Page 87 of Wanting a Family Man

“I’d be more sure of that if she wasn’t sleeping with you,” Reid said frankly. “Now that I know she is, I have to wonder what her end game is. Does she want a piece of Raven’s Cove? Does she want your money?”

“What money?” he near shouted.

Guilt had pushed that out of him. Defensiveness. He was insulted on Cloe’s behalf, and he’d known from the jump he shouldn’t sleep with her. He’d ended it, thinking that was the right thing to do, but he’d hurt her feelings and she’d literally been injured because of their breakup. Now his brothers wanted to pile on her?No.

“What do you mean, ‘what money’?” Reid frowned.

“I’m broke,” he threw out, glad to get it off his chest. “And Cloe knows it. I dumped everything I had into keeping this place afloat. It’s not coming back to me anytime soon and I can’t”—won’t—“leverage against the resort. So, no. She is not sleeping with me for my money. I don’t have any.”

She had wanted to feel good. That’s all. And what had he done? Made her feel bad about it. And the one thing shehadn’twanted was for people to talk about her sex life and question her motives.

He ran his hand over his face, feeling like a supreme asshole for having this conversation.

“When you say ‘broke’…” Logan prompted.

“Yeah. Spell that out for us. We all had to rejig our finances to make this work, but…” Reid’s frown intensified.

Jesus, this was humiliating.

“What do you think happens when you tell investors you’ll deliver a product, then you don’t deliver it?”

“But you’ve been making money for years, Trys. You bought a house in California. You have assets,” Logan insisted. “Don’t you?”

“Okay, get out your bibs because you’ll be dining on this for a while.” Trystan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes. I had money. I still have equipment sitting in storage that I need to produce my show, but I made decisions around the tone of the show that cost me my backers. Then the woman I was sharing that house with took it. I won’t bother getting into why. All you need to know is that I know what it looks like when a woman is sleeping with me for money. That’s not what Cloe is doing.”

“Damn. Sorry, man,” Logan said. “So what are you saying? That you and Cloe are, like, in a relationship?”

“We’ll circle back to that,” Reid cut in. “Why didn’t you tell us this when we first threw our money into Raven’s Cove?”

“Because we all had to ante up. Crew not cargo.” He tapped his chest. “My start-up money came out of this place, so it had to go back in. I wasn’t going to cry poor and leave it all on you two to bail this place out.”

“You still could have told us what you were up against,” Reid insisted.

“I didn’t want you rubbing my nose in it? All right?”

“Why the hell would we do that?” Reid asked.

“Fine. I didn’t want you to be completely indifferent.” He didn’t realize how true that was until he said it aloud, without thinking.

Reid choked out an exhale as though he’d taken a punch.

“Yeah. Ouch,” Logan agreed. “We care, Trys. Why would you think we don’t?”

“Because we never fucking talk to each other. I ghosted you? It was all on me, was it?” Trystan charged.

“Fair. Shit.” Logan scraped his hand over his jaw. “I didn’t think you wanted to talk to me, and I didn’t blame you. It was easier to leave my mistakes here than deal with them.” He shook his head in self-disgust. “The longer it went on, the worse I felt and the harder it was to patch up. By the time I saw you at Mom’s wedding, you were living the life of a movie star. What did you need me for?”

“You did fuck up with Sophie.” Trystan leapt on the chance to say what had been sitting inside him for years. “She told me to stay out of it so I did, but you are a colossalass. If you ever hurt her like that again, I will put you in the ground.”

“Message received, man. But there’s nothing out there I want more than her, so you can stand down,” Logan said mildly.

He wouldn’t even give him the fight he wanted? What an asshole.

“I should have kept in touch more, too,” Reid admitted.

“It’s okay,” Trystan muttered, more or less out of habit. “Your mom—”

“Has a mental illness,” Reid cut in sharply. “Idon’t. Except, you know, the clinical arrogance we all inherited from dear ol’ Dad.” Reid squeezed the back of his neck and sighed. “I had a lot going on, that’s true, but it was no excuse not to pick up a phone once in a while and check in with my brothers. I was a prick. I should have done better.”

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