both fell in love with and spend the rest of it wondering whether she would’ve still ended up beside me if Saturday had gone differently.
Or beside him. Or right where we’d all been headed before one sentence blew up the whole thing.
I couldn’t do it—not without looking across every Thanksgiving table, every Christmas morning, every random Tuesday dinner, wondering whether I’d somehow walked away with the life my brother was supposed to have.
The other versions don’t make it any easier. She chooses Mack, I lose her. She chooses me, and I lose him instead. Or she looks at both of us, decides this whole thing’s too complicated to salvage, and walks away before any of us get the chance to find out what we could’ve been.
Last week, we were trying to figure out how three people built a future together. Now I’m sitting in my kitchen wondering whether one misunderstanding stole the chance to find out before any of us ever got to answer honestly.
Mack stares at the floor so long I start to think he’s done talking, his thumb dragging absently over the truck keys until he finally says, almost to himself, “I keep trying to figure out which one I’d rather lose.”
I look over.
“Her…”
He lets out a slow breath, his eyes never leaving the floor.
“…or you.”
For a second, all I can do is stare at him.
I’d been sitting here thinking I was the only one selfish enough to weigh those futures against each other, and somehow he’d landed in the exact same place.
It shouldn’t make me feel better, but it does.
Just enough to remind me we haven’t been fighting different battles all week.
We’ve been carrying the same one from opposite sides of the room.
“So what do we do?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He turns the keys over once, then closes his hand around them.
“We tell her the truth,” he says. “We try to make it right.”
“And then?”
“Then she decides.”
I hold his gaze for another second before I let out a slow breath.
“Guess we’ll never know if we keep standing in this kitchen.”
The corner of Mack’s mouth twitches.
“No.”
“So…” I shove back from the counter and grab the travel mug he’d poured me twenty minutes ago.
“We drive three hundred miles, tell the woman we love we’ve been communicating like absolute idiots, hope she doesn’t slam the door in our faces, and if she does…
” I shrug. “At least she’ll finally know the truth. ”
Mack huffs out something that almost passes for a laugh.
“That’s your inspirational speech?”
“It’s what I’ve got.”
He shakes his head.
“Get your bag.”
I take the loft stairs two at a time.
“You know,” I call over my shoulder, “her parents are gonna be there.”
“Well aware.”
“They’re gonna have questions—”
I grab my duffel from beside the bed.
“—it might get awkward.”
By the time I get back downstairs, Mack’s already holding the front door open.
“You done?”
“Yeah.”
He locks up behind us.
“Let’s go get our girl.”
That finally gets a real smile out of him.
“Get in the truck, Tyler.”
I grin despite myself.
Road trip.