Love Irresistibly (33 page)

Brooke covered her face. “Thank you, Ford. And here I’d been worried before.” She stared down, hands rubbing her temples as she tried really, really hard not to imagine Cade with another woman. Then something slid across the table and into her view.

Ford’s iPhone.

With a photo of a bare-chested Ryan Gosling.

Despite everything, she smiled.

“Sorry,” Ford said with a sheepish grin. “Clearly, we’ve established that I’m not the best at the motivational pep talks. But can I say one more thing?”

“Just, please, try not to freak me out anymore, okay? I’m already far out of my wheelhouse just by considering this whole lay-everything-on-the-line scenario.”

“The only way you’ll know for certain what Cade is thinking is if you
ask
him.”

Brooke considered this, and then nodded.

Reluctantly, she had to admit that her “best friend with the penis attached” had gotten that part right.

Thirty-three

CADE ASKED THE
cabdriver to drop him off a few blocks from his apartment, thinking some fresh air would do him good. He wasn’t drunk, but he’d had a few drinks and wanted to clear his head—especially after his talk with Vaughn.

The main issue he had with Vaughn’s surprisingly non-terrible advice was that it didn’t address the real problem. Brooke moving to Charlotte was not the real problem. Sure, it didn’t make the situation any easier, but lots of couples dealt with job relocations and transfers, they made sacrifices for each other or they had long-distance relationships, and they figured it out.

The
real
problem was him.

The moment he’d heard from Charlie about Brooke’s job offer, and he’d felt that stab of disappointment, he’d closed himself off emotionally. He’d gone into his hey-it-doesn’t-matter mode, and had put on his nothing-fazes-me grin, and he’d told himself—and, essentially, Brooke, too—that it didn’t matter if she left.

That was what he did. That was what he’d always done. He pushed things away that hurt, and then he moved on. His father? Don’t want to think about the asshole. Football? Yeah, that was great back in the day, but let’s talk about something else. Move on.

He remembered that very first morning with Brooke, watching her sleep in his bed and wondering if he could allow himself to get close to her. And slowly, he’d been doing that, whether he’d realized it at the time or not, but as soon as the other shoe had dropped and he’d felt foolish for thinking they were on the same page, he’d thrown on an easy smile and had walked away.

Typically, that was a good play for him. One that had always worked in the past. Noah’s rejection had hurt, so he took all that anger and negative energy and he’d channeled it, positively, onto the football field. Then when fate had yanked football away from him, he’d gone to law school, and had funneled his ambition and drive into a successful legal career.

And he’d been doing just fine since then. Until everything had upended like the damn
Titanic
when a sixteen-year-old kid and a sassy lawyer had waltzed into his life. After that, it had suddenly become all
Oh, let’s open up and share
and
Oh, isn’t it cool having a brother
and
Oh, Brooke, it’s so perfect with you
and there’d been voices in his head, and all these weird
feelings
, and now, for the first time in his life, he was a mess.

Cade took a moment to let that sink in as he turned onto his block.

Huh
.
Zach had been right.

It really
wasn’t that much fun being a mess.

He was in uncharted waters here, and he had a decision to make. He could keep doing his self-protective thing, and let Brooke walk out of his life, and continue on with his string of unfulfilling four-month relationships with women who didn’t challenge him, didn’t make him laugh over a simple text message, and didn’t push him to be better. Or he could go find Brooke—a woman moving halfway across the country, a woman who’d specifically told him, in their very last conversation, that they’d both known from the beginning their relationship wasn’t anything permanent—and lay it all on the line, and hope that he didn’t look like a complete jackass in the process.

Cade waited for the annoying voices in his head to chime in with their opinions on that one.

Nothing.

This time, he was on his own, apparently.

As he opened the gate in front of his apartment building, he noticed someone sitting on the front steps. Whoever it was appeared to be waiting for somebody, and Cade smiled, thinking for a split second that maybe, coincidentally, it would be Brooke and—

Then he saw that it was his brother.

“Hey, Zach,” he said, heading up the front walkway. They didn’t have plans that night, so this was a surprise. “What brings—”

He stopped when he saw that Zach had been crying.

Instantly, Cade knew what was wrong—or at least, the source of whatever was wrong.

Noah.

The asshole had done something. Of course he had. Cade immediately went into protective mode. “What happened?”

Zach swallowed. “I kept thinking that you would come around eventually. I figured that once you got to know me better, you’d want to know more about our dad, too. But I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen.”

Cade ran a hand through his hair and exhaled. He’d always suspected that Zach had been angling for some heartwarming father-son reunion between him and Noah, but he hadn’t realized the kid was
this
serious about it. “I know you want that, Zach. And I want say that I’ll try, but—”

“He’s dying.”

Cade pulled back, the words dropping like stones in the air. “What?”

“He’s dying, Cade,” Zach said quietly. “My father—your father—is dying.”

Cade stared at him for a long moment. “How?”

“Cancer. Started in his lungs. I guess he used to be a big smoker before I was born. But we were—” Zach cleared his throat—“he was beating the lung cancer. Then an MRI scan came back about six weeks ago that showed a tumor on his brain stem. I knew it was going to be bad.”

It was all coming together now. “Six weeks ago. That’s when you came to see me.” And suddenly, a few things that had been nagging in the back of Cade’s mind made sense. Why Noah wasn’t helping Zach with football. A few odd, offhanded comments Zach had made here and there.

“After they did the biopsy, they told us that it’s some really aggressive kind of tumor. I knew then that I had to find you. I needed to do that for him. And I hoped we would have more time, but . . . they did a follow-up scan and we found out today that the tumor’s already grown.” Zach’s voice trembled. “They say that if we’re lucky, he’ll make it eleven months.”

Eleven months.

Cade felt a pit in his stomach as Zach wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. It killed him to see Zach so upset. Maybe they hadn’t found each other until six weeks ago, but it didn’t matter. This was his
brother
. He reached out and put his hand on Zach’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Zach.”

Zach pushed Cade’s hand away and stood up, suddenly going on the offensive. “You’re sorry?” He stepped closer to Cade, raising his voice. “Really?”

Cade held his ground. “Of course I am. No matter what happened between us, I’d never wish this on Noah. And I’d certainly never wish this on you.”

“Good. Then I want you to do something for me.” Zach’s jaw was set in determination. “I want you to go see him.”

That was . . . not a good idea. “I understand what you’re doing here, Zach. And it’s an admirable thing. But I say this in all sincerity: I don’t think Noah would want to see me. Especially not right now, with everything he has to deal with.”

“That’s a cop out.”

“Does he even know we’ve been hanging out?” Cade asked.

Zach paused before answering. “No.”

Christ.
Before Cade could respond to that, Zach continued.

“I didn’t want to tell him in case you refused to ever see him,” he said defensively. “Look, I get it. You spent your whole childhood waiting for your dad to show up, this big hero you’d built up in your head. And then he let you down. You know why I get that? Because I waited my whole life for someone to show up, too.
You
. Cade Morgan, football star. I never forgot that day when I was watching the Rose Bowl and my dad told me you were my brother.” His blue eyes snapped with anger. “When I was younger, I fucking
idolized
you. Whenever I got in trouble and my parents sent me to my room, I used to dream up these scenarios where you showed up and sneaked me out of my room, and we’d go on these crazy adventures together. So things didn’t exactly work out the way
I’d
hoped either, did they?”

The words hit Cade right in the gut. “I didn’t know, Zach,” he said, nearly a whisper. “I didn’t know anything about you.”

Zach nodded. “But now you do. Now you know everything. And the question is, what are you going to do about it?” He held Cade’s gaze. “He’s at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He’ll be there until tomorrow afternoon. What you do with that information . . .” he said as he held out his hands, “is up to you.”

* * *

CADE ENTERED HIS
apartment and tossed his keys on the counter. He set his briefcase down, and sunk onto the couch, thinking about everything Zach had told him.

His father was dying.

Many thoughts ran through his mind, but the one he kept coming back to was, simply,
Why?
For years, he’d wondered what was so wrong with him that Noah hadn’t wanted to be a part of his life. He’d forced himself to move on, but now that question had reared its ugly head again.

From what he could tell, Noah was a good father to Zach. For that, Cade was genuinely happy. And he would love to be able to say that knowing they were close wasn’t a bitter pill to swallow, that he had no further feelings on the matter, and that after all these years he’d come to accept that Noah was just the guy who’d gotten his mom pregnant, nothing more. He wanted to fall back into the comfort of his routine, and be that blithe, that matter of fact. He wanted the
why
not to matter. He wanted to not care.

But after all this time, he thought maybe he still did.

Thirty-four

BROOKE PARKED HER
car in a spot across the street from Cade’s apartment, and killed the engine. She sat there, waiting for the moment when she knew this was a bad idea, when logic and reason kicked in and she realized that instead of a face-to-face conversation, she could just text Cade something simple like, “Not going to Charlotte. Dinner tonight?” Because that—ha, ha—would put the ball in
his
court, not hers, and then
she
wouldn’t be the one . . . sitting outside his apartment looking like a stalker.

But the moment never came.

Crap.

So, fine, she was doing this. No clue what she was going to say to Cade—
Remember that part where I wanted to keep our relationship casual? Psych!
—but she figured she’d start with “hi” and go from there.

She got out of the car and crossed the street. It was hot outside, especially for eleven
A.M
. She’d wanted to wait a little longer to drop in on Cade, but she’d been driving herself crazy mulling over the various ways this conversation could go and had decided it was best to just rip off the Band-Aid and get it over with.

A teenager dressed in cargo shorts and a T-shirt was walking on the sidewalk, heading in her direction. They reached the wrought-iron gate in front of Cade’s building at the same time, and he politely held it open for her.

“Thank you,” she said.

She walked up the steps of gray stone, teenager in tow, and pushed the buzzer for “Morgan.”

“Looks like Cade’s a popular guy this morning,” the teenager said from behind her.

Brooke turned around and saw that he was studying her curiously.

“You’re the Niagara Falls girl,” he said.

She had no idea what that meant, but after taking in his tall frame and familiar cobalt blue eyes, she was certain of one thing. “And you’re the brother.”

“Zach.”

She smiled. His hair was lighter and shorter than Cade’s, but he was cute and athletic-looking in a way that probably caught the eye of many a sixteen-year-old girl. “Brooke.”

“You came to see Cade?” he asked, in a tone that hovered somewhere between a question and an accusation.

“I did.” She gestured to the silent intercom. “Although . . . he doesn’t appear to be home.”

Zach seemed particularly interested in this. “Huh.” He stared at the buzzer for a moment, and then looked back at her. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Charlotte?”

She pulled back in surprise. “He told you about that?”

“I was with him when that guy Charlie told him you were moving. Something that Cade strangely didn’t seem to know anything about.”

Zach waited, clearly wanting a response from her.

“I think this is probably a conversation Cade and I should have, Zach. It’s complicated.”

He rolled his eyes. “You two are like a broken record with that.”

Brooke’s ears perked up. “Cade said the situation between us was complicated?” She paused. “Did he say anything else about me?”

Instead of answering, Zach looked her over with a wary expression, as if debating something. “You know what? It’s been a really shitty couple of days, so I apologize if this comes out a little harsh. But . . . do you even like my brother? Because if he’s where I think he is right now, this day is going to be pretty shitty for him, too. So if you’re about to say good-bye, or do anything else that’ll make things even worse for him, then you should go. Just send him a text message when you get to North Carolina, or an e-mail, or tweet him, whatever.” He stopped and stared defiantly at Brooke, hands tucked into his pockets.

Brooke thought about how best to respond to that, since it sounded like there was a lot going on with Cade and Zach that she was out of the loop on. “I’m not here to say good-bye, Zach,” she said gently. “I’m not moving to Charlotte. And yes, I do like your brother. Very much so. That’s why I came here this morning—to tell him that.”