Page 87 of Scoring Eden

“When did you become such a softie?”

He looks me dead in the eye. “When I started fucking your sister.”

Roman’s eyes widen as he finally shakes himself out of whatever trance he was in and steps between me and Leo. “Good god, Leo, are you trying to get him to hit you again?”

Leo grins, white teeth flashing like the spring sun through the clouds. “Nah, Alex would never.” He hooks his arm through mine like we’re schoolgirls and pulls me tight against his side. “We’re brothers now.”

“By marriage only,” I grumble, attempting to wrestle my arm out of his. He only holds me tighter.

He’s lucky I’m terrified of upsetting my sister, because I’m twitching to knock that smug little smile right off his face.

The thunder in my expression doesn’t seem to faze him, though, because he starts the walk back to the locker room with his arm still locked through mine, dragging me along with him. “So, now that we’ve deduced you’ve been a prized dickbag, what are you gonna do about it?”

“Yeah.” Roman jogs along beside us. “Are you gonna talk to her?”

My stomach roils. “Don’t really have a choice, do I?”

“Well, what are you going to say?”

That I’m an asshole for ignoring her? That I don’t like the feeling I get in my chest when she’s around, so I’ve been avoiding her in the hopes that it will fuck off and go away? That, somehow, the pain is even worse when I’m not with her? That I just want to see her and touch her all the time, but we can’t have a real relationship because the thought of losing her someday is so terrifying that I don’t want to take the risk at all?

Shit.

I can’t say any of that.

“That I’m sorry for avoiding her, I guess.” My gaze falls to the trodden turf, the blades of grass as flattened as my state of mind. “And make sure she still understands that nothing can ever come of it.”

Leo disentangles himself from my arm and slaps me round the back of my head.

“What the fuck, man?”

Roman stops walking and glares at me with unbridled frustration. “Did you not listen to a word we just said?”

“You are honestly the biggest, most emotionally congested dumbass I have ever met.” Leo tips his head back with a long groan. “You’re, like, the textbook definition of a detached avoidant. It’s exhausting.”

Oh, for the love of God, not this shit again. “Stop spending so much time with my sister.”

“Can’t.” He grins again. “She’s my wife, asshole. And you’re never gonna have one of your own if you don’t pull your head out of your fucking ass.”

Roman shakes his head with a tired laugh. “I don’t get it.”

He wouldn’t. He doesn’t know why I am the way I am, and that’s not his fault. Maybe if he knew what happened to me when I was ten, he’d see where I’m coming from with a little more clarity. But I don’t want to talk about that stuff. Not with him. And not with Eden, despite how much my therapist is trying to force me into it. I don’t even talk about it with Brynn, and she lived the experience with me. If I can pretend it never happened, then it can’t hurt me.

Leo sighs, clamping his hand on my shoulder and looking in my eyes. “I do.” He lowers his voice. “I get it, I mean. I think you’re freaking out because you know that caring about her will make it hurt more if you lose her someday. And I can’t promise that you won’t, even if you do decide to man the fuck up and give in to what you’re feeling. But I do know this…if you carry on the way you are, you’ll wind up losing her anyway.”

A lump the size of a basketball grows in my throat. I try to swallow it down, but it doesn’t budge, and my heart pangs again, a deep, longing ache for something I won’t allow myself to have.

I get what Leo’s saying. I do.

But I know the risks that come with love, and I refuse to be that little boy again. The one standing on the steps of a children’s home with the life he once knew burning into ashes behind him. Happy one minute, orphaned the next.

I can’t be blindsided like that again.

I won’t.

“When did you get so good at talking about your feelings and shit?”

“Brynn,” he says simply.