Page 57 of Making the Save

“So? What’s got you upset?” he asked.

“Everything?” I laughed. “All of it. I feel like…” he was silent, waiting for me to finish my own thought instead of rushing in to put words in my mouth or tell me how he felt. “A paper doll.”

He looked at me and back at the road.

“Like I’m just this prop in other people’s lives. Other people’s stories. They dress me up, send me down the red carpet, send me to a party, a golf tournament, all to serve someone else. Or some idea of me that someone else has. I don’t think anyone sees me.”

Except you.I didn’t say it. I wouldn’t. How could I? I’d made all these rules.

But, of course, Wyatt wasn’t scared of my rules.

“I see you,” he said, his voice low and rough the way it had been in the ocean. My body went hot at the memory of his hand on my ass. His fingers on my nipple. My stomach did that flip thing that I always tried to write about and never seemed to capture. It felt like…longing. An ache. For him.

Being alone in a car with him for the next fourteen hours wasn’t going to help the situation.

“So, what games do we play to see who controls the music?” I asked him.

Wyatt chuckled. “You can put whatever you want on. I don’t care as much about the music as Liam does.”

“Then why did you play games?”

Wyatt glanced over at me. He was wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses that made him look sexier and slightly dangerous.

“Well, let me explain how it works. Especially when it’s two boys close in age. You compete for everything. I meaneverything. Games, food, clothes, who watches what TV shows. Doesn’t matter if I don’t care what music we listen to, I always needed to make Liam earn the right. It’s in the older brother job description.”

“What about girls?” I prompted. “Did you compete over them?”

“Never. Well, until now. I should probably confess. Liam was crazy about you when he was younger.”

“He told me.”

“Fucker.”

I laughed. “He also told me that you were the best guy he knew and that you wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me while you were around.”

He laughed like he wasn’t surprised, but he was happy. “That’s the other thing family does. We stick together and support each other. No matter what.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It is,” he said, like he was sorry I had never had it, but he didn’t pity me. It was a fine line and he walked it well.

Our silence was comfortable until Wyatt let out a deep sigh.

“What?” I pressed.

“Huh?”

“That sigh. It felt like there was a lot in there.”

Wyatt was quiet long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to share whatever he was thinking. Which was fine. Fake marriage didn’t give me the rights to his private thoughts.

I wasn’t going to be disappointed if he didn’t think he could trust me with something that was personal to him.

At least I was going to try and not be.

“Liam and I learned something after our mom died,” he said, and I turned towards him, delighted he was opening up to me. “She left us a letter that told us she’d been married before our father. And had a kid. She walked away from both of them andnever said a word about it. We didn’t know we had a half-brother until then.”

“Oh my gosh. Why did she leave behind her son?”