Linc nodded. “Okay. So this is what you need to know... Sage loves you.”
She’d said that and maybe she believed it to be true but it wasn’t enough. Love, sex, attraction wasn’t enough. It was easier, better, safer to be on his own. “So?”
“We’re here because my sister is miserable and looks like a corpse.”
“Again, so? What do you want me to do?”
“I thought you said he was intelligent,” Reame said to Jaeger, still sounding amused.
“I was wrong,” Jaeger replied. “He’s as dumb as a post.”
Linc tossed him a curse and threw up his hands. “Can you all please concentrate?” He gripped the bridge of his nose with his fingers. Back in control, he looked up at Tyce again. “What I, we, want you to do is to tell her that you love her and then tell the world that you are thrilled to be the father of her child. I want to be able to tell the world that our family is expanding and we’re excited that you and Lachlyn are part of our family. But really, I—we—just want Sage to be happy.”
Tyce felt like he’d been hit by a piece of Canadian maple. He just stared at Linc, trying to assimilate his words. He knew that Linc was happy to have Lachlyn as part of the family but he never thought that Sage’s brothers might feel the same about him.
Jaeger cleared his throat and Tyce’s eyes bounced from his to Sage’s second-eldest brother. “Did you ever consider that maybe your quest for Lachlyn to be part of a family was something you, subconsciously, needed? Maybe you were projecting your need for a family onto her.”
“That’s deep,” Reame mocked, his mouth quirking.
“Shut up, half-wit,” Jaeger muttered.
Tyce ignored their insults, thinking about Jaeger’s comment. Was there any truth in his statement, any at all? Tyce gripped the banister as he considered his question and faced the obvious truth. Yes, he’d also wanted to be part of a family, wanted people he could lean on, people who would stand in his corner, who would fight for and with him.
He was used to walking alone, fighting his own battles. It was what he knew, what he felt comfortable doing and when Sage offered him something bigger, something he didn’t know how to handle, he shot her down in flames. He thought he’d, one day, be okay with it. After all, he knew how to be an army of one.
He wasn’t okay with it and walking away from her had frickin’ ripped his heart and soul in two. Not to be melodramatic or anything.
“Do you know how much courage it took for Sage to open herself up to you, to ask for something more?” Linc demanded.
“She pushes people away!” Tyce protested, trying to grasp a straw that wasn’t there.
“Sure, until she asked you to step in the ring with her. And you still haven’t realized that when Sage pushes the hardest is when she most wants someone to push her back and not take no for an answer.”
Jaeger sent him a cocky smile. “She might be our sister but she’s a hell of a catch, Latimore. And you walked away from her? Moron.”
Linc’s fist slammed into Jaeger’s biceps. “You are not helping!”
Tyce was barely aware of the hissed argument going on below him. He felt like Linc had handed him a new pair of glasses and a fuzzy world had just become clear. Linc’s words resonated deep inside him and he knew them to be pure truth.
Sage had stepped way out of her comfort zone to ask him to love her and, God, he now, finally, could appreciate it. With this new knowledge, the last pieces of the puzzle that made up the full picture of his lover, his only love, fell into place.
She was his it, that indefinable, amazing, better part of his soul. He needed to go to her, to sort this out, but...
Hell. There was a damn good chance that he’d blown his opportunity with her, that she’d refuse to allow him back into her life. Tyce pushed his shoulders back, determination coursing through him. To hell with that. He did love her and Sage did need someone to push her back, to not take no for an answer. And he was the man to do it. He’d bucked the system all his life but, at the most important time, he’d walked away from the most vital thing in his life.
Jaeger, this one time, was right. Tyce was a moron.