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And that was when it happened.
After the storm of yesterday, our brief sojourn under the sun of good friends (even ones who were getting in your face), good food and lunchtime cocktails went behind the clouds and the rain started pouring.
“There you are.”
I knew that voice, and it made my skin turn cold.
I turned to see my brother there.
Considering Easton was cocky, spoiled, a mama’s boy and had the personality of a bro podcaster, it was really too bad he was so good-looking.
He got Dad’s blond hair and blue eyes, he wasn’t super tall, but he wasn’t short by any means. He worked hard at his body, so he was lean and fit. And when he wasn’t in surgery or in his office, he liked to be outside, so he had a nice tan and looked what he was: healthy and active.
I felt Javi straighten beside me.
“Easton,” was all I could force out.
“Since you’re not responding to texts or voicemails, thought I’d find you personally to thank you for fucking up my birthday,” he announced.
I felt Javi get super, double, crazy pissed beside me.
Easton didn’t miss it, and even if Javi was about two of Easton, that didn’t mean Easton hesitated even a second to look at him and ask, “You the caveman that hijacked Dad at work?”
Ummmmmmmm…
Unh-unh.
No way.
I stood. “Maybe we should talk somewhere else.”
“Why?” Easton returned. “Your caveman waltzed right up to Dad’s receptionist and demanded to see him. Tit for tat, Harlow.” He threw out an arm. “You don’t want this going down at your work, you should have brought your boy to heel.”
I didn’t need How to Handle Alpha classes to know you didn’t say stuff like that about an alpha with that alpha right there.
I knew I was correct in this when I heard a growl, some other scary noises, chairs scraping, I sensed people shifting.
But, because it was more urgent even than all of that, I was focused on what was happening inside me.
Something was dying.
No, something had been dying for a really long time, and now it was just…
Dead.
My brother didn’t even allow me to introduce him to my boyfriend. The man I was falling in love with. The man I’d talked kids with. The man I was doubling up on life stuff to share houses with.
My brother probably spent the last hour tracking me down just to be crappy to me. He made great money and could be doing practically anything on a sunny Sunday in Phoenix, but what he chose to do was find me just to be mean to me and bring rain to darken my bright day.
God, that thing was so dead.
I knew it was something I wouldn’t mourn, because it had never been mine in the first place.
It was the fact I wouldn’t mourn it that was so very sad.
Easton, being Easton, didn’t know that he’d delivered the death blow to something crucial in me.
He just kept talking.