There’s a knock at my door and I look up from the paperwork I’ve been perusing. Damon sticks his head through the crack. Fuck, I forgot he was coming.
“Hey, brother,” he says.
I lean back in my seat and rub my temples. This fucking headache will not go away. “Damon.”
He raises an eyebrow at me and comes in, shutting the door behind him. He’s dressed in a faded green t-shirt and jeans. “Sarah said I could just come in. Am I interrupting?”
“I’m just working.”
“Right,” Damon says. He takes a seat across the desk. “You forgot I was coming, didn’t you?”
The bullshit line I’m about to give him fades before I say it, and I decide to be honest. “Yeah, I forgot.”
“I figured you would,” he says.
I narrow my eyes at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” he says. “You’re busy and I know how you get caught up with work.”
I take a deep breath. I don’t need to be an asshole to my brother. He’s a decent guy, and he’s always had my back when it counted. “Sorry, Damon. Things have just been kind of fucked for me lately. I have you on my calendar, but I wasn’t expecting to see you until tonight.”
“Yeah, I took an earlier flight,” he says. “I’m the dick for showing up early.”
“No, it’s fine,” I say.
Damon rubs his smooth jaw. “So, there’s something I need to talk to you about, and I sort of want to get it over with.”
“What?”
“Something happened, and I think you’re going to be pissed,” he says.
The tension in his voice makes my back clench. “What happened?”
“Mom has breast cancer.”
The words drop onto me like a boulder. “Cancer? What the fuck? When?”
“She found out a little over a month ago,” he says.
I almost fly out of my chair. “A month? Are you fucking kidding me? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Slow down,” he says. His tone is infuriating. “They didn’t want to tell you until they knew for sure what was going on. They … well, they know how you handle this kind of thing.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Damon sighs. “They were worried you’d flip out and go dive off the Golden Gate bridge or something.”
“You can’t jump off the Golden Gate,” I say.
“See, the fact that you know that is part of the problem,” he says. “They didn’t want you to go do something stupid.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Come on, Ronan,” he says. “Remember when Dad had that scare a couple years ago? When we thought it might be his heart? What did you do?”
I pause, thinking back. “I went BASE jumping in Nevada.”
“Exactly,” he says. “And you almost fucking died that trip. Mom has enough to deal with right now without worrying that you’ll try to kill yourself.”
“I’m not trying to kill myself,” I say.
“Could have fooled the rest of us.”
I get a grip on my anger with a deep breath. “How is she? What’s the prognosis?”
“She’s fine,” he says. “They caught it very early, and it’s not aggressive. She had a lumpectomy two weeks ago, and the surgeon was really happy. She starts radiation in a few weeks, but really, that’s more of a precaution than anything. She’s going to recover.”
“I can’t believe they didn’t tell me.”
“Well, I’m telling you now,” he says. “Call her. Talk to her. She misses you.”
I’m overdue for a visit to my folks. “I’ll go. I don’t know when I can get away, but I’ll get down there as soon as I can.”
“Good,” Damon says. “Honestly, you don’t need to worry about her. She feels great, and there’s every indication she’ll make a complete recovery.”
I nod. “Good.”
“So what’s the plan for tonight? Do I get to meet this mysterious girlfriend of yours?”
That word is a stab to my gut, and my voice goes icy cold. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Sorry, last time we talked, you said—”
“She’s not.”
Damon takes a deep breath. “I know it’s usually a bad idea to poke a wounded animal, but what happened?”
There was a time when I might have talked to Damon about this. He knew all about Chelsea. I even talked to him about how I felt afterward. He helped get me through one of the worst experiences of my life. “Things just got really intense.”
“How so?”
“You know what? It’s nothing. I made a mistake with her. And I’ve been so fucking buried with this meeting we have coming up. When it’s over, I need to get out of town for a while. Blow off some steam.”
“Right, blow off steam.”
“Do you actually wonder why I don’t come around?” I ask, unable to mask the irritation in my voice. “I get the same thing from you every time. From Mom and Dad, too. Stop with the passive-aggressive bullshit. I know none of you approve of me—but none of you understand me, either.”
“I understand you a lot better than you realize,” Damon says.