“Because Dad made it my choice the minute he signed that damned power of attorney.” The fork hit his plate. “Look, I’m genuinely glad you’re home. I’ve missed you, and we need you. But I’ll be damned if you tell me to kill our father a week after you pull into town because you have a voicemail. You don’t even know if he was lucid when he left it.”

“That’s not what I said.” Black and white, the lines were drawn, just like Dad had noted.

“It sure sounds like it.” His jaw muscle flexed.

A decade in the army had taught me when to retreat and regroup. This was definitely that moment. “I just want to honor Dad’s wishes,” I said softly. “Let’s drop it.”

“And I’m just trying to show him that his good days are worth living for. He’s only been diagnosed for two years, and the days he’s lucid enough to realize what’s going on are devastating for him. He’s still dealing. We both are.”

And I wasn’t? Maybe I’d lost the right when I brought our little brother home in a box.

I started eating to keep my mouth busy, and Xander followed suit.

A few minutes later, Willow walked in. She shed her coat, tossing it to her sister behind the bar, and I stopped chewing. Stopped breathing. Stopped thinking.

Her long-sleeve pink shirt hugged every damn curve she had up top, while her jeans did the job on her bottom a little too well. Her hair fell down her back in soft waves, every color from mahogany to amber catching the light as she moved.

Okay, maybe I was losing my mind, noticing her damned hair. But my hands itched to bury my fingers in it, to wrap it around my palms and tug her closer.

And that smile…

I jerked my gaze back to my plate. Do not think about her like that. If I could have flipped myself the bird, I would have. Telling myself not to picture her under me was one thing, and getting my mind to cooperate was quite another.

It was Willow, for God’s sake. The same Willow who’d grown up underfoot. The one who’d spent her summers swimming in the hot springs between our houses. The one who’d held ice to my battered twelve-year-old face after I’d won the first fight I’d ever gotten into. The fight she’d tried to stop, putting herself between me and Scott Malone, who’d been picking on her like the spoiled asshat he was. The same Willow who’d let me sleep on her floor a year later, the night Mom died, linking her fingers with mine when she’d heard me crying.

The same Willow who fell for my little brother the summer she’d turned seventeen.