Page 113 of My Brother's Billionaire Best Friends
She turns toward me, curious now. “What do you mean? Deserved?”
Jack is raw and loud and emotional. Harrison is quiet and stoic, until he’s not. I’m the strategist. The one who smooths edges and keeps secrets in the name of control. But not tonight.
It’s time to tell her just how fucked up I am about this stuff. She deserves to be able to walk away, if this is too much for her.
“I thought my father left me,” I begin. “I thought he walked out on us. On me. I spent my entire life resenting him. Every time I lost something, or failed, or felt like I wasn’t enough—I put it on him. And then Vivian…she blamed everything on him. She built that belief into something permanent. So, when I was a kid, I had no reason to think otherwise.”
Parker steps closer, her hand slipping into mine. “But that’s what he did. Everyone knows that.”
My jaw tightens. “Everyone knows what Vivian wants them to know.”
The slightest gasp escapes her lips. “What did she do?”
“I went to see him after everything with Vivian broke. I wanted answers. Closure. Whatever people are supposed to chase after when they feel cracked open.”
“And?”
“He never left me,” I say, throat tightening. “He stayed away because I asked him to. When I was a kid and angry and certain, I told him to never contact me again. And he listened.”
She exhales, soft and slow.
“I blamed him for years,” I whisper. “I thought he’d abandoned me when really…I pushed him away. And he respected that. Even though it hurt him.”
She squeezes my hand.
“I have siblings,” I rasp. “A sister who plays piano. A little brother who once tried to eat a LEGO. Another sister in college. A family I never got to know because I was too angry to see past the story I’d been sold by my mother. She did this. All of it. She’s the one who had an affair that sparked their divorce. My father met Odette long after Vivian’s affairs, when they were already separated. He wasn’t some cheating bastard, like she always said. That was her.”
“Oh, wow,” she says.
“And tonight, sitting in your kitchen, watching your mother smile and your kids talk about cartoons and watching Phil almost laugh even though he’s upset…I realized something.” I turn to face her fully. “Family isn’t just the people who raise you. It’s the ones you choose. The ones who choose you back. I missed out on the first half of that lesson, but I’m not going to miss the second.”
She’s quiet for a beat, eyes shining.
“I want to build a life with you, Parker. I want the whole chaotic, messy, miracle of it. You. The kids. This odd, beautiful life we’ve fallen into.”
Her hand touches my face, soft and warm and steady. “I want that too.”
“And it’s scary.”
She laughs. “Yeah, it is.”
I laugh a little too, and the tension in my chest finally gives. “Then let’s be terrified together.”
She leans up and kisses me. When she pulls back, she presses her forehead to mine and smiles. “Come inside,” she says. “We have a family to put to bed.”
And just like that, I’m home.
28
HARRISON
The best thingabout haunting a high-level real estate deal is that no one ever expects the ghost to bite back.
Especially not when the deal’s buried behind four shell companies, a batch of offshore LLCs, and a bullshit front that calls itself something innocuous like Bright Urban Holdings. Vivian’s fingerprints are all over it, if you know where to look. Most people don’t. But I do.
And more importantly, my people do.
I’m not supposed to have people, technically. Notthesepeople, anyway. Not in the way Gavin has polished attorneys and Jack has ex-military security contacts. My network is quieter, more likely to be found in server logs and dark-thread chat rooms than at charity galas. But they’re loyal. And fast.
