He’d come this far; he might as well finish the story. “Remember Beth?”
“Hard to forget.” Disdain colored her words. “I put her in the same class as Gentry’s current guy, Jake. Neither is particularly kind or caring.”
“I don’t know Jake, but you’re right about Beth.”
She tipped her head in question. “Did you share that opinion with Joe?”
“No.” Her thermostat mustn’t have been working right, because the room temperature spiked. Alec paced as the memory replayed, as vivid and 3-D as the night it happened. “She showed up drunk at my place that night. Said she and Joe had been fighting. Begged me to let her in to talk. I made a pot of coffee and offered platitudes about how Joe cared about her and she should go work things out with him. Then she excused herself for a minute.”
He remembered her stumbling in her heels and feeling her way along the wall back toward his bathroom. “Honestly, I thought she went to throw up, but then she came back stripped down to her underwear. Started touching me, telling me how much she admired my success. How I was the ‘impressive’ brother. I was trying to get out of the situation when Joe pounded on my door. Apparently, he’d tracked her down using some mobile app. He walked in before she put her clothes back on, then jumped to a bunch of conclusions.”
Alec hadn’t stopped turning in circles. His thoughts were so steeped in the memory of Joe’s reaction to finding Beth there half-naked, that when Alec did finally look up, he was shocked not to see Joe standing in front of him, fist balled, face red and sweaty.
“I can see why Beth should feel bad,” Colby began, “but you didn’t do anything wrong.”
With shame on his mind, he met Colby’s gaze. “I did. Joe started in on me, called Beth a loser and so on. After years of tolerating all the put-downs—of taking the high road, even when he didn’t deserve it—I snapped. I let him believe that I’d been with Beth. I was an ass, but in the heat of the moment, I thought I’d earned the right to hurt him . . . or he’d earned it, however you want to look at it. I woke up planning to tell the truth, but he’d taken off with Mark up to the falls, and then it was too late.”
Wilting onto the sofa, he buried his face in his hands. He’d hoped to feel better after making that confession, but right now he couldn’t settle his stomach.
Colby bumped her knee against his. “Not your finest moment, but not unforgivable, either. Maybe you were an ass, but not an unforgivable one. Your fight didn’t make Joe take Mark’s dare.”
“I think it did.” He remembered the wounded pride on his brother’s face. “The idea that his girlfriend cheated on him with me, a guy he considered so beneath him, shattered his ego. I’m sure he hiked to the falls full of piss and vinegar. Mark’s dare gave him a chance to reclaim his manhood. If he hadn’t been reeling from shock, he probably wouldn’t have been so rash.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions. What-ifs will drive you crazy. Joe’s ego is on him, not you. Trust me. I’m sorry your last conversation with Joe went so horribly, but you loved him your whole life, and he knew that. We both need to let go of whatever we wish we’d done differently.” She blinked, as if she’d revealed too much. “Alec, our history is complicated. I get that. But I can’t keep hiding from life, either. It feels like I’m on the brink of something new and exciting. Maybe we’ll find our way forward together, but not if we keep looking back.”
“It’s not about looking back, it’s about confronting mistakes. We have to talk about Mark’s suicide.”
“Why? Why make me talk about that when I work so hard every day not to remember? It took eighteen months to sleep through the night without nightmares.” Her eyes glistened as her expression tightened. “I still can’t always shut out that final image of him when it wants to surface. But I’m tired of everything in my life being defined by what happened with Mark. All I want is to stop thinking about him. Please, Alec. Please don’t keep bringing him up.”
She tugged the wedding band off her finger and tossed it on the coffee table. They both stared at it while she wiped a tear from her cheek.
Shaken by her breakdown, he paused. Ignoring the past wasn’t healthy, but maybe it wasn’t his choice to make. She’d handed him an out. One that enabled him to stick to his original plan to do anything he could to secure her happiness. If that required him to keep his mouth shut about Mark, at least he’d be loving her the way she asked to be loved.