Page 146 of A Vicious Love

I paced once, then stopped because the room did not have enough space for whatever was happening inside me.

“I see this, and I want it with Sienna.”

My own words made me feel like I had stepped off a building and had not hit the ground yet.

“I don’t deserve it. But I want it.”

“Jamison,” she said softly.

“No.” I pointed at her. “Do not do that.”

“Do what?”

“Look hopeful. I’m not in the mood.”

“You came into our bedroom at three in the morning to announce you have feelings. I think hope is appropriate.”

“I did not say feelings.”

“You said emotional crisis.”

That was the problem with brothers. He had known me too long for lies to land properly.

I paced again.

“I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. I can’t sleep. I cannot stop thinking about her. Weston touches her back and I start considering whether St. Cross needs structural collapse.”

Emmie tucked her face partly into Marcel’s shoulder, but I could still see her smile.

“Emmie,” I warned.

“I’m sorry,” she said, not sorry at all. “It’s just… you really do care.”

“No, I don’t.”

Both of them stared at me. I hated how unimpressed they looked.

“I don’t,” I repeated, weaker.

Marcel said nothing.

Emmie said nothing. The room did not believe me either.

“Fine,” I snapped. “Maybe I give a fuck. Slightly. In a manageable way.”

Marcel lifted one brow.

I dragged a hand through my hair. “It is not manageable. It is consuming. Why is it consuming? Why do people allow this? Why would my brain choose now to realize I like her?”

“Because you were about to lose her,” Marcel said, “That is usually when stupid men notice value.”

My jaw tightened. “Marcel⁠—”

“You came here because you need the truth, not because you need me to be careful with you.”

We were not gentle men, but we had always been honest with each other in the ways that mattered. He had stood beside me when Harlan first learned my name. I had stood beside him when his merger made him worse before it made him better. We had carried bodies together. Buried problems together. Pulled each other back from edges we never named in daylight.

He was the only person alive who could look at me half-dressed in his bed, wife tucked under his arm, and call me stupid without losing teeth. I hated that I needed him. When it came my brothers. I’d never not needed them.