Page 38 of Chasing You

They’d end up planning a parade or one of those public flash mobs that gave him secondhand embarrassment so badly he wanted to cry. So, he’d do this now and ask for forgiveness later. The only problem was his brother and his friend weren’t any better than he was.

“Okay. Let’s start with what you have done,” Bowen said.

Adele flushed as Ridge burst into laughter. “Hand jobs in hotel rooms and in the shower is as far as he got.”

Bowen reared back. “Dude. This is my brother we’re talking about.”

“Yeah, well, he hasn’t given me much to work with besides that,” Ridge defended. “And that’s about all he’s done so far.”

Bowen stared at Adele. “Seriously?”

Adele shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

Bowen dropped his face into his hand and shook his head. “Okay. I mean, sex is good. It’s great. But that’s not going to convince him this is a forever deal. You know him. He’s always been fragile?—”

“Don’t,” Adele cautioned.

Bowen’s lips thinned. “I’m not calling him fragile as an insult. But you fucking broke his heart when you got married, dude. He literally fell apart at the wedding.”

Adele blinked at him. What the hell was Bowen saying? “What are you talking about? He was fine. I mean, we got a little drunk and weepy about life changing, but that’s normal.”

Bowen’s laugh was high and tight. “Oh my God, you really believe that. Jesus, I thought you were being obtuse on purpose. He was a wreck, dude. Hecriedduring the ceremony.”

“Well, yeah, but…” Adele stopped and bit his lip.

He’d seen Kash weeping out of the corner of his eye, and he’d thought it was sweet. He hadn’t assumed it was for any other reason than why everyone else cried at weddings. Adele hadn’t really loved his ex—not the way she deserved to be loved—but even he’d gotten a little misty at watchingher walk down the aisle in the white, puffy dress, looking like an actual princess.

God, had he really had his head buried that far in the sand?

“Shit,” he muttered.

“You both deserve each other,” Bowen said. “If you two had this talk years ago, we wouldn’t be here right now. You’d be married and happy and dealing with this crisis together.”

Adele’s chest felt tight. “I wouldn’t have Gage.”

“You don’t know that. Kash loves him more than anything. He would have been on board for adopting a kid,” Bowen pointed out. “But it’s too late for what-ifs. You’ve spent years ignoring how much he loves you. Now, you need to pull out all the stops if you want him to believe that he’s it for you.”

“Where do I start?” Adele asked.

Bowen and Ridge looked at each other, and then Bowen said, “You need to take him on a date. A real date. Not some bullshit trip to DC where you…do whatever you did—please don’t tell me—and then come home with everything all broken.”

“A date,” Adele repeated.

Ridge lifted a brow at him. “You know what he likes, right?”

Adele did. Or, at least, he thought he did. But he was starting to second-guess himself with everything. He thought he knew how Kash had felt at his wedding, but he’d been wrong. He thought he’d known how Kash felt about him their entire lives, but he’d had his head firmly lodged up his own ass.

God, for the amount of shit he’d given his friends over the years, he deserved to be raked across the coals.

“Help me,” he said.

Ridge sighed and looked at Bowen. “How did this man raise you?”

“It’s a damn mystery.”

Adele wanted to fight back, but at this point, he had no argument at all.

Through the dinner and drinks, they brainstormed as much as they could. Adele had a couple of decent ideas by the end, and he also had a feeling his jig was up. Lane had seen them with their heads bowed, and he’d caught his brother mouthing, ‘I’ll tell you later,’ when Lane raised a brow at them.

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