Faked (Ward Family #2)(67)

The sound of her name on his lips lit my skin with suppressed rage, feelings that I'd tried to smother all damn week about her. "If you want to escape this impromptu visit without a black eye, how about you not tell me things like that."

Finn cocked his head. "I only know what Lia told me," he explained. "I haven't seen her."

My shoulders relaxed, and I glared at Scotty when he badly smothered a pleased smile at my reaction.

Knowing my brother hadn't seen her soothed that immediate caveman reaction that I'd never experienced before her. And wasn't that insane? I was the one who walked away from her. I was the one who said things that I still hadn't forgiven myself for. And one single mention of how she was doing had every proprietary instinct roaring to life inside me.

They were both eyeing me.

"I just want her out of my head, okay?"

Finn raised an eyebrow. Scotty covered his mouth with his hand.

"What? I do. If dicks like you would stop constantly reminding me about ... Claire," my voice stumbled over her name, "then I'd be able to forget her."

So why did my whole body seize up with panic at the very idea of that?

Finn took a deep breath. "Bauer, I've been a crappy brother in a lot of ways, okay? And you haven't been much better," he pointed out carefully. "But I wanted you to hear from me, that even if Claire had some ... crush on me for a while, I didn't notice and I've never, ever looked at her that way."

Breath was sawing violently in and out of my chest, but I kept all my boiling thoughts inside.

Apparently, he deemed it safe to keep talking because he nodded slowly. "She's Lia's twin. And Lia is ... my best friend. It's like, trying to imagine me and Lia together and it just …" His voice trailed off. "It doesn't make sense in my head."

"You get why it makes me crazy, though, right?" I asked.

"For about a day, sure." He shrugged. "But I think what you're doing now? This has nothing to do with me, or whatever she felt before she met you."

I hooted with laughter. "Nothing to do with you? Pray tell, enlighten me, Future Dr. Davis."

"I'm no shrink, but Claire is the first woman to make you want something more. And you'd have to put every part of you on the line in order to make something real with her. It's scary, and you've never done it, and you grabbed the most convenient excuse to make life easier on yourself. That excuse is bullshit, but you'll hold on to it like it's a life raft."

Well.

I glared mightily at him because clearly someone had used their time driving up here to prepare exactly how to knee me in the proverbial balls.

Scotty murmured like he was hearing a good sermon.

He got a glare too.

Finn leaned forward. "What if she had been the one to show at your door?"

The second he said it, my heart reacted without a single thought on my end. Racing, pounding, thumping erratically at the mere mention of her on the other side of that door.

I wanted it so badly.

Wanted her.

"What if you had the chance, right now, to redo that day you guys came back?" Finn continued.

"You can't erase the past," I interrupted. I stood from the stool and paced the room. "No matter how I'd feel if she showed up, or if I could back up time, I can't take back what happened. What she said. What I said. It's done."

"But it doesn't have to be over," he said. "You're such a stubborn jackass, Bauer. She’s crazy about you, and look at you! You're a mess because you reacted badly and had a shitty argument. So what? People argue, and they say stupid things, and sometimes we have to be able to forgive them for those things because we know it's more important to move forward."

My hands speared helplessly into my hair, and I shook my head. The feelings taking over my body were almost more than I could handle because they were loud and overwhelming and terrifying.

Not once, as my board balanced on the icy edge before a race, had I felt like this. No matter what I was going to attempt or how big the stakes were. No competition or award had ever come close to what I felt like was at stake when I thought about the possibility of fixing things with Claire.

"I don't know ... I don't know how to make this better," I admitted quietly. Finally, I looked him full in the face. "What I said to her—"

"Oh, I heard, trust me," he answered with a wry smile.

"You heard?"

He held up his hands. "I was not the one to crack the window, but yes, I heard."

"Shit," I groaned. Just what I wanted to hear.

"You'll have work to do."

"That family will toss me out on my ass with two broken legs if I tried to show up again."

"No, they wouldn't." He sounded so sure.

With a lift of my eyebrow, I tried to wait the truth out of him.

He held up his hands. "They won't. Because if you mean to Claire what I think you do, they'll get over it. It won't take them long, and all you have to do is just ... prove that you mean what you say."

"That's all?" I asked dryly.

"Yeah. Once you do that, they'll be in your corner as much as they're in hers."

It was almost too much to bear, the kindling of hope that sprang up. I wanted to squash it with two hands and grind it out with my boot because I'd tried so hard to ignore how horrible I'd felt all week, how much I missed her, and the sad truth that I was so relationship-slow at the age of twenty-six that I'd screwed up my first real shot at happiness. The kind of happiness that made a hopeless wretch like me think about forever.