“Thanks a fucking lot, man,” I grumbled.
“Nothing good ever comes from being a guy’s booty call or fuck buddy, AJ,” Jake argued. “I mean, hell, look at what happened to Abby because of Bree.”
Rolling his eyes, Bray replied, “Yeah, well, Kylie is far from that level of psychotic.”
Rhys exhaled noisily before pinning me with a hard stare. “True, but I told you back in Oklahoma City not to start that shit up again. Looks like you were all invested the first time, and now it’s her this time.”
Tilting my head, I gave him a ‘what the fuck’ look. “Seriously? So Kylie showing up is all my fault?”
“Well obviously you didn’t shoot her down hard enough last night if she thought it was okay to come waltzing in here.”
“What exactly did you say to her last night?” Brayden questioned.
I grimaced. “I just told her I had to go, and that I’d talk to her later.”
“Dumbass,” Rhys muttered.
I threw up my hands. “I didn’t have a whole lot of time to stop and have a meaningful fucking conversation when I could see Mia freaking out and bailing.”
“Regardless of how it happened, you really screwed up, dude. You should go after Mia,” Brayden said.
I snapped the towel away from my face. “Are you shitting me? She handcuffed me to the shower!”
“You love her,” Bray countered.
“I do not,” I lied.
When I glanced over at Jake to see if he was buying my line, he gave me a sad smile. “Don’t look to me for advice. I fucked up way too many times to count. Abby’s a freakin’ saint to love me, least of all forgive me.”
While I was crumbling on the inside, I tried with everything I had to keep up my tough guy exterior. “Jesus guys, I still have my pride, and it’s screaming at me not to chase after a woman who won’t be reasoned with.”
Jake crossed his arms over his chest. “This from the same guy who told me I had to do something epic to win Abby back.”
“That was different,” I mumbled.
“Because it was me? Because it wasn’t your heart on the line?”
“I don’t know.” Pinching my eyes shut, I rubbed my forehead. “The bottom line is Mia isn’t Abby—she has some real dark shit in her past.”
“So what, you don’t feel you’re man enough to deal with all that?” Jake countered.
I snapped my eyes open to glare at him. “No, asshole. That’s not it at all.”
“Abby still has to deal with my shit—the women and my grief—, but she does it because she loves me.” He smacked me hard on the back. “Maybe you should try to deal with Mia’s shit because you love her.”
When I glanced at Rhys and Brayden, they both nodded their heads. “Come on so we can eat some chili before it gets cold,” Brayden suggested. With a wink, he added, “You’re going to need your strength when it comes to getting Mia back.”
“Fine. Lead the way,” I replied. As I followed them to the ladder, I thought it was going to take a lot more than a little food fortification to give my body what it needed to prepare to battle Mia. Although after what she did, part of me was saying good riddance to her. But somehow I knew she was worth fighting for—that she was different than any other woman I’d ever been with. More than anything, I wanted to prove to her, that in spite of her past, some men would fight for what they wanted, and I was just that kind of man.