Page 38 of Mended Hearts

“You spent over a year building this team. You’ve finally got a shot at a Super Bowl. Don’t fuck with Paxton’s head now that things are working.”

“Now we’re talking football?”

“He already gets shit for me and Alice. The last thing he needs is more rumors that he’s a nepotism pick. He earned his place on that field.”

“And he shows it every Sunday.”

“The kids love her, Ollie.”

“I know.”

“Can you really risk her being another person they lose?”

My mouth opened. Nothing came out.

Because he wasn’t wrong.

And fuck him for that.

He stood, adjusted his jacket, and headed for the door—but not before pausing to squeeze my shoulder.

“I love you, little brother. But think long and hard before you lose more than you bargained for.”

6

The One Where It All Goes To Shit

OLIVER

Paxton Rhodes’ bright blue Ford Raptor pulled into Greyson and Alice’s driveway about twenty minutes after my brother left me standing like a statue in my office. I eventually gave up on my coffee in favor of a shower. Like if I scrubbed the scent of her off my skin, I might actually be man enough to make the right goddamn decision. Because her scent alone was enough to make me fold.

Asshole.

The irony was,I’dconfrontedhimafter he wrestled Alice into agreeing to marry him. But it wasn’t the same. Alice was his direct employee—and she’d fucking hated him.

That wasn’t us. Had never been us. Leighton clicked into my life like she’d always been there, a piece I hadn’t realized was missing. She became one of my best damn friends. And she was, hands down, the most radiant woman I’d ever seen.

Coming from a guy who grew up around the Emerald Bay model circuit, that was saying something.

But she wasn’t like them. No hate to the women who kept our city's cosmetic surgeons busy, but Leighton was their polar opposite—soft in all the right places, with an expressive forehead and a smile that could blind a man. She was just as likely to post a video of her Jeep kicking up desert dust as she was to snap a sun-drenched beach selfie. And I fucking loved it. She breathed life into this house without even trying.

But…

A great deal of that life was the joy she brought my kids. Especially Mattie.

I sat watching my little girl piece together a three-D magnetic puzzle that made my brain hurt just looking at it. I wasn’t sure if she’d build rockets or run a company someday, but I knew she’d be brilliant at either. Mostly, I just wanted her to be happy. Healthy. Ideallynow, not ten years from now when she was unraveling all the damage we’d done through years of bullshit with Carly.

A day that had started on cloud nine had abruptly dropped off a cliff. I felt like Wile E. Coyote in a Roadrunner cartoon—only instead of an anvil, it was my older brother and his ruthless logic.

Leighton didn’t strike me as the type who would just walk away from us.

Them.

Fromthem, I corrected internally.

But she also did everything at full volume. No halfway. No hedging. It was all or nothing. Which made her addictive as hell. But if I messed this up—if sex was what broke us—would she pull out with the same intensity she’d come in with?

Fuck.

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