burden that you left behind. And I built up a lot of excuses for why I had to do things a certain way. Hell, I nearly married the wrong woman, the safe woman, because I was so committed to doing the right thing. Which was actually just the easy thing.”
“Obviously you didn’t marry the wrong woman,” he said, talking about Lydia, Colton’s wife.
“No. Thank God. She was instrumental in helping me realize all the different ways in which I was messed up. Which was kind of good, since it was the only way I could even start to fix it.”
“Is there any fixing this?” he asked.
“Our family?”
“Eventually. But I’d like to start with you and me. You don’t have any reason to forgive me, Colton. What I did was all in my own best interests. Actually, it wasn’t even in my best interest, it’s just that it was the easy thing. I’ll do whatever I have to do. I’m going to stay here. I’m going to prove that I can stay. I don’t expect you to forgive me now. I don’t expect you to let go of the past seventeen years right now. I just want to know that there’s hope.”
Colton leaned forward, pressing his hands together, staring straight ahead. “I don’t suppose I have to let it go in order to know that you’re my brother and I love you.” He looked at him then. “The rest we can work on, right?”
Gage ran his hands over his face. “I tell you what, it’s a lot easier to walk off into the sunset than it is to stick around and try to figure out how to do this.”
“Do what? Say you’re sorry?”
“No, that’s easy for me. Calling myself every name in the book, that’s easy. Just accepting that I’m a bastard, that’s easy. The prospect of coming here and fixing things for you, for Rebecca, that was easy. But only when I thought that at the end I would leave. If I stay, eventually I’m going to have to figure out real connections. I’ve been avoiding that for a long time.”
Colton cleared his throat. “I know I’m your younger brother. And I know we don’t know each other very well. Take it from somebody who ran in place for a long time. Eventually, you have to start giving pieces of yourself. Because if you don’t do that, you’ll look around and see that there’s no one there that really matters. You have to give something real to get something in return.”
He thought of Rebecca, and his heart nearly cracked in two. She had given him all of her, every piece. From her scarred, beautiful body to her scarred, perfect soul. She had trusted him with those things.
And he had given nothing in return. He had come into her life and begun to manipulate it, but there had been no sacrifice behind it. Nothing genuine. Nothing real.
“How do you do that? How do you do that when you know it might end up draining you dry? When you know that you might never get what you want in return?”
“You do it anyway, knowing that it might cost you. If it’s free, it’s probably not something you want. Expensive things, those are the things that have value, right? It’s the same with emotions. It’s the same with people.”
“Well,” Gage said. “I think that’s bullshit.”
“Oh,” Colton said. “It is. It’s also the most important thing I can think of. Lydia changed me. If you had come back into town before I had her in my life, I probably would have punched you in the face and sent you on your way. But she taught me that there are things that are more important than pride. Than duty. If you lead with love, the rest tends to fall into place.” He cleared his throat. “And that is it for me on the advice.”
Gage thought about telling Colton about Rebecca. But he didn’t know what to say. And he realized there was only one person in the world he should talk to about Rebecca. And that was the woman herself.
If she would talk to him.
He didn’t deserve it. That was for sure.
But he was ready to try. He was ready to strip himself bare, he was ready to open himself up. Even if it meant pouring himself out until he was dry.
He supposed that was the other side of the coin. The other part that you needed to make love mean anything.