Page 49 of A Matter of Fact

Rhys laughed softly. “That’s his default setting with me.”

“Madder than normal.” A blender turned on, drowning out any background noise.

“What are you doing over there?”

“Making a smoothie for breakfast,” Sebastian answered, like it was perfectly normal. Which maybe for Sebastian it was.

“No,” he answered Sebastian’s earlier question. “I did not make him madder than he normally is.”

“He called me this morning.”

“So early,” Rhys mused, checking the time stamp on the email and finding it had been sent an hour before Rhys even thought about waking up.

“Are you staying here, Rhys?”

“I’d like to,” he said.

“Are you ready for what that means?”

“I honestly don’t know,” he answered. Rhys understood the implications if he didn’t do what he’d been ordered to do. He knew it was one thing for Sebastian to have fled home. He was the second son. And while Rhys had never thought of his brother as being a spare anything, that was the reality of their situation. Sebastian was allowed to fuck up because Rhys never did.

Rhys understood it would be different for him to walk away from everything he’d grown up with, everything he’d built as an adult. While he wanted free of parts of it, there were definitely aspects of his life that he enjoyed and didn’t want to lose. His money being the main one, and the comforts that his money brought to his life. Anyone who said money didn’t buy happiness was just mad they didn’t have much of either. After all, it was money that bought him a three dollar jar of pickles and earned him a weekend in bed with Beckett Thatcher.

“Are you going back this weekend?” Sebastian asked. “Maybe just for a bit to smooth things over?”

The idea had Rhys’s stomach roiling.

“No,” he whispered. “I don’t think I am.”

“Monday?”

“I don’t know, Sebastian.”

How was he supposed to think straight? How was he supposed to make a decision that would impact the rest of his life when he couldn’t go more than five minutes without thinking about Beckett? How could he focus on finances and houses and estate planning and wills and trusts when all he wanted was to be back under the sheets with another warm body?

“Is this about your date?” Sebastian asked. Rhys could hear the tease in his voice and he hated it.

“I’m not fool enough to rearrange my entire life for a piece of ass, Sebastian,” he snapped. “I’m not you.”

“I see you, Rhys.”

He scoffed.

“I wouldn’t go as far as to say you’re here for the apology tour, but you’re not the same man you were when I left Mallardsville after graduation,” Sebastian said, and he was right. Rhys had lived a thousand lives and sacrificed a hundred different things since then.

“I think it’s important that I tell you I never wanted to break up with Callahan,” he said.

“What?” Sebastian choked on his smoothie. “That’s random. What?”

The confusion in his brother’s voice was prevalent, and he grimaced, shoving his laptop onto the couch and away from him. He took another drink of his coffee and stared out the window. The sky was gray, the sun hidden behind a thick blanket of clouds, and the entire city looked as forlorn as he felt every time he dared to think about Callahan.

“Callahan was a sacrifice,” he said, forcing the admission out for the first time in decades. “I wanted to marry him.”

“That’s what you told him, Rhys. But actions speak stronger than words. We all know that.”

“There was too much at stake.” He raised his voice. “I don’t expect you to understand because you’ve never had to.”

“Try me.”