Mitch led her down to the lobby, slipped on his sunglasses. They headed toward the waterfront.
“I’m assuming you heard about what happened yesterday?”
Mitch slid his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, I did. Are you okay? You don’t look very good.”
Her brow quirked. “No, huh? Well, I don’t feel very good. Nothing like having everything hit all at once. Ryan was a little ticked when he left.”
“Ryan has a temper,” he said as they walked into the park. “He doesn’t handle it well sometimes.”
“Well, that’s a surprise,” she tossed back sarcastically. “He wouldn’t even let me talk.”
“You’ve got to understand, this is really hard for him. He changed after you disappeared, shut down in a lot of ways.”
“Just what is your relationship?”
“He’s my best friend. He was before you two were even an item. But,” he added, “that doesn’t mean I won’t kick his ass when he’s being a jerk. Especially when it involves you.”
The determination in his voice made her smile. “Why is it so much easier for me to talk to you than it is to talk to him?”
“Because I’m your brother.”
Warmth closed around her heart. She’d never thought she had a brother.
“And I don’t want anything from you,” he went on. “Except to get to know you again, to be your friend. Ryan wants his wife back.”
She dropped onto a bench, a deep sigh escaping her lips. “I’m not his wife. I may have her body and her face and her voice, but I’m not her. Not inside.”
“Yeah, you are.” He sat beside her. “You just can’t see it because you don’t remember it. But you’re still her. Things you say, things you do, the way you carry yourself. You’re still ready to bite my head off when I disagree with you about geology.” She looked down at her hands and smiled. “And you have the same gentle spirit she did.”
“But I’m different.”
“Yeah, you’re that too. But it doesn’t mean you aren’t who you are now because of who you were then. People change all the time. If this whole situation didn’t change a person, they wouldn’t be human. Ryan’s different. I’m different. It makes sense that you, of all people, would be different.”
“He’s so cold. I can’t believe he was ever the sort of man you all describe. You and Simone, you make him sound so warm and friendly, but everything I’ve seen of him in the last week makes him look exactly like the cold-hearted, arrogant, ruthless tyrant the media makes him out to be. I can’t read him. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to.”
Mitch smiled. “That’s Ryan. He keeps his emotions closely guarded. But he wasn’t always like that.”
“What changed him?”
“Losing you changed him.” He shook his head when she looked away. “Ryan closed in on himself after we lost you. He exists for two reasons these days—to work and to take care of Julia. Nothing else in his life matters—not the money or the fame or the power. He only works as hard as he does because it’s a distraction from having to feel anything. It’s the game that keeps him going. If he lost it all tomorrow, he wouldn’t care as long as he had Julia. He’d just start all over. You have to understand that although he wants you to get to know Julia, the thought of losing her at all is terrifying to him.”
“I’m not trying to take her from him.”
“I know that,” he said softly.
“I feel like my life is split into two parts, the person I was before, and the person I am now. I don’t know how to blend them.”
“You’re trying too hard. It’ll happen when it happens. I know it’s hard. I know you think about her and you see Annie, and you think about yourself and you see Kate—two different people, two different lives—but deep down, they’re the same. You just need some time to figure it out.”
“And in the meantime, I’m just making a mess out of everything.”
He brushed a hand over her shoulder. “You guys will get through this. Give Ryan a day or so. Once he spends time with Reed, all of that anger about not knowing about him will slip away. Trust me, I know the guy. He’s hard as steel around the edges, but inside, he’s one big, gooey mess.”
“So I shouldn’t go see him today?”
“No way. He’s brooding today. You won’t get through to him.”