My Best Friends Brother

Chapter 225

I could never stop feeling this way about him.

I threw it all at him last night and he didn't deserve it. Every word I said was the truth, all of them were thoughts and feelings that exist within me but it wasn't everything I feel. I didn't tell him how happy his smile makes me, I didn't tell him that holding his hand as he led me onto the dance floor gave me more pleasure than every positive moment I've had for the last four years combined. I didn't tell him that even at my lowest, even when I let myself truly believe that we were better off apart for both our fucking sanity, I still would've ran into his arms the moment he opened them.

I need to talk to him, I want to talk to him, I just know after last night he isn't going to want to talk to me.

I blamed him, I blamed him for all the pain and all the hurt but I shouldn't have, both of us played a role in every one of these decisions. When he left, I didn't stop him. When I was going to go for him and saw he was with someone else, I could have called, I could have asked what he wanted.

I was scared, I was a fucking coward. I was so terrified of hearing him say that he didn't want me that I threw up all my armour and forced myself to be with someone like Xade even when I knew I shouldn't.

That's on me.

He wasn't alone on that dance floor last night, up until that final second I wanted to kiss him just as much as he wanted to kiss me.

He wasn't the one that was engaged, I was.

I blamed him for my pain, but he never caused it. It was me. I did it to myself.

Al reaches across the counter, running her fingers through my hair. I know I look like shit so I just keep my eyes firmly glued to the plate.

"Babe, keeping shit like this bottled up isn't good for you. You've been doing it more and more these last few years, please tell me what's going o-" She's cut off as the front door to the swings open, Cara and Chase taking a moment to stop trying to set each other on fire with their fake matchsticks and running over to the giant man in the doorway.

"Daddy!" Jayce smiles down at his little army of psychopaths, scooping them both up into his arms and nestling his stubbly beard into their necks to make them giggle.

Al has that look, that 'I can't believe that's my baby daddy' look. They've been together so long, seventeen years if you ignore the break where they were pretending they weren't completely fucking in love with each other still. The way they look at each other has never changed, they were barely old enough to stop being called kids when they met, they've both changed in that time but they've only grown together.

It's beautiful, so much shit had to happen for them to get here but look at them now. These two, that's fucking destiny.

Jayce lowers the kids back to the floor when they start trying to rip each other's eyelashes out, kissing Heather on the top of her head and offering Liam a high five before walking into the kitchen and barely giving me a glance, wrapping his arms around his wife and pulling her into his chest.

"Everything okay with Dad? Did you fix whatever was broken?" Jayce nods, the two of them appearing to work like a well oiled machine as they move in sync, twisting and stepping out of each others way until he has the plate of sandwiches she made him earlier in his hands without ever having to fucking ask for them.

"Yeah, pretty sure we discovered the problem when the drain was packed full of orange fucking curls. I'm definitely getting old though, me and Cole had to call Milo in to come fucking help because neither of us could get down on the floor like that anymore." He chuckles, but my heart smashes full force into my lungs and robs me of my breath at the mention of his brother's name.