19. Shoplifting the Pooty #2
I caught only half the conversation, but the gist was the entire wedding party had arrived a day early, the mother of the bride had strong opinions about vegetarian options, and apparently, the Ramirez’s’ rehearsal dinner was now a full-catered production with floral centerpieces and a cellist, effective immediately.
She pinched the bridge of her nose, rolled her eyes at me, and mouthed thank you as she held up her drink before jogging down the chapel steps, cold brew in hand, already in crisis mode.
I admired the efficiency. I admired everything.
She was pulling away in her SUV when I felt my brother’s gaze boring through the side of my skull.
Dawson, who must have been out working on the property, pulled up in a golf cart.
He moved with that old lineman grace—compact, heavy, a little battered by a decade of farm work and a decade more of never talking about feelings.
He sat beside me, picked up a piece of loose gravel, and started chipping away at the cement post with it.
“You know Mom’s already planning the wedding,” he stated flatly.
So was I. When I’d asked Felicity if I should reserve the ranch for a December wedding, I was only half-joking.
“Yeah, your wedding,” I deflected.
He tilted his head, not responding to my Uno Reverse card reply. My oldest brother didn’t say much, he didn’t waste words, it was something I’d always respected about him. But he communicated very strongly what he was feeling. Right now I felt the accusation in his silence.
“Nothing is going on,” I lied through my teeth.
“I’m just wondering if you know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“She’s a woman, not a timeshare.”
“She’s got a lot on her plate.”
“And?” With each statement my brother made, my defensiveness grew.
“And you’ve never met a problem you didn’t want to fix.”
I turned to him. “She’s not a problem.”
“I didn’t say she was.”
I remained silent and hoped my brother would drop it.
He didn’t.
Dawson sighed, perhaps sensing my irritation. “Don’t turn this into something it isn’t. I like her.”
“Congratulations,” I deadpanned. “I’ll let her know.”
“This isn’t about her. I’m talking about you.”
“My favorite subject,” I grumbled.
“This is about you deciding everybody else and their problems are your responsibility.”
This conversation was going from bad to worse.
I was getting more and more pissed by the second.
I was tempted to tell him to fuck off, but Dawson never talked out his ass or butted into anyone’s personal life, so if he had something to say, I wanted to hear it, if only to dispute it. “You mean caring about people?”
“I mean taking care of them,” he clarified.
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive,” I rebutted.
“No. But they’re not the same thing either.”
Weren’t they? I honestly didn’t know.
“She’s been doing this on her own for a long time. Raising her kid. Keeping everything together. She doesn’t need somebody coming in and taking over.”
“You make it sound like staging a hostile takeover.”
“You need to be careful with her,” he came back, not dropping the subject.
My jaw tightened, and I instantly got defensive at his warning, as if he knew what was good for her. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means she’s got a kid. A whole life that existed before you walked into it. This isn’t some woman you can charm for a few months and then disappear.”
“Right, because that’s my MO.”
“It is.” Dawson held my stare in challenge. “You’ve been doing this your entire life.”
“Doing what?” I had no clue what the fuck he was talking about. I’d never been in a serious relationship, so my brother, whose opinion I typically valued, was talking out of his ass.
“Saving people.”
A humorless laugh escaped me.
“I’m serious. Mom needs something, you handle it. Dad is absent, you step in. Dylan or Damon get into trouble, you’re the first one through the door. You see somebody drowning, and you don’t even stop to ask if they need help. You just jump in.”
“That’s called giving a shit.”
“No. Sometimes it’s called needing to be needed.”
What the fuck? Is that how my brother saw me? More importantly, was there truth to it?
Dawson held my gaze. “And she’s exactly the kind of woman who’s going to set every one of those instincts off. She’s doing everything on her own. She’s exhausted. She’s got a kid depending on her. There are probably a hundred things in her life you could make easier.”
Exactly. I thought the same thing. So what was the problem?
“So I’m supposed to stay away from her because I can make her life easier?”
“No. You’re supposed to make damn sure that’s not why you want her.”
I started this conversation off denying anything was going on, but Dawson had always been able to cut through my bullshit. I felt like there was no reason to continue my denial.
My brother continued, “Because she and Maverick don’t need some guy sweeping in, playing hero, and deciding six months from now that the cape doesn’t fit anymore. And she sure as hell doesn’t need another man making promises he can’t keep.”
What the fuck did he know about her past?
Had she been talking to him?
Despite knowing my older brother was head over heels in love with his high school sweetheart, Sadie, and had been his entire life, I found myself feeling jealous, an emotion I wasn’t used to.
“I think Cuba Gooding Jr. said it best in Jerry Maguire,” Dawson said straightening.
“Show me the money?” I had no clue how that quote corresponded to this conversation.
Dawson shook his head. “No, dumbass, when he was talking to Jerry about dating a single mom.”
“Oh.” I didn’t actually remember what he’d said, I hadn’t watched that movie since I was in high school.
“Don’t shoplift the pooty,” Dawson said as if that was supposed to mean something to me.
“Don’t shoplift the…” Oh, right, I got what he was saying. It took me a second, but I got there. He didn’t want me to sleep with Felicity under false pretenses and take advantage of her.
I wasn’t. She’d laid out the rules, I was doing my best to follow them. Well, except rule number one. Not that I could tell him that, since one of those rules was that no one could know.
“I’m not,” I gritted out, hoping Dawson couldn’t see the nerve he was hitting.
“Good.” Dawson stood and slapped me on the shoulder. “Then don’t.”
I looked up at him.
“And don’t try to save her. Stand beside her. Let her handle her own shit. Let her tell you when she needs help. And if you still want her when she doesn’t need a damn thing from you—” Dawson walked over to the cart and got in. “Then maybe it’s real.”
My brother pulled away after imparting his final words of wisdom and left me feeling even more confused about the situation than I had before.
I’d spent most of my life assuming my emotions were kind of a liability—something to be managed, minimized, or eliminated entirely.
And I was good at it, no matter how loud or sharp the feeling, I could always shrink it down to something manageable.
But I couldn’t do that with Felicity. There was no managing.
But that had nothing to do with her being a single mom.
I told myself Dawson was wrong, what I felt for Felicity had nothing to do with a “Superman complex,” which I’d been accused of having more than once. This was just two people acting on an attraction neither of them could deny or ignore. That’s it.
That’s what I told myself, and I almost believed it.