Endeared (The Accidental Billionaires #5) - J. S. Scott Page 0,86

wake up from those dreams, I have to talk myself down from calling her at three o’clock in the morning just to hear her voice. Almost every single person in her life who should have been there for her let her down. What if I somehow let her down, too?” I took a deep breath before I added, “I haven’t been myself since the day she walked into the clinic, and in my gut I knew that she was still going to get to me, just like she did in high school. And I was right. But nothing could have prepared me for the crazy way I love her now.”

The living room was silent for a few minutes after my tirade, until Aiden spoke in a low, serious tone. “I never got over Skye, either. We were both young when we fell for each other. Because I was heartbroken, I managed to put all those emotions away for a long time, but they were still there. I know you weren’t here when Seth and I went through exactly what you’re going through now, but it does get better. When you love a woman, and that woman becomes your entire world, there’s never a day that you don’t think about her security and her happiness. But the near-insanity does settle down a little after you’ve been together for a while. You start to have faith that she’s not going anywhere, and you have proof that she’s happy every single day with the decision she made to take your ass on for a lifetime. It’s the uncertainty in the beginning that makes you crazy.”

I raked a hand through my hair in pure frustration. “So what in the hell am I going to do?”

“Just love her,” Seth suggested. “Marry her. Give everything you have to that relationship because you know you’ll be fucked if she’s not happy. Live through the hard shit because you know a bad day with her is better than any day without her in it. In the beginning, keep reminding yourself that she feels as crazy as you do sometimes, and roll with it together.”

“And for fuck’s sake,” Aiden said in a disgruntled tone. “Don’t ever accuse her of cheating on you unless you know you’re one hundred percent correct, because once you do it, you can never take it back.”

“I didn’t accuse her of that,” I said defensively.

“You didn’t say it,” Seth agreed. “But you were thinking it, and she knew what was in your head when you left without a single word to her. Listen to your gut and your heart, instead of your obsessive mind.”

I banged my head against the back of the sofa. Maybe I hadn’t said it out loud, but I had let my insecurities about our relationship get to me.

Never once had Layla given me any reason to think she wasn’t faithful to our relationship. Hell, we spent most of our time together.

“I want her to live with me,” I confessed. “I want to marry her. I want all of those things you said. I’m just not sure she’s ready.”

“She’s ready.”

“She’s ready.”

My two brothers made their assessment almost simultaneously.

I was going to have to lay all of my cards on the table with Layla, whether she was ready or not. If I didn’t, I’d end up losing her because of something stupid, like jumping to conclusions just because she was hugging another guy who didn’t have my DNA.

“Logically,” I said, “I know damn well she isn’t interested in Jax. She’s told me that before. And maybe it bothered me that she’d never told me that she was talking to somebody on Not-Just-A-Hookup, too, but she has a right to have her own friends. She sure as hell doesn’t need my permission. Maybe what really gets to me is that Jax was there for her when I wasn’t. But logically”—I stressed that word again like it would magically make me think with a rational brain—“my being there for her wasn’t even possible. We weren’t even speaking because of that whole scholarship misunderstanding.”

Aiden’s expression was troubled as he started to speak. “Owen, you can ‘what if’ yourself to death, but at some point, you have to leave all that shit behind. Been there. Done that. Drove myself nuts about the years I lost with Maya and Skye. Don’t let your past define your future.”

“You can be there for her now, Owen, if you really want to be,” Seth pointed out. “You can’t change the past,