Braydon(13)

Or if he even should.

Braydon made his way back to the club, scanning the room in an attempt to find Jessie. He needed to talk to her. Needed to apologize. She didn’t deserve that. Not from Brendon, and certainly not from him.

But she wasn’t there. At least not that he could see.

Rather than looking like a lovesick fool and scouring the halls for her, Braydon opted to mingle with his brothers. Which was where he spent the next few hours, laughing and joking, pretending everything was fine, when in reality, it was anything but.

Needless to say, his night hadn’t gone quite as he had planned, but his brothers all seemed to be content.

Not that he wasn’t happy for his brothers. He certainly was. Kaleb, Zane, Travis, Ethan . . . They had all found exactly what they were looking for, and he wished them nothing but happiness. But as each minute passed, it was becoming more and more difficult to find happiness in his own relationship. If it could even be called that. It was safe to say that Braydon had royally f*cked up.

Giving in to the threesome, knowing that it wasn’t what he wanted, had been the first mistake of the evening. He wanted Jessie, that would never change, but he didn’t want to share her anymore. And his feelings for her were only growing stronger.

And now more than ever, Braydon felt the need to get away from it all. He needed to take a breather, get his head on straight. And thanks to his cousin Tessa and her husband, Cooper, he knew exactly how he was going to go about doing that. It was just a matter of time.



A COUPLE OF hours later, Braydon was walking into his house —the place surprisingly quiet since Brendon had yet to arrive—making him feel more alone than ever.

For the first time in his life, there was a rift between him and Brendon that he feared they wouldn’t get past without some time apart. Not that he was looking forward to it, but after their argument, he wasn’t sure what else to do.

Now that he was home and some of his anger had subsided, Braydon was left facing something else. Losing Jessie entirely. He’d screwed up tonight. But there was also a deeper fear. One that he’d never considered before.


The three of them had gone into this with one thing on their minds. Sex. Sex for the sake of sex, pleasure for the sake of pleasure. Emotions didn’t have any place in their relationship, but Braydon had gone and done the unthinkable.

He had fallen in love with her.

And now more than ever, he knew he’d never be able to continue on this path.

There seemed to be only one logical conclusion for Braydon. Only one way to fix everything that was broken. Thanks to his conversation with Cooper earlier, he’d found an out that would work for them all.

Heading to his room, Braydon pulled an empty gym bag from the shelf in his closet. Rummaging through his drawers, he grabbed enough clothes to last him a couple of weeks. Then he started snatching up little things that he might need—cell phone charger, iPod, vitamins, headphones, and his laptop. Keys, wallet, phone . . . He was finally ready to go and he knew he had to hurry.

On his way through the living room, his attention was drawn to the mantel and the pictures that decorated it. A quick detour had him taking a closer look. There were several of him and Brendon together. Throughout their lives, they’d been in more pictures than he could count, each capturing a moment. Some of those most memorable moments were laid out before him. Unable to walk away without taking them, he grabbed every last picture from the mantel, including the one of his parents and the one of the whole family standing in front of the Walker Demolition sign. God, they were younger then. Where had the time gone?

Not wanting to run into Brendon, he took one more fleeting look around before heading for the door.

He promised himself he was going to give himself the space he needed, at least for a little while. And in time, maybe everything would work itself out, because he knew that it wasn’t working otherwise.





chapter THREE

Three months later

“Have you heard from Braydon?” Kylie asked as Jessie obnoxiously spun her coffee spoon on her sister’s kitchen table.

“Nope,” Jessie offered without going into detail.

“Have you heard from Brendon?”

“Nope,” she answered, making a bored popping sound on the “p.”

Jessie didn’t have any more answers for her sister than she’d had for the last three months, although she knew Kylie was hoping Jessie would hear from Braydon. Or even Brendon. She hoped the same thing, but she didn’t make that fact known. Granted, Curtis had heard from Braydon, and according to the Walker patriarch, Braydon was doing fine. That didn’t make it any easier for the rest of them.

Shortly after Zane’s wedding, Braydon had hightailed it out of Dodge, so to speak. And by “shortly,” Jessie meant that sometime between when Braydon left the reception and when she and Brendon returned to their house, he had packed his bags and left town without so much as a note. No one other than Curtis and Lorrie had talked to him since. At least, not that she knew of. Not even Brendon.

Of course, that had been a point of contention between her and Brendon for the last few months. Neither of them would accept complete responsibility for Braydon’s disappearance, although Jessie knew they were all three to blame. So they’d resorted to ignoring one another, pretending nothing had ever happened between them, either.

She remembered that night so clearly. Remembered what had happened between her and Braydon in that storeroom, remembered the argument the twins had had right there in front of her. Aside from the few minutes she’d spent with Braydon buried deep inside her, blinded by pleasure from being with the one man she wanted more than anything, the rest of the night had been horrible.