Wrapped Up in You - Jill Shalvis Page 0,82

to stand as well. “I feel like I failed you on this one.”

“You’ve never failed me,” Caleb said.

“Arlo being in the hospital suggests otherwise.”

Caleb turned to him. “Did you hit him?”

Kel shook his head. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do. You feel the need to control every single situation so that it goes your way. But life’s annoying like that, man. You can’t control everything. Believe me, I’ve tried. Ask the women in my life, they’ll tell you, especially Sadie.” He shook his head. “Which means I had to let go of a lot of shit I didn’t want to let go of.”

“But Sadie never put your job in jeopardy,” Kel pointed out. “None of them closed themselves off to you at every turn. You had it easy.”

Caleb laughed. He laughed so hard he had to sit down. “Let me correct that notion right now. Sadie was more closed off than Fort Knox. It took patience, cunning, and every ounce of brainpower I had to make her fall in love with me, and in the end I nearly screwed it up by not trusting her.” He gave Kel a direct look. “I’d say don’t do that, but it seems like I’m too late.”

“You want me to trust the woman who hid stuff from you too?”

“Self-protection is something I understand all too well, and so should you. And it’s all a moot point anyway, because in spite of everything that happened between Sadie and me, I wanted her anyway. Every minute that she’s in my life, she makes it better. Her smile, the way she looks at me, hell, the way she laughs at me. She . . .” He trailed off, searching for the words.

Kel groaned. “If you say she completes you—”

Caleb pointed at him. “That’s the one.”

Kel shook his head.

“Don’t believe me?” Caleb asked, amusement fading. “Then think about what it will feel like when you go back to Idaho and leave what you have with Ivy in your dust.”

Kel had thought about nothing but . . . and it still didn’t change facts.

Caleb’s brows went up. “Are you kidding me? You’re going to go back?”

“I was always going to go back, Caleb. You know that.”

Caleb shook his head, not accepting this. “You’re looking at that ranch in Sonoma.”

“As an investment.”

“I call bullshit,” Caleb said. “You’re really going to walk away from the best thing to ever happen to you—and for what? A job that betrayed you?”

“It wasn’t the job. It was the people.”

“So stay and work for people who’d never put you second to a job.”

“It’s not that simple,” Kel said.

“Yeah, it is, but you’re too stubborn to see that.” Caleb shook his head again. “So are you going to be a total dick and just ghost her, or are you going to try to work things out first so that you can at least try the long-distance thing?”

“It’s not up to me.”

“Really?” Caleb asked, heavy on the disbelief. “You think she should come to you? Because she’s not humiliated enough that her brother screwed things up in a very large way, affecting you, me, and her entire life here, the life she’s worked so hard to get for herself?”

It was Kel’s turn to stare out the window now, blindly, into the city.

“You fell in love with her,” Caleb said.

“You can’t fall in love in two weeks.”

“I fell in love with Sadie in one night.”

Kel shook his head. “That was you.”

“What, and you’re immune?” Caleb studied his cousin. “No, that’s not it,” he said slowly, not sounding happy. “You think you don’t deserve it.”

“More like I don’t want it.”

“But you admit you fell in love.”

Kel hadn’t articulated it to himself quite that bluntly, but there was zero doubt that Ivy had gotten to him. She’d gotten inside his head, inside his heart, even down to the primal part of his soul. She’d bypassed all his defenses and brought something to life deep inside him that he’d kept hidden and protected. “It was a mistake,” he said.

“What a load of horseshit.”

“You’re friends with her,” Kel said quietly. “I understand that. I don’t expect you to cut her out of your life. I’m asking you to understand what I have to do.”

“No, don’t give me that crap,” Caleb said. “You’re not owning up to a mistake, and you’re not making a hard choice either. You’re covering your ass and protecting your heart, the way you did with your mom, the way you had to do at work, and now