Page 77 of The Rough Rider

“That’s not it,” Hunter said.

“Just go away.”

“You want her. Come on, Gus, I’ve been trying to dance around this, I’ve been trying to let you have your secrets. I’ve been trying to let you have...whatever this is. Because before you married her, I would’ve said exactly what you would have. There’s no way. She’s a lot younger than you.”

“Yeah. She’s a lot younger than you too, but she liked you.” But he knew why. He wasn’t charming. He wasn’t handsome. “Why would Alaina want a guy who’s eleven years older than her and scarred all to hell?”

“That’s not what I mean. But you don’t exactly scream teenage dream.”

“I get it.”

His brother paused for a long moment. And Gus pondered the virtues of punching him in the face before he could speak again. But he didn’t. “You want her, though.”

Now he regretted not hitting him.

“Yeah, and if I could figure out a way to fix that, I would’ve done it years ago, Hunter. Trust me on that. Because it was never my plan to pant after thatgirl. Not ever.”

“Well, good for you. You did something about it. You have her.”

He growled. “I was never going to marry anybody. And here we are.Here we are. I can’t touch her.”

“Why not?” Hunter asked. “That’s obviously why you married her. To touch her.”

He shot Hunter a hard glare.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Hunter said. “Are we making up stories here together, or are we being honest? You want her—why aren’t you having her?”

“Because I fucking can’t. Because I can’t trust myself. I just about killed a couple of jackasses in a parking lot that were flirting with her. That’s who I am.”

“Look, I didn’t think we were going to play this game. TheDad’s-blood-runs-through-my-veinsthing. We’ve talked about it a ton of times.”

Thedadword stuck in his throat. Because it wasn’t about his dad. It was about him. About what he’d already done.

“Just mind your own damn business.”

Hunter huffed. “You made it my business. You were shouting f-bombs in the building.”

“And you wereeavesdropping.”

“Just... If I could say one thing to you, Gus...”

“You’ve said about ten things to me, Hunter, and I’m already annoyed.”

“Fine. You have every right to be. But I’m going to say it anyway. There are a lot of opportunities in the world to get a shit hand. Lord knows we’ve had it this whole time. There aren’t a lot of opportunities to be happy. Why don’t you experiment with that and see where it gets you.”

“I’m glad things have worked out for you,” he said. “But we’re not the same.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Hunter, I know you went through stuff. But did Dad try to kill you?” He just stood there, and stared at his brother. Who could only stare back.

And he didn’t see why he shouldn’t just say it now. He was beginning to feel like he didn’t have anything to lose.

“No,” Gus said. “He didn’t. Don’t pretend that you know what I’ve been through. Don’t pretend that we’re the same. Or that we have the same place to come back from. Because you didn’t spend some of your teenage years getting surgeries. And then not being able to get them because...because the person who burned you was not going to take you to the hospital to finish up the reconstructive work that you needed. I don’t know how to do this thing that you know how to do. I don’t know how to be that person. To give you a really bad metaphor, it got burned out of me a long time ago.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

He shook his head. “How do you know?”

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