Narrowing his eyes suspiciously, he asked, “Just like that? I ignore your attempts at reaching out and don’t come to your wedding, and you forgive me just like that?”
“Just like that,” Nick agreed.
And just like that, the bad blood between them fell away. Luke followed his brother inside.
“No girl with you?” Nick paused and looked around outside.
Luke let his brother have that jab since he had deliberately missed the wedding. His brother wasn't completely wrong. Wanting to find a wife and have a family of his own had consumed him since his late teens. While other kids his age had been playing the field, he had searched for the woman he could marry.
Now thirty-three, he was still looking.
“I'm not always in a relationship,” he said.
Nick rolled his eyes. “You remind me of Aggie.”
He didn’t know about Aggie, but he knew why he was always in a relationship. He’d always felt like he had never had a real family. He wanted desperately to rectify that. He wanted something he could count on, someonehe could count on. He needed someone to ground him, to be his rock, his one constant thing in a world that changed too rapidly. He was just beginning to doubt that things would ever work out the way he wanted them to. He wouldn’t give up on finding love, he just wasn't sure how many more failures he could take.
“Aggie’s your wife?” Luke hated that he had to ask that and didn’t already know the answer.
“Agape, it means love,” Nick said softly.
The light that shone in his brother’s eyes as he spoke of his wife was exactly why Luke wanted to fall in love. He’d tried forcing it so many times, but all of them had turned out to be a disaster.
“I'm sorry. I shouldn’t have made the crack about having a woman with you.” Nick was watching him closely. “You really do remind me of Aggie.”
“Who reminds you of me?”
A pretty woman with waist-length blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes appeared behind them.
Her eyes widened when she saw him. “You must be Luke, Nick’s little brother.”
She walked toward him, and Luke expected her to hold out her hand to shake his, but instead, she threw her arms around him and gave him a huge hug.
Surprised, he hadn’t expected such a warm welcome from his new sister-in-law, especially since he hadn’t accepted their invitation to attend their wedding, awkwardly he hugged the woman back. He hadn’t been prepared for such a positive reception, he’d been ready for yelling and arguing, he’d been ready to argue his position and reasoning for staying away. But this was disconcerting. This made him wonder why he and Nick had let so many years go by without reconnecting.
“So, are you in town permanently or staying for a while? Do you already have a place to stay? You can stay with us if you need. Have you got a job?” Aggie rocketed off a list of questions.
“I'm staying. I start at a new job at the beginning of next month, and I rented an apartment not far from here.”
“You planned this. It wasn't spur of the moment?” Nick asked.
His brother had really mellowed since he’d met Aggie. Mellow was not something he ever thought of in conjunction with his older brother. “This was planned. I've been here a little over a month. I just …” He’d needed to build up the courage to see his brother face to face, only he didn’t want to admit that out loud. “I just needed to get settled first,” he said instead. “We’re family, and for a long time the only family each other had. Then you got married, and it really hit me that you are the only family I have.”
“Not for lack of trying.”
Both he and Aggie winced at that, and Luke wondered how many failed relationships she’d had before she met Nick. He’d had three failed engagements and a long string of break-ups so long he couldn’t even see the end of it anymore.
He wanted this.
What Nick and Aggie had.
Why was it so hard to find?
And why did Nick always have to find a way to point out to him that he was still single? That had been one of the reasons he’d stopped making attempts at communicating with his brother. Nick never missed an opportunity to make a jab about the losses they’d suffered and the pointlessness of searching for happiness. Even now that his brother had managed to snag a hold of that elusive happiness, he still couldn’t seem to understand why finding someone who loved him unconditionally was so important to him.
He was jealous, and that made him want to lash out.
Luke knew he was being unfair. He wanted his brother to be happy. They had both lost so much, buthewas the one who had always wanted a family of his own while Nick had maintained he liked being alone, so it didn’t seem fair thathewas the one who was still alone while his brother had everything he had ever wanted.