Braydon(37)

The time that he’d been away had been good. He was tortured by a significant amount of regret, but there was no doubt that he’d needed it. Everything had been coming to a full, rapid boil, and he knew in his heart that if he’d stayed, things would’ve gotten way out of hand. At least now, all three of them had had time to put things into perspective. Thanks to his time away, he somehow managed to see things without the fog of his emotions. At least a little.

Not that everything had changed. Braydon knew that his feelings for Jessie hadn’t diminished, and the jolt that he’d experienced seeing her last night in nothing but that skimpy towel, her skin still damp from her shower, had sealed it for him. His feelings for her certainly hadn’t changed. Not even a little bit. And when she had told him they had nothing to talk about, he knew she was lying. To herself and to him.

But he still didn’t know how to go about fixing that.

It wasn’t that Braydon didn’t have experience with relationships, because he did. It didn’t matter that he didn’t have one-on-one relationships with women when it came to sex. He still spent time with them without Brendon. Granted, most of the time Braydon took on the role of friend.

For whatever reason, he’d always been dubbed the good guy. The guy all the women wanted to be friends with. Where Brendon was usually standoffish and detached, Braydon tried to be a friend. That was a no-win situation he’d found himself in starting back in high school.

Brendon seemed to be the reckless one. The bad boy, so to speak. And Braydon, although just as mischievous as Brendon, managed to get away with so much more because people saw him differently than they did his twin. That had worked for both of them growing up. Brendon would generally take the fall and Braydon would find a way to get them out of it. On and on the cycle went over the years until people started believing that Braydon was the good one, the sweet one.

Right.

If they only knew.

But they didn’t know. No one did. Not even Jessie, a woman he’d become close to over the past year. A woman he’d been intimate with in ways that she probably had never imagined when she willingly walked right into their waiting arms. Braydon still managed to keep himself in check when she was around, never letting himself get too lost in the moment or too out of control where she was concerned.

Everyone probably assumed that his greatest desires were tapped because he was involved in threesomes.

Not even close.

And a lot of that had to do with the fact that he held so much back. He allowed Brendon to take the lead, to control things, because Brendon had a strong desire to always be in control. Braydon’s backseat stance had always worked for them, and it was easier to not rock the boat.

They’d fallen into the same tried-and-true method with Jessie. The sex had been phenomenal, even if he hadn’t exerted his true dominance like he’d wanted to time and time again.

Fuck. The thought of sex with Jessie nearly had him running off the road.

It had been three f*cking months since he’d been laid. By a woman, anyway. As far as he was concerned, his own hand didn’t qualify, although he’d spent countless hours trying to relieve the ache. Never had it worked though. Usually he was left still thinking about Jessie, still hard, still aching.

The population sign for Coyote Ridge passed him by in a blur and Braydon knew he needed to get his mind out of the gutter. He was going to have lunch with his mother, for f*ck’s sake.

That thought did it.

When he pulled into the parking lot, he noticed his mother’s car was parked right up front.

Well, there went the idea that she might’ve been trying to set him up. As he pulled into a parking spot toward the back, since all the others had been taken, Braydon tried not to be disappointed by that fact.

A minute later, Braydon was stepping into the air-conditioned diner, the sweet smell of fried foods making his stomach growl. His eyes had barely adjusted to the dim lighting when he was greeted by Rachel Talbott, her eyes wide and her grin just as big as she looked at him. She wasn’t subtle about the way her gaze raked him from head to toe. Considering the woman was known to do the same to all his brothers, Braydon didn’t think anything of it. Despite her incessant flirting, Rachel was harmless.

“Have you been working out?” she asked him sweetly as she led him through the restaurant.

“Not more than normal,” he said, thinking back to Sawyer’s comment. Was it that obvious?

“You’re lookin’ good, sugar,” she told him, letting her arm brush his as she stopped in front of a table in the back.

Braydon’s gaze slid down to see his mother sitting in a booth, her face downcast as she studied the menu. She didn’t look up at him, which was surprising.

“Mom,” he greeted her, nodding his head to Rachel in a gentle dismissal.

“Hey,” she answered, peering up at him briefly. “What sounds good to you?”

Okay, yeah, she was acting strange.

Braydon slid into the booth across from her. He didn’t bother with the menu that Rachel had placed on the table for him. He knew what they had to offer. He’d been coming to this restaurant all his life. During his time away, he had realized just how much of a creature of habit he had become. The same restaurants, the same bars, the same type of women . . . Up until Jessie.

Braydon shrugged off the thought as he watched his mother. Now was not the time for him to get all introspective. He should’ve been more focused on what his mother was up to. Or whether he’d just become paranoid in recent months.