Then she felt him swallow hard and pull back to stand.

“What are you doing?”

“I said you could trust me not to let anything happen. To make that true, I’ve got to go.”

His hair was tousled from her fingers, his shirt untucked, the fit of his jeans making it clear that leaving was the last thing his body wanted to do.

And yet he was going to walk away. Because she’d asked him to. “Diego.”

His dark, heated eyes met hers and softened. “Yeah?”

“Don’t go.”

He held her gaze for a beat and then slowly shook his head. “I promised you,” he said gruffly. “And I’m not going to ever break a promise to you again.” And then he was gone.

Chapter 7

Diego drove straight to Rocco’s house. The whole way over there, his sudden epiphany bounced around in his head like a ping-pong ball. Daisy had clearly spent a lot of years resenting him for what he’d done, for how he’d shut her out, closed himself off to what was happening in her life. But at the time, his life had been a chaotic disaster.

When Rocco did the same to him, Diego had hated him for it. He’d nursed a grudge for a decade now, and though he liked to pride himself on being a stand-up guy, a good man, the truth was that he hadn’t always been.

Rocco was currently living in their childhood home with Tyler. There were a lot of memories associated with the place, and it seemed like every single one of them were pummeling Diego as he walked up the path.

The last time he’d been here had been the day of his dad’s funeral. After, he’d packed to leave and never came back. He’d stood on this very walkway, a duffle bag over one shoulder, facing off with Rocco, who hadn’t wanted him to go.

Ironic, since after their dad’s stroke two years before that, Rocco had taken off for the Caribbean to blow off steam.

And he’d stayed gone until that day.

For Diego, it’d been too much. His dad was gone, and so was he.

Rocco opened the door to his knock, and for a moment, Diego couldn’t tell the past from the here and now.

Tyler came up behind Rocco, a hand on his fiancé’s shoulder whether in solidarity or restraint, Diego didn’t know. Diego met Tyler’s eyes. At whatever the man saw there, he nodded, squeezed Rocco’s shoulder, and then left the brothers alone.

“Hey,” Rocco said, clearly stunned to see him. “Uh…everything okay?”

“Yeah.” Diego shook his head. “No. Listen…I just wanted you to know that I get it now. If I’d had a chance to be with someone I was in love with in the Caribbean, I’d have stayed gone, too.”

Rocco blinked and scrubbed a hand over the top of his head in a move that Diego recognized as one his father used to do all the time when he didn’t know what to say. Even as he thought it, Diego caught himself doing the same thing and stopped.