Chapter 41
JANE
Ifollowed Wyatt to the living room, where he sprawled out on the couch and kicked his feet up on the coffee table, despite Mom’s standing rule about shoes and furniture. Fucking teenagers, man.
Biting back a reprimand that came almost as easily at this point as breathing, I watched him pull his phone out and start scrolling with aggressive intent, thumbs stabbing the screen like he was trying to bruise it.
“I thought we were going to talk,” I said, perching on the arm of the couch across from him. “Can you put your phone away, please?”
He didn’t look up. “There’s nothing to talk about, Jane. I don’t get why you keep asking me about it.”
Nothing to talk about? How about the way you flinch every time my husband breathes in your direction. The way you look at me like I betrayed you. The knot that’s been in my chest for weeks because you refuse to speak to me.
“Why don’t we talk about the fact that you’ve been acting like I ran over your dog and take it from there?”
He rolled his eyes but finally looked up, his shoulders already squared for a fight. God, he looks so young like that.
Convinced the world was out to screw him over personally.
“I’m not acting like you ran over my dog. I’m not the one who’s being weird. You’re the one who—” He cut himself off, scoffing. “Whatever.”
I moved from the arm of the couch, settling in for a longer conversation on the armchair Mom loved and I never used. “You know I wasn’t having an affair, Wyatt.”
His mouth twisted. “Yeah. I know that now.”
“But you’re still angry.”
“Because you didn’t tell me,” he shot back. “I had to figure it out myself. Like an idiot.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” he snapped. “I’m standing there and he tells you not to forget your ring. Your ring, Jane. Right in front of me.”
“I’m sorry it happened that way. I didn’t—”
“No,” he interrupted, scowling as he sat up a little straighter. “You’re not sorry. You never are. You just think you know what’s best for everyone, decide things based on your own opinions, and the rest of us just get dragged along after.”
A stinging pain spread through me at his words. “That’s not what I did.”
“Isn’t it?” he retorted. “So you didn’t decide to get married and keep it from me, then expect me to just welcome your husband into the family like it was nothing?”
“I didn’t make a big deal out of it because it was business,” I said, forcing myself to stay calm. “It wasn’t some big romantic thing at the time.”
“At the time,” he echoed. “So it wasn’t, but it is now?”
I hesitated, wrestling with the answer just for a second, but he noticed it anyway.
“Wow,” he said flatly. “That’s what this is, then. You actually fell for him.”
“Yes,” I finally admitted, my voice barely more than a whisper because the word hurt coming out in the wake of that article, like it was a blade being twisted into an already open wound. “I did fall for him. He’s my husband, Wyatt. Having feelings for him isn’t a bad thing.”
I didn’t tell him about the article, or the photo, or the way my stomach had dropped right out from under me this morning.
He didn’t need to know about any of that even if it was relevant to what we were discussing.
Right now, I had no idea where Alex’s heart or head was at and I didn’t need to give Wyatt another reason to hate him.
My brother scoffed and looked away, his jaw working like he was chewing through something bitter. “I wasn’t even invited to your wedding.”
“I know,” I said softly, that one truth landing with a little more force than anything else he’d said so far. “I’m sorry. That was wrong.”
“Do you have any idea how that feels?” he asked, finally looking at me again. “Everyone else knew. Everyone else got looped in. And I’m just, what? The kid you didn’t think needed to know?”
“That’s not it,” I protested immediately. “God, Wyatt, that’s not it at all. Only a few people knew. It wasn’t everyone at all. I just was trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
“From this,” I said helplessly, gesturing between us. “From the mess, and the pressure, and being pulled into something you didn’t ask for.”
He laughed, but it came out clipped, bitter, and humorless. “Congrats. You failed.”
My heart began pounding, my thoughts tumbling over each other. I’d handled situations that, on paper, had been so much harder than this, but Wyatt was my baby brother. The one I packed lunches for and who’d slept on my bed when he’d had nightmares after everything that had happened with our dad.
“You should’ve been at the wedding,” I conceded quietly.
“I made a mistake keeping it from you, but you have to understand that it wasn’t some big, beautiful fairytale day.
We went down to the courthouse. I didn’t wear a new, princess dress.
I went in the closest thing I had to bridal in my closet and that was it. ”
“I don’t give a fuck about the dress, Jane,” he snapped. “I’m allowed to be pissed off about this.”
“Sure, but you’re not allowed to be a rude, entitled brat about it,” I said firmly. “Alex is doing incredible things for this family.”
“Oh, well, that’s just great.” He scoffed. “So he’s taking care of us now. Is that what you’re saying? That he’s replaced Court and you want me to start calling him dad?”
I frowned. “No, Wyatt. Why would you even say that? I’m not your mother. He’s your brother-in-law, not your father.”
He huffed out a breath in response, crossing his arms tightly over his chest like he was done talking about this, but I wasn’t. Frankly, I was just getting started.
“Alex isn’t trying to replace anyone,” I said slowly. “He’s just trying to help.”
“Oh, right,” he sneered. “Because guys like Alex Westwood just swoop in and come to the aid of the needy for no good reason?” He shook his head, looking at me like I just wasn’t getting it, and honestly? I really wasn’t. “I don’t want his help, Jane. Not if the cost is my sister.”
“What?” My eyes widened, incredulity rocking me to the core. “Alex isn’t going to take me away from you.”
“That’s exactly what he’s doing,” Wyatt argued. “Whether you mean for it to happen or not.”
“No, Wyatt. Just… no. I’m not a toy that he grabbed and is holding out of your reach. We’re just married now, is all. Obviously, we’re spending time together.”
He scoffed again, but as his gaze drifted back to mine, the fight started to drain out of him. I saw it in the way his shoulders slumped.
“I’m not ready for you to leave,” he said after a long pause, his voice wobbling slightly at the edges.
“You’re the only one who’s been here. The only constant I’ve had.
Maybe if you guys had been dating for a long time and I knew it was coming, it would’ve been different, but now, you’re just gone. ”
My throat tightened. “I’m not leaving you. I might move out eventually, yeah. That part might change, but nothing else between us has to. I’m still your sister. I’m still here. I still show up. That doesn’t stop just because I’m married.”
He stood up, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his hoodie. The anger I’d been bracing for wasn’t there anymore, but what was left behind was quieter. Heavier. Sad.
I think I preferred it when he was pissed off at me.
“I hear you,” he said finally, but his voice didn’t sound like belief. It sounded like resignation. “I just don’t think you see it.”
“See what?” I asked.
“That it already has changed, Jane,” he said, and then he walked past me and he was gone before I could figure out how to stop him.
The front door shut with a soft click that seemed to echo through the house, and I sat there with my heart aching and my thoughts spiraling. But what hurt the most was that he wasn’t wrong. Everything really was changing.
I was barely home anymore. When I was, I was distracted, on the phone with Alex, talking about Alex, fighting for Thayer… with Alex.
My life had narrowed down to two gravitational pulls—my husband and the company. Everything else orbited around them or got shoved out of the way.
Meanwhile, Wyatt was applying to college, filling out forms at the dining-room table where I used to sit and help with his homework. Soon he’d be gone too, off to start a life that didn’t include me hovering in the background making sure the house stayed standing.
That change was coming whether any of us liked it or not.
Maybe that was what he was really reacting to. Not Alex or our marriage, but the realization that the ground under his feet wasn’t stable anymore. Welcome to adulthood, kid.
Fear had a way of disguising itself as anger and Wyatt was going through a lot.
I pressed my palms into my eyes, the article flickering at the back of my mind again now that my brother was gone.
That image of Mallory’s hand on Alex’s haunted me so much more now for having realized how much my life had started revolving around him.
I still hadn’t listened to any of the voicemails he’d left or answered his calls. I hadn’t read a single one of his texts either, and I felt awful about it.
Alex didn’t deserve the silent treatment. He’d done nothing but show up for me, over and over again, steady and unflinching. But right now, every time my phone buzzed, it felt like one more demand on a system that was already overloaded.
I just needed a fucking minute.
The house felt too quiet without any of my brothers in it. Too big. Too full of echoes from other versions of our lives when Dad’s laughter had still sometimes come down the hall and Mom called for us to come down for dinner.
Everything used to feel simpler, even when it had been so much harder after Dad had gone away. It was then that I realized how much more intensely Wyatt had to be feeling all the changes. I’d been so self-centered recently—or Alex-centered, rather.
I’d told myself I was allowed to want something for myself for once. That I’d earned it. That loving Alex didn’t make me selfish but that it made me human.
All of that was still true, but so was the fact that somewhere along the way, I’d stopped checking in as closely as I used to. I’d assumed Wyatt would adjust because I always had. I’d underestimated how scary it must be to watch the one constant in your life start to shift.
I didn’t know how to fix that. I didn’t know how to split myself into the right shapes to be everything everyone needed at the same time.
My phone buzzed again in my hand.
Alex.
I stared at his name on the screen until it went dark, letting it ring out and go to voicemail. Guilt followed immediately, but I shoved it down. If I answered him right now, I’d either cry or say something I didn’t mean or demand reassurance I wasn’t ready to hear yet.
I needed space to think. To breathe.
To not be pulled in ten different directions at once.
My fingers trembled as I looked at my phone, knowing Mallory’s number was in there somewhere. At one point, I’d been helping the lawyers try to track her down for the DNA test of Court Jr.
My heart started racing, adrenaline spiking in a way that felt unhinged and impulsive. I stared at the phone, her number representing answers I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear.
She’d offered to talk and maybe I was just grasping for control wherever I could find it, but I scrolled to her number anyway. My pulse thudded in my ears as I stared at it.
This was a bad idea. I knew it, but I still almost hit call.
Almost.
At the very last second, I locked the screen and shoved the phone back into my purse like it’d burned me. I wasn’t ready to open that door. Whatever waited on the other side of it would only make things worse, not better.
I leaned back against the couch, feeling like everything was slipping just out of reach. My brother. My marriage. My company. My sense of control.
I didn’t know where to start fixing any of it.
All I knew was that something had cracked and I was standing in the middle of the mess, trying to decide which fire to put out first before everything burned.