"What the hell are you talking about?" Sam asked. He looked back and forth between his brothers before looking at me. But I couldn't answer. It felt like I couldn't breathe.

"Short story of his past," Dylan began, and my hands clenched into fists on top of the table. "He had a druggie, absentee mom, and his old man beat him and Amy. Almost killed them. The Greens adopted them after that. That would never sway my decision on this situation. But now? Connor is always living in fear that he's going to turn into the guy who raised him. His anger scares him, and he told us that he was afraid if he had kids, he'd do the same thing to them."

"Holy shit," Sam said under his breath and scrubbed his hands down his face. "Connor, man, I'm-"

"So you can see our reasoning," Dakota said, cutting him off. "I love you, Connor, really, man, I do. But I can't let you be with my sister. I have to protect her, and letting her be with a man like you would be the exact opposite of protecting her. You would ruin her."

"Dakota," Sam snapped.

"He said it himself! He said he would ruin his future family, destroy it. Those were his words. I don't care if he was wasted, don't we always say drunks are the only honest people?" Dakota stood, and leaned over me, his voice low. "Break up with Maci . . . tonight. If you still want to go to the cabin with us tomorrow, then come. We want you there. None of us will say a thing about tonight, like I said, we'll act like none of this shit happened."

My eyes flashed up to his, then down to Dylan's. He looked away and cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, man, I didn't want to bring that up. But you had to know why we can't let you be with her."

With a hard nod, I ignored Sam calling my name, and walked out of the bar.

I knew what I had to do.

I just didn't know how to do it in a way that would convince her.

"CONNOR, WHAT ARE you already doing home? I thought you were going out after work."

I stood there staring in my fridge, trying to ready myself for this. After I'd figured out how to do it, I'd been telling myself over and over that this was for her own good. That it might upset her at first, but in the long run, it was what she needed.

"I didn't know I had to give you a play-by-play of what I was doing."

"Whoa, what's wrong? Did something happen at work?"

I grabbed a beer and shut the door with more force than necessary. "Jesus, Maci. Nothing is wrong. Is it so wrong that I wanted to have a night away from you?"

Her head jerked back, and her eyes widened. "What?"

"I'm tired of constantly babying you. Did you ever think that maybe I need time to see other women? That that's the way this usually works?"

"What works?"

"Sleeping around with people." I turned away from her, and took long pulls from my beer. Trying not to choke at the thought of being with anyone else, or her with another guy. "I wanted to prove something to you, Mini. I wanted to show you what you were missing by just being with that preppy guy. I think I more than proved that, and I'm done catering to you."

"What. The hell. Did you. Just call me?"

I was going to throw up. I tried to blank my expression when I turned toward her again, the way I did when I questioned people. But this was fucking Maci, and I could hardly look at her without wanting to pull her to me.

"God, Maci, grow up. It's just a damn name."

"Why are you doing this? What happened today?"

"Nothing happened." She reached out for me and I grabbed her wrist, walking her out my door and toward hers. "You can't be in my apartment, I have someone coming over."

"You-what? Connor!" she cried out my name and clutched at her chest when I released her. "Why are you being like this? This isn't you."

"Shit, enough! Stop making this out to be so dramatic when it really doesn't have to be. I'm just tired of pretending with you."

"Pretending?" she whispered to herself, her eyes looking everywhere but at me.

"I'm sorry if I let it go on too long, but you need to find someone else. Get a boyfriend or something, one that you're not afraid to introduce to your brothers."

Her head snapped up, her gray eyes pleading. "Is that what this is? Because I haven't told them yet? I'll tell them right now, I swear!"

"No, fuck, that's not what I meant. You need to find the guy you're meant to be with, and I'm not him. Obviously you've gotten too deep in this, but this should have never happened."

"How can you say that? I belong with you . . . to you. I'm yours, Connor! Completely. Yours. Why can't you see that you own me?"

I watched as her gray eyes filled with tears, and I wanted to die.

I'd been looking for any kind of emotion since Cassidy had left. I'd searched for it in so many women. This girl . . . for so many reasons she shouldn't have been the one to start evoking all these feelings again-and yet, she had been. My best friends' little sister. My neighbor. The girl next door. Everything cliche and everything I had overlooked for years. I wondered for the hundredth time tonight why I couldn't have actually seen Maci years before.

Another sob tore from her chest, and I wanted to take her in my arms and brush away the tears that had just started falling down her face. I wanted to tell her that she had all of this backwards. She owned me. But I couldn't do this to her. Not only would her brothers never allow it, especially after tonight, but they were right . . . I would ruin her.

I had fears she couldn't understand, a life that she'd had no idea about, and too many secrets I wasn't willing to taint her world with. I would ruin her and our future family, and I wouldn't be able to live with myself when that happened.

My body was shaking, and I tried to focus on anything other than the way her expression was breaking my heart. I'll destroy her. I'll ruin her. I continued to chant those words and focused on the fact that I could never be the type of man that she needed.

Swallowing past the tightness in my throat, I scoffed. Scoffing was good. It made me sound like that much more of an asshole. "You can't start crying every time you aren't getting your way, Maci. You're an adult, start acting like one."

"Connor!" she cried when I turned to leave. "Why are you doing this to us? I know you, I know you want to be with me too. Is it Dakota and Dylan, did they find out? Are they making you do this?"

I stopped walking when I reached her door, but couldn't look back at her when I said, "You don't know anything about me. The fact that you somehow made yourself believe there was an us is proof of that. There is no us."

"How can you sa-"

"Because we fucked, Maci, that's all we did!" I turned to look at her beautiful face, filled with pain. "It's not my fault you let yourself believe we could be something. It's not my goddamn fault you don't know how to keep your feelings and your needs separate."

Her head shook slowly back and forth, and her hand came up to cover her mouth as a strangled sob left her. "You're lying," she choked out. "Please don't do this!"

"Goodbye, Maci."

"Connor!" she sobbed when I shut her door behind me.

I hurried into my apartment and threw the can of beer at the wall, suppressing an agonized roar as I stormed into my bedroom. For the rest of the night, I stood with my forehead and palms pressed against the wall that connected our bedrooms, and listened to her sobs. And for the first time since I was last beaten at seven years old, I cried.

Chapter Eleven.

Maci "UP! COME ON, get up!" Amber yelled as she charged into the room we were sharing.

Glancing over at her when she jumped on my bed, I looked back up at the ceiling and suppressed a sigh. "I think I'm going to call it an early night. I'm exhausted from traveling up here."

"Bullshit you are! You're moping and being all stupid depressed because Connor turned out to be a dick!"

My chest ached, hearing his name. "Amber . . . please, just let me be upset about this for a while."

"Nope, no. Not going to happen. As your best friend, it is my duty to make sure you get back to being all happy happy because it's almost Christmas, have an awesome fucking vacation, and get laid by some random hot ski instructor."

I actually cracked a smile. "Ski instructor? Really now . . ."

"Yes, and it will be perfect. It will take your mind off the asshole, you won't have to see the guy again until next year-if you even see him again."

"Ahh . . . no thanks. But, really, have at it."

Standing up, she grabbed my ankles and started dragging me down the bed.

"Holy shit! You're such a fucking bitch. Oh God!" I wheezed when my back hit the floor with a hard thud.

"I'm your bitch, and it's why you love me. So let's slut it up, hit a few bars and-"

We both looked toward the hallway when one of my brothers yelled my name.

"Why do I feel like I'm about to be in trouble?" I whispered to Amber when she helped me up off the floor.

"Maci, get the fuck up here!" one of the boys yelled seconds before I heard him pounding down the stairs.

We stood there frozen as we waited, and I jumped when my door was thrown open so hard, I was sure it left a dent in the wall.

"Jesus, Dyl-"

"Shut the fuck up and get your ass upstairs. Now."

"Excuse me? Don't be fucking rude! Get out of my damn room, you son of a bitch!"

"Maci!" Came another voice from upstairs. Seconds later, Craig was standing behind Dylan. "You might want to come upstairs." It wasn't a suggestion. It was a command, and he sounded just as pissed as Dylan.

I looked up at my ceiling when I heard my dad yell, "Calm down, Dakota! Let the man talk."

Connor. My heart raced and ached at the same time. My stomach started churning, and I was afraid I was about to lose what little of dinner I'd actually eaten. I didn't want to see him, but why would he be here and upsetting my brothers if it weren't for me?

Grabbing Amber's hand, I pushed past my brothers and tried to ignore the way their glares made my skin crawl. Running up the stairs, my shoulders slumped and I had the ridiculous urge to start crying when I saw him standing there.

Connor hadn't come for me. Bryce had.

The loss I'd been dealing with over the last twenty-four hours since Connor had thrown me out of his life seemed to double. That little glimmer of hope that he'd changed his mind had been crushed when I saw Bryce instead of the man I loved standing there next to my dad.

"What are you doing here?" I asked Bryce. His family vacationed here every winter, just another reason why we'd been close for so long. But when he'd texted me to see if we could talk while we were here, I'd thought my 'Fuck off' response had said it all.

"You lying bitch," Dylan said under his breath as he and Craig shoved past me, pushing me into Amber.

"Hey, baby," Bryce said, a smile lighting up his too-perfect face.

"Baby?" Amber and I said at the same time.

"Oh, hell no. I thought we were finally done with you," Amber sneered.

Bryce sent a glare her way before looking at me again. "As always, Amber, what a pleasant surprise to see you."

"Somehow I doubt that."

I held my hand up to keep them from going into one of their fights, and stepped forward. "Bryce . . . why are you here? I told-"

"I was just telling your father about our plans."

Plans?

"Maci,"-my Dad began-"this young man has just informed me that you're going to be getting married within the year . . . ?"

"What? No!"

"You don't have to keep lying just because your brothers are here," Bryce said as he stepped up to me. One arm went around my waist, the other cupped my cheek. His eyes roamed my face before zeroing in on my nose. When he spoke again, it was soft enough that only Amber and I could hear him. "I thought we agreed you were going to take that thing out? And please tell me your hair will be blonde again soon, I was planning on announcing our engagement at the beginning of the year."

"You are such a little piece of shit."

Bryce kept talking like Amber had never spoken. "I told you, Maci, no one will take you seriously when you look like this. You're the mistress . . . remember? I need a wife. It's time to grow up, baby."

The air in my lungs left in one hard rush. It had hurt the first time Bryce had said that, but now, after Connor? It was killing me. He was right . . . all I was, like this, was a fuck buddy. I wasn't relationship material, and, according to Bryce, I wasn't marriage material either.

"I know," I said as I nodded my head in his direction. Suddenly, I felt a large presence behind me.

"I suggest you leave," Dylan said.

"Now. And if you don't stop touching my sister, I swear to God you will spend Christmas in the hospital," Dakota added.

Okay, make that two large presences.

Bryce actually had the balls to look up over me and say, "I'd like to speak to my future wife, if you don't mind."

"Nah, man. That's not about to happen. You'll leave; we have to talk to her. Seeing as you just dropped this on our whole family when none of us even had a clue about you, I'd say this is the wrong time for you to be here." Dylan grabbed my arm hanging limply at my side, and pulled me back toward him, and away from Bryce.

"Maci?" Bryce looked at me.

"Let me walk you out," I choked out, and wrangled my way out of Dylan's grasp.

Not looking back to see if he was following me, I turned and headed toward the front door. Once I got there, I waited until Bryce was near me before jerking the door open and stepping outside with him.

"Mac-"

"Leave, I don't want to see you again. I thought I'd made that clear to you before, apparently I was wrong."