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“Didn’t what?” I demand while my brothers stand silently watching as if there were a ping-pong ball volleying back and forth between us.
Dad’s jaw sets in an angry clench I’m also all too familiar with. “I’ve never discussed my business with you, and we’re not starting today.”
I try to get my fuzzy brain to make sense of all of this, but it doesn’t.
I’m not sure if it’s a protection mechanism or if I hit my head harder than I thought when I went down.
“Cait . . .”
I turn around and look at Callen. Declan stands behind him, quietly having his brother’s back. But Callen... he’s heartbroken, and it makes me want to scream. I’m so angry. At him. At my father. At my brother.
“You told me you loved me, and then you were gone,” I remind Callen. Anger and heartache mixes with mental exhaustion and physical pain. “You said you were wrong. That we werewrong, and you left. Moved out. You made me think I was crazy. That there was never anything there. That there was nothing between us.”
“Fucking coward,” Maddox growls, and I expect Callen to lose his mind over his best friend calling him that, but it’s as if he’s dismissed Maddox entirely.
The opposite of love isn’t hate.
Everyone thinks it is, but it’s not.
It’s indifference.
Callen ignores Maddox and keeps his focus solely on me.
“I would have done anything to keep you safe. To keep you whole and breathing. I thought I had to?—”
“Wait...” I turn slowly back to my dad. “You told him my life was at stake? You told him what? That he made meunsafe? But you never told me? My life, Dad. My. Life. How could you not tell me?”
My father has the decency to hold my rage-fueled glare and not look away, but he doesn’t answer.
“Did you tell him he had to break it off too? Was that you? Tell me it wasn’t,” I beg, but he doesn’t budge. He doesn’t need to say a word. I already know.
“You did,” I gasp as my head throbs with the realization that all of this... the heartache. The pain. The devastation. It was avoidable. “It was your fault. I’ve been miserable for months, and it was because of you.”
It starts to make some kind of warped sense.
Why Callen moved out so quickly.
Why this man who spent a lifetime protecting me destroyed me in one conversation.
“I could have had everything I ever wanted, and you stopped it without giving me a choice. I will never forgive you for that.”
“Caitlin—” my father pleads in a tone I’ve never heard from him before, but I move on, unable to look at him.
“And you.” I spin on Callen. “Did it even occur to you to talk to me? That maybe I deserved a say in how I livedmyown life? Because I would have chosen you. You were worth it to me, even if I wasn’t worth it to you. We could have figured it out together. But instead, you unilaterally decided you knew best for me. Like I’m a child who needs to be saved. Shame on you.”
“You hating me was a small price to pay to keep you safe, Caitlin. It might not have been the right thing to do, but it wasthe only fucking option. You were all that mattered.” He looks so sure. So confident. And yet so pissed.
You can hear a pin drop as I turn away, unable to look at him one second longer.
I take in the destruction around me.
The bruise on Callen’s jaw.
The antique table Mom and I found at a flea market a few years ago, flattened and broken on the floor.
The crushed roses and Nonna’s favorite crystal vase, shattered.
Then I look at my brother, the one Callen tried so hard not to hurt, and I’m utterly disgusted with him and his part in all of this.
