“Oh, good. There you are,” I said, as though I had been looking for him this whole time. “I’m heading back to Palm Beach.”

He looked up at me. “Why?”

“Um. Because I have a job.”

“I thought you were here having a baby with Amelia or some shit.”

I sighed, angry and annoyed. I wanted to scream, Grow up! Move on! You think your dream died? Well, mine did, too, brother.

I felt a familiar sickness creeping inside of me. Sometimes I thought losing Greer was some sort of karmic retribution for taking Mason’s great love away from him. Only, I hadn’t meant to. I couldn’t have seen how it would play out when I set it all in motion. Yeah, I had been jealous. But I had also been proud. I wanted the best for my brother.

“It was my baby with Greer, and Amelia was going to carry it, but it didn’t work out. The embryos didn’t take.”

He put his spoon down and stopped chewing. “Bro, I love you, and that is why I’m saying this to you. You’ve got to get over it.”

I laughed ironically. He’d fired me up good now. “I’ve got to get over it? Me? I lost the love of my life, Mason. You’re sitting here in your parents’ kitchen at thirty-six years old eating cereal in your boxers. Maybe you’re the one who needs to get the hell over it. News flash: you wouldn’t still be playing baseball, no matter what.”

He didn’t seem fazed, which annoyed the hell out of me. “Dude, Greer was hot and all that, but you act like she was perfect. She wasn’t perfect. She didn’t appreciate you enough. She took over your life, and you let her.”

I didn’t even think. My bag was off my shoulder, and I was lunging at my brother, throwing him off the stool, onto the floor. I landed on top of him before I could even consider controlling myself. My arm was reared back to punch him in the face, and the terror that flashed in his eyes thrilled me.

But I was the one who should have been terrified. Mason might have been lazy about work and life, but he hadn’t taken a day off from training, as though he was going to be in the major leagues next week, since he was fourteen. Which is to say, he could have killed me swiftly, easily, and probably not even left any blood.

Instead of punching him, I said, “I do not ever want to hear her name come out of your mouth again. Do you understand me?” In retrospect, maybe I was taking everything that had just happened out on my brother. It wasn’t fair. But sometimes brothers do that.

As I looked into Mason’s face, I had a moment of pure clarity. Greer was gone. She wasn’t here to fight for herself, so I had to fight for her. But that didn’t mean that, while she was here, she was perfect—or even that our relationship was perfect. We had problems like everyone else, only it seemed unfair of me to remember those now. But maybe it wasn’t unfair. Maybe Mason was right. Maybe it was better. I loved how strong-willed she was, but, sometimes, I wished she had been softer with me. I loved how decisive she was, but, often, I wanted her to factor me into her decisions a little more. I loved how put together she was, but, every now and then, I needed to be reminded that she could fall apart.