“Let me rephrase. I am an asshole. And I owe you an apology.” Their arms and legs brushed as he settled in beside her, calm and relaxed in a way that was beyond her ability, ever. “First,” he said, “I need you to know that I wanted to tell you about my brother. I did. But I let the guilt cloud my judgment.” He closed his eyes. “Rowan told me he didn’t want his kid growing up like we did. He wanted them to have two parents in their life that loved each other. ‘Winnie and I are going to make it work,’ he told me. And”—Cam met her gaze—“I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t buy into the notion of love, because it’d never worked for me. But Rowan said it only has to work the one time. A twenty-year-old schooled me.”

She felt her heart go a little squishy.

“Rowan wanted me to fill the role for his baby that he knew he wouldn’t be able to.” He shook his head. “And even then, I wasn’t having it. He was bleeding out, dying, and I told him to stop saying goddamn good-bye to me, that he was going to make it, that he’d live to drive me out of my mind another day.”

Piper smiled through unshed tears. “And what did he say to that?”

Cam’s mouth curved in a grief-filled smile. “For the first time in our lives, he got royally pissed off at me. He grabbed me by my shirt with his bloody fists and shook me. He yelled, ‘I need you to listen to me, for once!’”

“Did you?”

“Yeah. I finally stopped reacting instead of listening.” He closed his eyes. “And you know the rest.”

She tried to hold on to her anger. But in spite of her best efforts, some of it was fading. Actually, a lot of it. “So that’s why it’s so important to you to listen. It’s one of your best qualities.”

His smile was wry. “But see, I don’t always listen. I didn’t listen to you, or my heart. I’ve got a long history of letting those I care about down. My mom, Rowan, you.”

Dammit, there went some more of her bad temper. “No,” she said. “Promises mean something to you. I get that. It’s . . . noble. You were trying to help Winnie and you’d given her your word. I do that on the job, I keep people’s medical secrets, so my sister asking you not to tell me . . . well, I have to accept and understand that. It was her story to tell and she thought I’d overreact or tell her what to do rather than listen. Same with Gavin. That’s between me and them, and no matter what I might want, I can’t control them.”