Page 82 of So Close

“The fact that you love her and want to do right by her?”

“Don’t you think he thought he did?”

“Trey,” Brynn said quietly.

“Don’t. Please, don’t.”

“Someone needs to, dude. Someone needs to tell you you’re being—”

She hesitated.

“An idiot?” he suggested, since that was what her expression seemed to be saying.

She shook her head, and the scorn softened into something much more like pity. He wasn’t sure he liked it better. “More like a wounded bear.”

“A wounded bear,” he repeated.

“Not to point out the obvious, dude, but Mom’s death did a number on you. It wasn’t your fault, you know.”

What? “I never said it was.”

Her gaze softened further. “No. But you’ve alwaysthoughtit.”

He was shaking his head, but the world was already tilting on its axis.

“You always make it about Dad. Dad not taking care of her, Dad not pulling his weight. But I saw you, Trey. I saw you trying to pick up the slack. Doing all the work in the yard. Around the house. Repairing, cleaning, trimming, tidying—fixing. Fixing fucking everything like if you just worked hard enough, you couldbedad and take the weight off her.”

It was a sneaker wave, what she’d said, the kind that crawled up the beach and snatched your feet out from under you. The kind that dragged you into a riptide.

He was still shaking his head.

“Trey. Isaw. And then you did it again. To Karina. If you worked hard enough, if you built an empire that couldn’t be touched, if you poured enough money into the life you were leading with her, nothing bad could ever happen to her.”

“Except me,” he said. “I happened to her.”

Brynn glared at him.

“Mom loved Dad, you know. I mean, there’s no accounting for taste, but she did. And the fact that he never had any money didn’t bother her in the slightest. The thing that bothered her was the fact that he was so busy with all his scheming and risk-taking that he wasn’tthere. She just wanted him to be more present. And maybe if he had been—if he hadn’t been so busy trying tofixeverything—then he would have been able to really, well,fix everything.

“The only thing bad about you, Trey,” Brynn said, tears filling her eyes, “is that you think we want what you cangiveus. You don’t understand that what we want isyou.”

“But she doesn’t,” he insisted wildly, because his own eyes were filling with tears and he couldn’t,couldn’tcry—hadn’t,not even when his mother had died. “She can’t. Not after what I did. I almost took everything away from her.”

Brynn sighed deeply. She brushed a hand over her eyes. “When she was yelling at you. Why do you think that was? Was it because she thought you were taking everything away from her?”

Was it? He heard the echo of Auburn’s words, suddenly: Oh, myGod, is that really how you see this? That this is all about you and what you did? Do you haveany ideawhat an asshole that makes you?

He was starting to get the idea.

“You know what?” Brynn said. “Don’t answer that. I know the answer. You know the answer. I don’t want to play Socrates. Just—man the fuck up and figure it out.”

A faint thread of hope, like the first strand in a new web, strung itself through him.

“How do I—how do I fix it?”

“Oh, God, Trey, you’rehopeless.”

Which was funny because that little thread of hope was growing stronger every minute. Something he could hang onto.

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