“Not like it was intended. It was a couple years after they got married, about a year before Vera came along, when Oliver was working nonstop, so consumed by his job and business trips that he’d leave Felicity home alone for days and weeks on end. She was constantly coming to me to vent or complain, y’know? She didn’t want to tell Mom or Dad, because she was sure they’d side with Oliver, but she was lonely and depressed and needy. Eventually she had enough and wanted to separate. All this time she had been trying to get pregnant but it’s kind of hard to do when your husband’s never around.”

I had a bad feeling I knew where this was going.

“That’s when one night, after they had a huge blow-up fight, she showed up on my doorstep with wine and a sob story, begging for a listening ear. That was our thing back when we first met—I listened. She always told me that it made me different from all the other men, that I genuinely heard her, that I cared. I was the shoulder she could cry on. That’s a death sentence for a guy, though. Guys don’t want to be the shoulder; we want to be the arms carrying the girl to bed.”

I nodded. I understood all about putting men in the Friend Zone a little too well. Though why couldn’t men be happy being either?

“She loved Oliver, but he was killing their marriage. Well, anyway, a listening ear turned into a one-night fling, but we both knew the next morning that she needed to tell Oliver and see if they could fix things or if she should walk away.”

And there it was. The bomb.

“In a way, that was the catalyst for Oliver to get his priorities straight. He cut back his work hours, put their house up for sale to start fresh, and Felicity had Vera. I’m not saying it wasn’t rough working my ass off to get back in Oliver’s good graces—I still am—but eventually we worked it out. My mom, however, never quite forgave me for what I did to my brother. I can still today hear whispers of her resentment.”

I could see the regret, the guilt, the self-loathing all over him. He reeked of it. He also reeked of something else. Something he wasn’t telling me.

“What do you mean by you’re still working to stay in Oliver’s good graces?”

His face flushed. Uh-oh. I had stumbled upon that something.

“Nothing really. I’m just always going to be indebted to him. But all of that is ancient history. I don’t care about the past. All I care about is my future—with you.”