She braces a hand over her heart, and I can almost feel her worry. “Your parents must have been worried sick.”

“I was too pissed to care. A neighbor finally found me.” I’d been hiding between two bushes, dry eyed and hungry and confused as hell. At that age, I wasn’t precisely sure what my father was doing with that other woman, but I knew it was wrong. “When I got home, my mother screamed out her anger that I worried her for nothing before she retreated to bed. Once we were alone, my father sat me down and told me not to be a righteous little pussy about what I’d seen that afternoon. Then he took a conference call with someone in China. We never spoke about it again.”

“Did you ever tell your mom what you saw?”

I shake my head. “You have to understand… I was a kid who wanted to please the father who never seemed to have time for me. I thought keeping his secret—and a lot of the others I learned about over the years—might make him care more. Besides, I think my mom knew and tattling would have been merely rubbing her face in all her misery.”

“Does Griff know what kind of man your father is?”

“Of course,” I assure her. “He figured it out a few years later when he discovered Dad banging his third-grade teacher.”

Keeley pushes her bowl away, shaken. “I can’t imagine… My father loved us with all his heart. The day he passed away, he squeezed my mother’s hand in his hospital bed, kissed my forehead, and promised her that his love for us was deathless, even if he wasn’t. He was a good man. Despite having remarried a few years ago, my mom still wears a locket with his picture around her neck. I miss him.”

Tears shimmer in her eyes. The memory is one she holds close to her heart. She’s proud to wear the emotion on her face.

I’m not the enemy, but if I was, she just exposed a big chink in her armor. Does she know that? Or does she trust me enough not to use her feelings against her?

I like that idea.

“And mine is a selfish, womanizing pig. Griff and I saw a thousand instances of that as teenagers. When we were little kids, he seemed to take delight in watching us twist and contort, trying to please him. But when we interned with him a few summers, we bonded over our dislike of the way he treated us. We swore we’d never be anything like him.”

Yet I fear he’s exactly who we’ve both become.

Our shared boyhood crap held us together until three years ago, when that goddamn deal with the freaking Middle Eastern prince splintered our pact into a thousand pieces. If I’m being really honest, I’ve been somewhat lost since.

“I’m getting the picture,” she murmured. “Did you try to talk to your brother after he left?”

“Sure. I thought someone had stolen money from our bank and broken into our office at first. I called him that morning he didn’t show up for work. He answered with ‘Fuck off, you backstabbing shitbag’ and hung up. So I went to his place. He lives in a guarded complex. He told the guard there to advise me that I was no longer welcome.”

That’s one memory I would rather forget, driving over to Griff’s building and trying to reason with security as the pounding rain soaked my freshly starched shirt thirty minutes before I was supposed to FaceTime this royal prick every square inch of the property he was signing for later that day. Security wouldn’t budge, and I drove away soaked and confused and fucking sad.

“That’s it?”

“What else did you want me to do? He wouldn’t see me. He wouldn’t see Britta, even when she sent a letter to his house to tell him that he would be a father in seven months. He just cut us cold.”

Keeley pauses, and I see the wheels in her head turning. “Then came his nasty e-mail with the pictures of him and Tiffanii naked?”

“Yeah, and there was nothing to say after that.”

She nods. It’s a lot to absorb, and it sounds as if she had a really awesome childhood with parents who loved her. No wonder she’s not really grasping all the baggage from mine.

“It’s safe to say that your dad’s behavior affected Griff, too?”

I never thought about it quite like that. I mean, we were both warped. That’s a fact. Emotion never entered into our decisions. Showing weakness was the worst thing we could do. I thought I had feelings for Tiffanii, but lifelong commitment to one woman was something I shied away from because, of course, why pluck a single flower when I would always want to plow the whole field? I really thought that until recently. Griff’s departure had me examining the past. Keeley’s perspective makes me reevaluate my attitude. No doubt about it…filtered through her lens, my life looks fucked up.

“It must have. I’ve wondered for years if he left Britta and Jamie without blinking because the responsibility scared him or, like Dad, he was just incapable of caring. I don’t know.”

“What do you think he saw in Britta? I mean, you said he has a ‘type’?”

“And she’s the epitome of what trips Griff’s trigger.”

“Blonde?”

I shake my head. I can accuse Griff of a lot of shallow shit because I know he’s screwed hordes of willing women. Hell, in college he used to love the tourist hangouts because the ladies were drunk and easy and looking for a good time. Britta seemed to change all that. Or I’d thought so until the day he left.

“Smart. Sharp. Someone with attitude and verve. Good tits help.”

Keeley swats my arm. “Seriously?”

“What?”

“Tits?” she challenges with a cock of her head.

“Do you like breastsss better?” I intentionally stumble over the word because, really, it’s not the easiest word to say.

“Yes, especially when you’re not being an ass about it.”

I try not to roll my eyes. “Don’t make me call your girl parts a vagina,” I warn. “That’s a pussy. Yours is a really pretty one.”

Her expression turns tart. “Mine is off-limits to you. We’re talking about your brother.”

“But not in the same sentence as your pussy.”

In all honesty, I’m poking at her. I don’t know why exactly. To lighten the mood? So she stops feeling sorry for me? So things seem less heavy? Probably all that. When I’m with her, I have so many thoughts. But they’re more than thoughts when they make my chest squishy. They’re feelings.