Page 25 of Her Dirty Secret
He grimaces. “Ugh, really?”
“Really,” I confirm, not sure which part I’m validating. But the answer is the same for both anyway. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really holding her back?”
He sighs. “You and her are a lot alike,” he grumbles. “Can’t mind your own business, can you?” But by the small smile tugging at his lips I can tell he’s not totally opposed to my meddling.
“Don’t worry, I’ll warn him that if he ever hurts her, you’ll end him and all that crap,” I promise.
He laughs. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” he assures me. “If he can get behind the walls of Fort Emily, I’ll take care of that myself.” He cricks his head to the side, cracking his neck. I roll my eyes at him.
“Whatever. Pissing contest later. Talk now.”
But he still looks reticent. “She’s going to be mad I told you.”
I crawl into his lap, holding his face between my hands. “Don’t worry about her right now. It’s just you and me here,” I say softly, grinding my hips into his. His mouth opens a fraction.
“You fight dirty,” he breathes, running his hands down my back.
With a smile, I lean in, so my lips are hovering over his, my breasts grazing his chest. “I learned from the best.”
With a smile, he plants a brief, chaste kiss on my lips, then pushes me back on his lap. “Short version? Emily’s first boyfriend was bad news. And it didn’t get a lot better from there.”
“Which kind of bad news?” I ask delicately.
“The metalhead, drug-using, getting-locked-up-for-assault type,” he replies grimly. “He hit her once. Only once, and that’s what convinced her to leave. He was arrested for nearly beating a guy to death a month later.”
I can’t imagine a world where the feisty woman I know lets a guy hit her. Or where her protective older brother doesn’t do something about it.
“What did you do to the guy?” I whisper.
Bryce shakes his head. “She was in college at the time, and I was deployed. By the time I came back, he was dead. Prison fight.” The sorrow in his eyes is only a shadow of what I imagine Emily went through. “She’s always been tough. But when I got home, she was even tougher than when I left. Doesn’t take a lick of shit from anyone. Not sure how, but she’s been in love twice since. Mostly just ended because the guys were too big of douches to be very good boyfriends. But ever since that first wreck, when she gets hurt or scared, she just withdraws for a while. Then she comes back like nothing ever happened. It just established some really bad patterns for her.”
“I had no idea.”
He runs his hands lightly down my arms. “She doesn’t exactly open up to people, babe. It’s not your fault you didn’t know. Hell, it’s not the Italian’s fault either. If he really does have feelings for her, if he said something to her about it, that would be enough to send her running. She was just scared.”
“Scared,” I agree. “And hurt too.” I relay everything Alessandro told me about their fight and her thinking he was with another woman after that.
Bryce lets out a low whistle.
“Yep, that’ll do it.”
“So what do I do?” I ask.
He considers me for a moment. “There’s nothing you can do,” he says simply.
“But I—”
He holds up a hand. “The Italian’s got to. He needs to do what I should have done, instead of sending Emily in to do it for me.”
I huff a small laugh. “Oh? And what’s that?”
He sits up, drawing close, and looking deeply into my eyes. “He needs to do whatever it takes. Stand at her door shouting his feelings for the world to hear. Send her love letters through the cracks of her door all Harry Potter–style and shit. Let her see how fucking lost he is without her. That’s what the dumbfucks before him never did. Fight for her.”
His thumb skims my cheek, and I realize he’s brushing away tears.
“I thought about doing all those things and more,” he whispers. “I gave you too much space. He shouldn’t make the same mistake.”
I laugh through my tears. “Don’t beat yourself up,” I reply. “It turned out pretty good for us, in the end.”