I almost tell him that, but then I think better of it. “Thanks.”

“Can I ask a question?”

My normal response: You’re going to do it anyway, so is there really any point to your asking me?

But today I say, “Sure.”

Gabe’s eyebrows go up. He wasn’t expecting that. He was expecting the usual snark from me.

“All the money coming in from you. That’s not all Real Romance parties, is it?”

It’s not really a question.

I never told Gabe about my plan, and I never updated Lucy on where it stood.

“No,” I say. “Not all Real Romance.”

I tell him about the new parties with my game store, book store, and spa partners. I explain that I started doing the sessions… and they’ve been working. The partners and I are making money. The clients—mostly women, but sometimes also couples—love them.

And best of all, I’ve been upselling the other trips at the end of each session, and getting signups.

Gabe nods. “I wondered where the random new signups were coming from. There were a bunch we couldn’t account for from any other funnel.”

I nod.

“I need you to keep me in the loop,” Gabe says in his boss/dad/asshole voice.

Two weeks ago, that would have sent me to the moon on a rage-rocket. But for whatever reason, today, I get it.

I’ve been a pain in Gabe’s ass. As a kid, I made him pick me up, staggering drunk or stoned out of my mind, from parties all over the Five Rivers region. He had to phone in my fake school excuses, show up at the principal’s office to pick me up for suspensions. He called my employers to beg them to give me back jobs I’d done everything I could to lose. He bailed me out of the drunk tank, cleaned me up after fights, gave me work when I couldn’t—or really, more accurately, wouldn’t—hold down another job.

And when he did, I rewarded him by bucking his authority, snarking at him, and generally giving him shit.

Since Zoë got pregnant, the only truly hotheaded thing I’ve done was throw a punch at Len, and I had plenty of good reasons to do that.

But Gabe doesn’t know that.

So it makes sense that he’d still have a few doubts.

And for once, I feel like it’s my job to close the gap.

“For real, Gabe. You can trust me.”

I don’t think I’ve ever said anything like that to my brother. Usually it would be, What the fuck? You don’t trust me?

I’m not sure how he’s going to react.

My heart’s beating like it does when Zoë calls. Or when Rachel gets anywhere in a hundred-foot radius.