Page 11 of Coming for Her Brother’s Best Friend (Coming For Christmas #4)

Something dark charged across Stetson’s face. First shock, then anger, then hurt. He took a step forward. Hayes didn’t lift his hands or lower his eyes. He just took it in, like he deserved whatever was coming his way.

“My sister?” Stetson asked, his voice just above a whisper. “My sister.”

“She’s a grown woman.” Hayes held his ground. “She’s also your sister, not your property.”

I stepped between them before Stetson threw the first punch. “That’s enough.”

“Is it?” Stetson’s gaze didn’t leave Hayes’s face. “How long has this been going on?”

“Three days,” I said. “And three years.”

That made him look at me. He blinked hard. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means I met him when you brought him home on leave, and he walked away because of you,” I said, forcing my hands not to shake. “It means last night was a choice. My choice.”

“You’re going to stand here and tell me you didn’t think to mention it?” he asked.

“When?” My laugh came out sharp. “Between the blackout and the cake and making sure no one froze in their rooms? You got snowed in and missed the wedding. I didn’t plan any of this.” I swallowed. “But I’m not sorry it happened.”

He stared at me like I was speaking in Swahili. Then his mouth flattened. He shifted his attention back to Hayes with a focus that made my skin prickle.

“You’re like a brother to me,” he said. “I trusted you with her.”

“You trusted me to respect her, and I do,” Hayes said. “But if you expect me to hide from her forever, I won’t.”

The words were soft and easy, but the meaning behind them was a hard line. Stetson didn’t like it. “You’re leaving,” he said. “And you thought, what? You’d get your hands on her and then send a postcard from Anchorage?”

“No,” Hayes said. “I thought I’d do the job I already accepted and come back to her.”

“You can’t mean that,” Stetson said.

“I do.”

“Say it, then.” Stetson let out a sharp laugh. “Say you’re going to be with my sister.”

Hayes didn’t look at me. He didn’t have to. I could feel the decision vibrating through him like a live wire. When he spoke, there was no hesitation, no second-guessing in his tone.

“I want to be with your sister,” he said. “I’m not walking away this time.”

My knees buckled. He’d pretty much said the same thing to me last night. But hearing him say it in front of my brother felt more real. He was choosing me. Not just for a night, but forever.

Stetson’s jaw clenched. His hands opened and closed at his sides. He looked at me, at Hayes, then back to me. Then he tipped his head, a short, disbelieving nod, like he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around this version of reality.

“I need air,” he said.

He turned on his heel and strode toward the doors. The plow had left a clean track to the edge of the drive. He took it like a man who didn’t care where it went as long as it wasn’t here.

I stood there, my heart beating wild in my throat. The front desk manager had both hands pressed flat to his ledger, his knuckles white. My first instinct was to run after him. Instead, I turned to the only steady thing in the room.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Hayes, because it was the only sentence I was capable of forming.

“Don’t be.” He stepped closer, his movements slow and careful. “He needed to hear it from us.”

“He needed to hear it from you,” I said. “You’re the one he bleeds for.”

“I’m not asking him for permission,” Hayes said. “I’m doing him the courtesy of telling him the truth.”

I closed my eyes and let the words settle because if I tried to hold them and all the fear at the same time, I was going to implode. When I opened my eyes, his face looked calm, wrecked around the edges, but resolved.

“He’s going to come back madder,” I said.

“I know.”

“He might not forgive you.”

“I know that too.”

“He might not forgive me,” I added, and my voice finally broke because the men in my family weren’t known for changing their minds.

Hayes reached for my hand. “I’ll stand in front if you want me to. Or I’ll stand next to you if that’s better. Either way, I’m not hiding.”

The tightness behind my ribs eased a fraction. Not enough to breathe easy, but enough to breathe. “Okay.”

The lobby settled back into normal around us. Wrapping paper crinkled, cocoa sloshed from a cup onto the floor, and a toddler wailed about a lost mitten like the world had ended. I was shocked that it hadn’t.

“Do you want me to go after him?” Hayes asked.

I shook my head. “He’ll walk it off. He always has. He’ll circle back meaner or softer depending on where his feelings land.”

“And when he circles back?”

“We’ll be where he left us,” I said, and realized as I said it that it was true. It felt like a promise I could keep.

Hayes’s mouth tilted. Not a smile. Something steadier. “Then we’ll be here.”

I nodded, smoothed my sweater like that could make the tremor in my hands less obvious, and turned back toward the desk because the lobby still needed steering and the day wasn’t going to organize itself.

I took two steps before I felt his hand gently tug on mine.

Whatever happened, we’d face it together.

I went back to work. Hayes moved with me. The tree glittered. The quartet continued to play Christmas carols everyone knew. Outside, my brother would decide what kind of man he wanted to be about the fact that I was a woman, not a line he got to decide who had the right to cross.