Drake continued to shove food into his mouth, as if nothing was going on around him. As if everything Cole had believed for over a decade had not just been turned on its head in a single sentence.

Mason was watching Cole from the counter, and their eyes met for a second. There was a challenge in Mason’s. Cole racked his brain to when he was eighteen years old, searching for a time when either Mason or Gabe might have given him signs they wanted him to join the family business. They’d never said a word.

“I call bullshit,” Cole said calmly, quietly, hiding the storm of emotion that was blowing through him.

“Call bullshit all you want,” Mason said. “That’s your problem.”

“You guys barely even talked to me back then, let alone said anything serious about business opportunities.” Cole took a bite of burger, not really tasting it but working hard not to show how fucked up he was inside about something that had happened—or hadn’t happened—fourteen years ago.

“Oh, we tried. Several times,” Gabe said. “Both of us. You never stuck around long enough for us to get into it.”

“You had a way of making it hard to talk to you,” Mason said, going after his veggies now as if nothing else mattered. “Especially when you signed over your shares. I specifically remember telling you it was a mistake and that you didn’t have to do it, even if you weren’t ready to work for the company. Let’s just say you weren’t open to hearing anything we said.”

Gabe let out a short laugh. “That’s putting it mildly. You were a bear and you know it.”

“Bear,” Drake repeated. “Son of a bitch. Downright asshole.”

There was nothing Cole could argue with in that statement. “That proves my point,” he said. “Why would you want your asshole brother who wasn’t going to college to work for you or with you?”

“Why wouldn’t we?” Gabe said. “You’re fucking brilliant. College or no college. Dad wanted all of us to be involved in the company if we wanted, however we wanted.”

“Dad’s been dead for fifteen years,” Cole threw out, in part to cover that he was reeling even more.

It was the first time since he was a little kid that he could recall any of his brothers had said anything positive about him, and he recognized, in that moment, maybe he had been dying for it. Mentally, he tamped down on that shit. He’d made it for years without it and he was fine.

“It’s not Dad’s company anymore,” Gabe said, “but he and Uncle Ham started it, and we try not to lose sight of their reasons for doing that. If they hadn’t, we’d have different lives, for sure.”