“I was ready to go.”
Zach was still waiting for his heart to shatter.
Only it didn’t.
It just felt . . . tired. Deflated.
Noah dragged Zach into the cottage, waving Brandy goodnight. Zach stared at Brandy across the garden. He stood thoughtful against breeze-ruffled, moonlit flowers and his bach. He mouthed something, but Zach couldn’t make it out, and the door shut abruptly.
Noah herded him to his room, helped him climb out of the gorgeous regency tailoring that, earlier, had made him feel so good. Confident. Zach fell into bed, groaning into a pillow.
“Want to talk about it?”
“Brandy was right.”
The bed dipped and Noah rested a palm over the inked fairy prion on his shoulder.
Zach sighed. “Jack made me feel like I knew him. I didn’t.”
“At least you know now.”
Zach shifted his head. Noah’s beard was heavier today, like he hadn’t trimmed as he usually did. “I wish I was more like you. Didn’t feel things so deeply.”
Shadows passed over Noah’s eyes. “You think I don’t feel deeply?”
“You can deflect. Like you’re made of steel.”
“You’re upset. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“It’s a good thing, Noah. Better than this. The pain of constant rejection.”
Noah’s jaw tightened. He looked away. When he spoke, his voice was rich and steady and reliable. “I’m sorry Jack turned out to be a jackass after all.”
Zach yawned. Sleep pulled deeply, like it needed to impart urgent news. “You were right. We don’t all find our true mates.”
Noah squeezed his shoulder, shifted, and turned off the light. “I wish I was wrong about that.”
He’d slept . . . better than he’d have thought. Zach stretched, climbed out of bed into murky light and trudged to the curtains, opened them to the glare of a cloudy sky.
Well. The weather always had a magical habit of reflecting his mood.
He should have been drowning himself in ice cream and rom-coms all night, soothing another crack to his heart. But. Something wasn’t adding up.
It was like he wasn’t really sad.
He pressed his forehead against the glass and stared at the tall figure striding toward the cottage.
He wasn’t sad.
Morning shifted around Brandy, combing his hair toward the sky. But it barely touched his slacks or his button-up shirt. Crisp white. The clouds would have to blink.
The doorbell chimed, a pretty hop through the bones of the house. Zach’s stomach churned and some sweat-inducing sense had him rooted to the spot.
Noah answered the door. They traded mornings, and Brandy asked to come in. To . . . talk to . . . Noah?
Not that they didn’t have conversations without him; they frequently did. But Zach had thought he’d come to check on him. To offer him sage old-man advice or . . .
Zach snuck down the hall and planted himself against the wall outside the kitchen door. Cups clinked and the scent of percolated coffee tickled his nose.
He desperately wanted to peek through the door, but even his shadow would cause them to stir. He settled on imagining them at the table, opposite one another. Brandy thoughtfully pausing, like he so often did before he spoke.
“Is Zach up?”
“Sound asleep when I last checked.”
A relieved sigh. “Good.”
Good?
Zach’s palms suctioned onto the walls either side of him.
Brandy kept his voice low. “I have some . . . information. I don’t know whether to tell him or not. It involves Jack.”
“Okay . . .”
“I don’t want to make him feel worse. But another part of me wants to warn him. In case . . .”
“In case Jack comes back?”
“Right.”
“I think it might depend on the information,” Noah said slowly.
A cup clacked against the table. Brandy cleared his throat.
“Do you recall when I left your picnic brunch? . . . Yes, well. Isabella had messaged me. When I got to her place, she was puddled on her bathroom floor crying. Three pregnancy sticks, all positive.”
His brother only knew what Zach had told him about Isabella, which was . . . everything. Zach stiffened against the wall. He felt what was coming before it was spoken.
“Do I want to know what this has to do with Jack?”
“She never told me who the father was. Just wanted to know I would help if she kept the child. But last night I picked Zach up from her street. I shrugged it off as coincidence, but something in my stomach refused to swallow that. And then Jack, at the ball. . . . I called her. She confirmed.”
Zach sagged slowly to the cold floor.
Quiet.
He recalled how pale Jack had been after receiving that phone call, the same day Brandy had left the picnic so abruptly.
“I don’t want him hurt. Perhaps he doesn’t need to know. And I’m afraid if I told him . . .”
“He’d be angry at you? Pin it down to envy?”
Another silence.
Zach stared at the opposite wall until the blankness blurred. How had he ever thought he knew Jack?
