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“I came to support you,” I said, steeling myself for a fight. He wouldn’t be Rhett if he made things easy.

He huffed, straightening his magazine. “You want to support me? Leave my sister alone like I told you to. She doesn’t know you like I do.”

I sat a couple chairs away from him. “I’m not here to argue.”

“Then why are you here? Because I didn’t ask you to come, and I don’t need your ‘support.’”

“Rhett... you’re my best friend. You were there for me when my mom...” My voice broke. “You were there for me through it all, and you’re fucking crazy if you think I’m not going to be there for you when you go through this. Especially since you aren’t telling anyone in your family, and you know Liv’s too damn loyal to say a word.”

His jaw ticked, and he was quiet for a long moment. Finally, he folded the magazine, staring hard at the floor. “I don’t want to die, Fletch.”

Emotion clogged my throat, but I swallowed. “We don’t know anything yet, Rhett. It could be easily treatable with a simple surgery.”

“And it could have spread to my lymph nodes. We don’t know.”

“We don’t know,” I conceded.

He lowered his voice. “Fletcher, this whole thing has sent me into a tailspin. You know, I’m thirty-two years old. And what do I have to show for it? When Gage was my age, he’d made his first billion. Tyler’s married, has a business he loves. You’re a fucking doctor. And what am I? a second-rate bull rider with a job on someone else’s ranch. I pushed away the only woman I ever loved and hold every other woman I meet at arm’s length. This can’t be it.”

His words echoed in my mind.This can’t be it. “It won’t be,” I promised him and myself. “Why do you think I became a doctor? I couldn’t let what happened to my mom happen to anyone else I love. And no matter how pissed at me you are, I love you just as much as any one of my brothers.”

Rhett looked at me. “I’m sorry for what I said about—”

I shook my head. I wanted him to give Liv and me the clear to date, but I could wait. “You love Liv,” I said. “You were doing what any good brother would do.”

He shook his head. “I’ve made all the mistakes a person could. I’d hate to see her have anything less than...”

“Everything,” I finished. Because that’s what I wanted to give her.

He nodded.

“Rhett Griffen?” a nurse called from beside the door.

“That’s me,” Rhett said as we both stood to follow her.

“And him?” the nurse asked.

Rhett studied me for a moment, then put his arm around my back. “That’s my brother.”

36

Fletcher

I offered to take Rhett out for dinner after his test, but he said he needed some quiet time to think. Which left me to reminisce on my drive back to Cottonwood Falls. So much had already changed since I’d moved back home. A lot of it for the better. But in some ways, I felt more confused than ever.

I didn’t know what to do about this practice. I definitely didn’t know what to do about Liv.

Since I still had time before I needed to be back home, I drove by the Cottonwood Falls Cemetery. It was a small plot of land outside of town, surrounded by a tree row of evergreens. I drove around the gravel path skirting all the headstones.

The way was familiar. I came here every Mother’s Day, every year on my mom’s birthday, and every time I felt at a crossroads in my life, because even if my mom wasn’t here anymore, this was where I went to see her.

I got out of the car, the afternoon sun hot on my skin and the grass crunching slightly underfoot until I reached her headstone. There were new silk flowers in each of the vases along her grave. I noticed a figurine of the football team, a ceramic truck with flowers hanging out the back. A Cottonwood Falls Police Department badge and a set of dog tags.

All of my brothers had been here. But it had been a while for me. I traced my fingers over the rock Maya painted for her grandmother for Grandparents’ Day, the paint already fading.

Then I looked at the words, etched into marble and seared into my mind.

Maya Madigan