Colton to know about the accident just yet, and because he really didn’t want his brother to know about the fact that he had slept with Rebecca.
“That was subtle,” he said.
Colton lifted a shoulder. “That’s Lydia. She’s a politician. She gets things done one way or another, but not necessarily with subtlety.”
“I’m not going to hurt her,” he said, speaking of Sierra.
“I don’t believe you.”
He deserved that. He knew he did. But hurting Sierra was the last thing he wanted and he’d be damned if he let the accusation stand.
“Do you think that I came back to help handle Dad’s affairs and cause more damage? That doesn’t make any sense. I can’t fix what happened in the past if fixing it means making the last seventeen years completely different. The only thing I can do is change what I’m doing now.”
“And then you’re going to leave.”
He gritted his teeth. “Plenty of people maintain a relationship with their families while they live in different towns,” he said, echoing what Rebecca had said earlier.
“Yeah, but even you have to admit your track record on that is pretty bad.”
“I’m not going to deny it.” Tension stretched between himself and his brother. Tension and so many years of silence bringing them to this moment. “There were things that I couldn’t talk about. Things I still don’t want to talk about. But I was young, and I was stupid. I did the easy thing,” he said, nearly choking on the words because there hadn’t been anything easy about leaving his family. “But I’m thirty-five years old, I’m not eighteen. I’m not going to handle things the same way now that I did then. It was easy for me to think that time stopped here while I was gone. That Sierra was still a little girl, that you were still a skinny kid. But now, I’m thinking I’m not the only one that’s guilty of that. You think that I went away and did nothing, that I learned nothing, that I suffered nothing. I had a life. Seventeen years of it. I’m not the same person I was when I left.”
Colton eyed him warily. “Sure, I hear you. But I’m not sure that I can trust the person standing in front of me any more than I could trust the person you were.”
“Let’s meet tomorrow. I want to talk to you about the financial situation. The best I can do is be transparent with you about this stuff. The best we can do is start, right?”
“I guess so.”
Maddy reappeared then, her expression just as guarded as Colton’s. “She said you can come in.”
His heart dropped slightly, and he realized then that he hadn’t really imagined she would let him visit her. He had expected to get turned away at the door. The fact that Colton, Maddy and Sierra were accepting him in any capacity was more than he had expected.
He had imagined resistance. Outright refusal. It was strange to wrap his head around something different.
He nodded, following Maddy to the door and stopping her just as she started to push it open. “Thank you for calling me,” he said.
“I told you not to come.”
“I know. But would you have listened if our situations were reversed?”
A reluctant smile tugged at her lips, and she quickly forced it back down. “No. But also, I haven’t been out of Sierra’s life all this time so I would punch you because you would have no right to tell me to stay away.”
“You’re protective of her and I get it. I respect it. But I don’t want to hurt her, I promise you. I think you’re right. I think we are alike. Which means I know, and I trust, that if I mess this up you’ll come after me with a knife.”
“I will eviscerate you with the confidence and skill of a woman who is no stranger to self-defense. On that you can trust me.”
“I do.”
“Good,” she said, pushing the door open and indicating that he should go in without her. “Oh, and, Gage?”
He looked at her again. “What?”
“Don’t hurt me either.”
That small moment of vulnerability from prickly Maddy made his chest tighten. “I won’t,” he said, his voice gravel. And he prayed to God right then that he could keep that promise.
It had been a long damn time since anyone had asked anything of him. Since anyone had expected anything of him. Maddy made him want to try.
She gestured for him to go on, and he did, walking into the