Page 35 of Never Say Yes To Your Brother's Best Friend

Idon’t know what in the mooney loomy mooing cow I was thinking last night.

I suppose I wasn’t. My brain was pretty much cooked from lack of sleep. I can see how it’s a thing they use as torture and how it would be mighty effective. Not that I’ve ever been tortured. I haven’t. I’m just saying.

I expect Aspen to be cuddled up to me, soft and warm and full of pity that I know I’m not going to be able to even pretend to stand when I wake up, but the bed is empty.

She’s not here.

But I’m here, wrapped up snugly in sheets and a comforter that smells like Aspen. Fresh and airy. All flowers and clouds, honey and citrus.

I find my clothes once I make my way out of my cocoon. They’re not scattered on the floor like they should be but folded neatly at the end of the bed. It makes my face burn to think about Aspen tucking me in like a toddler, finding my clothes, andfolding them. It makes me mortified beyond anything to think I came close to some kind of breakdown last night. I was just so, so, sooooo tired. Fuck me, I need to start sleeping more often.

When I don’t, lapses in judgment happen, apparently.

I don’t want her to take care of me. I don’t want to be a burden.

I’ve never had anyone care for me like that. Jace might have been like a brother, but he didn’t pick up after me. The closest he ever came to nursing me was stitching up my various injuries over the years, and I liked to pretend those never happened. I’m not one of the take-a-break or rest-and-recover types. We certainly didn’t do the sharing-with-tears thing. Yes, we told each other stuff. But no, it wasn’t anything like what happened with Aspen last night.

I’m a red hot mess. I’m heading to my room to shower and get fresh clothes. My dresser is still in there. I figured I needed it until I could get some boxes for my things, and then it could go too. I stop dead at the top of the stairs. I’ve gone in the wrong direction without even noticing it. I hear humming. It’s a pretty sound. A happy sound.

I might as well go and try to salvage some of the disaster of last night. If I get it over with, I won’t have to think about it. Then I can shower and freshen my beautiful ass up. Ha freaking ha. Believe me, I know I’m the furthest thing from anything that could be called beautiful.

Except when Aspen looked at me last night, she looked at me like she thought I was.

My chest feels like someone just cut a deep wound through it. As I descend the stairs, it tugs and pulls like there’s a tidy line of stitches holding me together. The gaping space in the wall where the huge painting was makes me grin. I can’t help it. It’s so satisfying that it’s gone.

Aspen is at the island, stirring something in a huge stainless steel bowl. Her hips shake with every turn of the spoon. She’swearing the world’s cutest dress—white and pink plaid with strawberries and large white buttons. It’s all frilly and girly. Her long blonde hair is pulled back in a braid, and she looks like the real, vintage salt of the earth. The truest kind.

Just like her brother was.

Even if he never wore white and pink plaid and strawberries.

Jesus, I know he was only her half-brother, but she looks just like him sometimes. It’s more than their shared genetics. It’s their expressions.

Like now, when she hears me step in, and she stops stirring. Her eyes sweep over me, and they’re immediately hard, as though she has no time for whatever apologies I might have come in here to make. They soften just slightly, the blue thawing out, and I know if I need to collapse into a chair and justtalk,she’lllisten.

“Patrick McDonald,” she says, her voice sharp because it needs to be sharp. I have zero shields or walls or neutrality going for me, and she can tell. “You can always talk to me. It’s okay to not be okay. Someone needs to darn well tell you that and mean it and get you to believe it, but it’s not okay to say things that are cruel about yourself. I’m not here for that, and I’m not going to let you be either.”

She has my number. This woman has had it since the day she showed up on my doorstep, fearless and chasing down her brother’s last wishes. It makes my legs weak to hear her say my full name like she always has. Just like Jace used to. I doubt he ever told her he did that.

I scrape a hand over my face and grainy eyes, down past the facial hair that should just come off already. “I’m fucking embarrassed.”

She starts stirring again, but her eyes never leave me. I’ve been in unthinkably dangerous situations before, yet I’m still frozen in place. This feels a hundred times worse than getting chaseddown or shot at. At least I know what to do in those situations. Right now, I feel completely lost.

“Why should you be embarrassed? Are you not a human being? Shouldn’t you have regular emotions, ones you need to have in order to be healthy? Don’t you deserve to be able to grieve?”

“Men don’t…uh…men don’t break down like that.”

“Yeah,” she scoffs. “Yeah, right. That’s the oldest lie I think I’ve ever heard.” She gives whatever she’s mixing another hard stir. “Debunked. That’s straight-up debunked by basic science. Men can cry. They should. They need to. There is zero wrong with it.” She taps the bowl with the side of her free hand, making her fingernails clink against the metal. “And don’t you dare say it’s a weakness because I personally know a ton of strong men who cry. It’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I just…lost it. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep like that.”

“If you’re blushing about me tucking you in and making sure you were okay, please don’t. I’m just sorry for all the nights you’ve spent where you didn’t have that. The little kid version of you, the big kid version, and even the teenage version. You’re never too old to need to be taken care of once in a while.”

I feel like I could die, and there she is, just putting it out there so matter-of-factly.

“I know you’re not used to it, and I’m sorry for that too.” She points at the table. “Sit down. I’m going to have blueberry pancakes ready right away.”

Blueberry pancakes. That might as well be a bullet straight to my chest. Jace’s favorite. Not that we ever had them out there, wherever out there might have been. Out there meant a lot of places for us, but he talked about how good they were back home and how his mom used to make them. His stepmom too. He had two moms, and they both loved him. He had two, and I had none. I remember how I used to be so madly jealous of himand would then hate myself for it because a grown man should be over shit like that. It wasn’t the kind of jealousy that made me hate him. Just the kind that made me wish I knew even a fraction of the love that glowed on his face when he talked about home.

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