“Grant?” Seth asked.
Maya nodded, and for the first time since she walked into his office, she looked less than 100 percent self-assured. Maybe a tiny bit scared.
Seth opened his mouth to tell her that maybe the conversation wouldn’t be as hard as she thought. That maybe Grant felt the same way.
But then he remembered what Brooke had said. That Maya needed to live her own life, make her own choices . . . and her own mistakes. Although he didn’t think this thing with Grant and Maya, whatever one might call it, was a mistake, still, he kept his mouth shut and decided to go a different route.
Maya shook her head in disbelief as he rounded the desk and wrapped his arms around her once more, although briefer this time.
“Two hugs in one day?” she said when she pulled back. “I don’t know what the heck Brooke Baldwin did to you, but I think I like it.”
Seth’s good mood faded slightly at the mention of Brooke, knowing that he wasn’t likely to get the second chance with her that he had apparently gotten with Maya. He and Maya were blood, with close to three decades of history behind them. Brooke had known him for all of two months and had no reason to give him a second chance. Hell, he wasn’t entirely sure he deserved one.
Maya went on her toes and kissed his cheek. “I love you. You know that, yeah?”
“I know. I love you, too.”
“And Brooke. You love her, too?”
Seth waited for the familiar stab of panic at the thought—at the uncomfortable sense of unpredictability that came from losing one’s heart to someone spontaneously, without knowing whether they loved you back. Of the wild, terrifying abandon of caring about someone so deeply that they could turn you inside out.
He felt none of that. There was only sureness. Rightness.
“Yes,” he said simply. “I love her.”
Maya’s smile was wide and beaming. “You know how you’re always throwing out advice at me, even when I don’t ask for it?”
His eyes narrowed. “Yes.”
She patted his chest playfully. “Well, here’s some unsolicited advice for you. If you want to win her back, go big. Throw your whole heart into it. Because I think she’s worth it.”
Seth watched his sister stroll out of his office, all sassy confidence as she went to get her man.
Just like Seth was about to get his woman.
Because unlike Maya, Seth didn’t think Brooke was worth it.
He knew she was.
Chapter Thirty-Three
JUST THINK, MAN, BY this time tomorrow night you could be getting laid,” Grant said, picking up an ugly vase off Seth’s bookshelf as though he intended to pack it and instead going to the fridge to help himself to a beer.
Such had been the entire afternoon.
His best friend’s idea of “helping him pack” seemed to be limited to the refrigerator and pantry, and instead of anything making it into the boxes, it all went directly into Grant’s stomach.
Seth ignored his friend as he picked up an ugly metal figurine, studying it for a half second, realizing he’d never even noticed it before, and chucking it in the Goodwill pile that was considerably larger than his keep pile.
Goal number one of new life, get shit I actually like.
Actually, no, that wasn’t the first goal.
First he was going to win back Brooke.
Then he’d figure out how to hire a designer that didn’t have a strange fascination with humanoid figures crafted from various types of metal.
“I’m just saying, you’d be a lot less grumpy if you got laid,” Grant said, pointing the beer bottle at him.
“Great. I’ll be sure to call you in the aftermath so that you can reap the benefits of my postcoital glow,” Seth replied.
Grant winced. “Dude. Don’t.”
“You don’t get to don’t me. You’re sleeping with my sister.”
“Hell yes, I am,” Grant said with a cocky smile. “And it’s—”
“No,” Seth said. “No fucking way. Don’t finish that sentence. For Chrissake, get me a beer. No, never mind, I need whisky.”
It had been six weeks since Maya had called off her wedding and told Grant how she felt about him. Seth wasn’t exactly sure how everything had played out, and wasn’t at all sure he wanted the details, but they were both the happiest he’d ever seen them, and that was enough for him.
He and Grant had mended things, too, in the way that men not entirely comfortable with emotion tended to do. Seth had shown up at Grant’s door with a bottle of Pappy and invited himself inside. Grant had nodded, stepped aside to let him in.
And just like that, they were back to normal.
Simple. Basic. Easy.
Fixing things with Brooke? Not nearly so easy.
Even the reappearance of Grant in Seth’s life wasn’t helping his nerves right about now. For close to two months he’d been working tirelessly on what Etta had started calling The Project, and although he’d never felt so solid about something in his life, he couldn’t deny that the undercurrent of the unknown was starting to eat at him.