Cristina. “Who?”
“Alex,” LT said. “She’s right about all of it. About your past bein’ nothin’ but grit in your eye. About the thing we regret bein’ the love we withhold.”
Bran felt a muscle in his cheek twitch. “Does no one on this island believe in privacy?” He pushed back in his chair and glowered at LT. “How long were you standing there listening to our conversation?”
“Long enough to hear you not deny lovin’ Maddy.”
What is that I’m feeling? Impatience? Exasperation? Anger? He couldn’t tell for sure. The only one he could pinpoint with any certainty was heartbreak. The last two weeks had felt like two years.
Maddy had kept up her end of the bargain, going on like nothing had happened between them. Like nothing had changed between them. Her emails were just as funny and poignant and openhearted as ever. As alternately light and serious as they’d always been. Funny clips one day and mournful ruminations about her uncle the next. You know, just like always, she was being his…friend.
Except now it wasn’t enough. Not when he knew what it was to have more. To have everything.
“So what if I love her?” he snarled. “It doesn’t change who I am.”
“And who is that?” LT casually took a sip of his beer. His calm only increased Bran’s agitation.
“My father’s son,” he said. “You’ve seen me on the battlefield. You know what I’m like. You’ve seen the thing that lives inside me.”
LT didn’t say anything for a while, simply stood there drinking his damn beer. Then he finally spoke. “See, now, what confounds me is that you think you’re the only one of us who has a dark, vicious side. That you’re the only one of us who gets that look in his eyes when that side takes over. But we all have it, man. We all get it. Those dark, vicious sides of us are what kept us alive all those years. The difference between us and you is that we appreciate ours and you’re afraid of yours.”
“I’m not afraid—”
“Yes,” LT stressed, “you are. That’s why you always turn it off so quickly. Why, the instant the danger or whatever is over, you flip that switch inside yourself and start in with the jokes. You think you have to beat it back or it’ll take over. But it won’t, Bran. Don’t you know by now you can handle it?”
It sounded so good. It sounded so easy. And he wanted to believe it. “My father couldn’t handle it.”
“Yeah, well, you may be your father’s son. But you are not your father.”
“You shoulda seen how jealous I was of that young stud park ranger every time he looked at Maddy,” he snarled, remembering the red in his vision, the violence in his heart. Terrified of both. “When he touched her, I wanted to rip his arms off and beat him with ’em.”
LT snorted. “Join the club, man. When Olivia and I are in Key West and heads turn in her direction, I’m hard-pressed not to go on a murderin’ spree. Feelin’ possessive and protective and damn near nuclear about the woman you love is natural. Not actin’ on all those feelings is what separates the men from the monsters. And you, my friend, are a man.”
With his whole heart, Bran wanted to believe LT was right. Wanted to believe that what ran in his blood could be controlled by his brain. Wanted to believe that nurture had more to do with the making of him than nature.
Pa Ingalls…The name drifted into his mind from a long-ago memory.
Is it possible?
Possible to be as good a man, as decent a man as Pa Ingalls, the one who’d always made his mother smile? Asking the question, even to himself, opened up the prospect just a crack.
The joy that rushed in, the yearning, was almost more than he could bear.
“Now, I know you had some supremely bad shit happen in your past,” LT continued. “But stop bein’ a jackass and lettin’ the past rule your present. You don’t see yourself clearly, but the rest of us do. You’re a good man, Bran Pallidino. An honorable man. And a worthy man. And we all think Madison Powers would be the luckiest lady on the planet to have you.”
“I’ve said my piece,” LT said, pushing away from the doorjamb and heading in Bran’s direction. “So I’m goin’ outside to make out with my beautiful fiancée behind a palm tree.” He set his beer on the end table beside the