Page 12 of Promise Me Forever

He curls his fingers in my beard and grins at me, a globule of drool rolling down his chin. I swipe it away with the tip of my thumb, and he squeals with delight. Maybe that’s part of it—it’s so damn easy to make them laugh, to make them happy. It’s sad to think that he’ll eventually be as fucked up as the rest of us.

Or maybe not, I think, as my sister-in-law walks over. Maybe he’ll be the perfect blend of Melanie’s selfless and sunny disposition and my older brother’s drive and ambition. “Let me take him from you, Drake. He needs his nap,” Mel says, giving me a warm smile. Her cheeks are flushed pink, her hair slightly mussed.

Nathan steps up behind her with a bottle of merlot in his hand. “Do you want me to take him, corazón?”

She smiles sweetly at him, and I swear he melts into a puddle before my eyes. It’s like when the Wicked Witch of the West gets doused in water. He’s so pussy-whipped these days—not that I blame him. Mel is great, and she makes him happier than I’ve ever seen him. That’s no easy feat given the charmed life Nathan already led before he met her.

He’s one of those guys that everything always came easy to—sports, school, work, women. He worked hard and played hard. Like the rest of us, he was devastated when we lost our mom, but he was the one who always seemed like he was treading a gilded path. I’ve always partially hero-worshipped him, even though he’s only a few years older than me. He’s the son our dad always saw as the one who would carry on the James family line, and I guess he was right. Luke is living proof of that.

“No,” his wife assures him. “You go have a drink with your brothers. I’ve got him. I think maybe I need my nap too.”

I’m pretty sure my older brother growls at that latter part, but I ignore him and reluctantly allow her to take the baby from my arms, but not without a final kiss on his head. “See you later, little guy.” He gurgles and waves his chubby fists at me.

I spent the first four months of my nephew’s life living in Chicago, but now I’m back in New York where I belong. I have a lot of uncle time to make up for, and I intend to enjoy every sweet minute of it.

The noisein the den is comforting, reminding me of much happier times when we all lived here and Mom was still with us. For a while after she passed, our family home felt like a prison to me, every room a reminder of what we lost, the scent of her perfume still seeming to linger in every hallway. It was like the place was haunted, and we were all suffering. I’m glad to be back here, rebuilding, all the James boys together again—just likeshe would have wanted. As though he knows exactly what I’m thinking, Nathan gives my shoulder a comforting squeeze. “It’s been a while since we were all here for Sunday dinner, huh?”

The past three months have been a whirlwind of tying up loose ends on my old life in Chicago, so this is the first time I’ve made it home since shortly after Luke was born. An unexpected lump balls in my throat, and I swallow it down. “Yeah. She would’ve loved this.”

“She would have. I wish she’d been able to meet Mel, to hold Luke in her arms.” I see a sudden shine of tears in his eyes, and it freaks me out. Nathan James is not the kind of man who cries, for fuck’s sake.

He swipes the moisture away and gives me a sheepish grin. “Don’t you dare tell a living soul you just saw me crying at Sunday dinner. I’ll never hear the fucking end of it.”

“So I can’t tell everyone that becoming a dad has turned you into the kind of emotional sap you used to roll your eyes at, then?”

He punches me hard in the arm, turning it numb. I grunt, but I’m used to it. When you grow up with four brothers, someone is always walking around with a dead-arm. It’s brutal.

He jerks his head in the direction of our other three siblings who are huddled around the large oak coffee table our parents brought from their very first house in Spain. “We’d better get in there before Mase and Elijah drink all the good Scotch.”

I notice the familiar black label on the bottle. “Does Pop know they’ve nabbed some of his fifty-year-old Macallan?”

Nathan shrugs. “The old man is so happy to have us all under one roof, I’m sure he’d let us drink his cellar dry. Besides, he’s too busy prepping for dinner to be interested in what we’re doing right now.”

I can picture him in hisI’m the bossapron, the one our mom bought for him shortly before she died. It brings a smile to myface and very nearly a tear to my eye. Only the fact that I just mocked Nathan for being a wuss holds it back. “Can’t believe he still hasn’t gotten himself a cook.”

“You know him. Too set in his ways. Besides, it keeps him out of trouble.”

He’s not wrong. Our dad built his tech company up into the multibillion-dollar global conglomerate that it is today, and he is an amazing man, but he hasn’t been the same since Mom died. It hit us all hard, but for him, it was like losing half of himself. He had a heart attack a while ago, and although he’s made a full recovery, it’s a worry. Dalton James is no frail granddad—he’s still a force to be reckoned with as he quickly approaches seventy—but he is one of the reasons I moved back. He won’t be around forever, as he likes to remind us on a regular basis.

Nathan walks across the room, and I follow him. Feels like I’ve spent a lot of my life following Nathan, and to be fair, he’s never steered me wrong. He persuaded me to go all in with him on the law firm, and that worked out—my work is the love of my life. My Melanie. He sits on one of the big, comfortable sofas, and I flop down next to him.

“So, what was her name?” Mason asks as soon as my ass touches the seat.

Should have known I could hide nothing from these four. “Whose name?” I feign ignorance anyway. It’s worth a shot, plus it’ll annoy the hell out of him.

Mason narrows his eyes, but they’re filled with amusement. “The girl you blew me off for last night. It better have been a girl anyway. If I find out you canceled on me for work again, dude…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, but the implicit threat hangs in the air. Another dead-arm lurks on the horizon.

It wouldn’t be the first time I canceled on one of them for work. My priorities have been clear since I was in my early twenties and everything else in my life went to shit. Work neverlets me down. It never dies or walks out on me or makes me feel like crap about myself. Work is the best wife I could ever have, and out of all the James brothers, I’m the one who would be described as a workaholic. That’s saying something, considering how driven and ambitious they all are. Apart from Maddox, and he is a different story altogether. Our youngest brother is working his way through his own demons, and they would eat mine for breakfast.

My brothers are all looking at me, waiting for a reply. “Her name was, uh, Scarlet. It was a one-off. I won’t be seeing her again.”

“You blew me off for some girl you’re never going to see again? Dude.” Mason shakes his head. “It could at least have been someone special.”

“Someone special?” Elijah says, arching an eyebrow at him. “Since when did you start believing in that kind of romantic stuff?”

“Fuck you, bro,” Mason says. “I watch a lot of Netflix.”

Elijah hands me a glass, and I gratefully accept and take a sip, enjoying the smoky liquor warming my throat almost as much as I do the banter between my brothers. “I don’t dospecial,” I say, “and I never see any of them again.”

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