Page 61 of Better than Famous

He moved down the bar to serve a bachelorette party that was loudly requesting shots. I scanned the crowded room. My family occupied a large, circular booth near the back windows. Hidden in the shadows, I’d remained undetected by them. Harper was laughing, throwing her head back at a joke Chase had just delivered. Her husband had an arm slung casually around her shoulders, pulling her close. Brenna and Hunter sat across from them, engaged in an animated debate with Eli and a very pregnant Jules, due any day.

They were vibrant and connected. They were a complete, thriving ecosystem.

The noise of the pub was overwhelming. The laughter, the clinking glasses, the terrible guitar solo all grated against my nerve endings like sandpaper. Pushing off the stool, I abandoned the club soda. I bypassed the main exit, weaving through the crowded tables and shoving through the heavy swinging doors into the kitchen. The line cooks shouted orders over the sizzle of deep fryers, but I didn’t stop. I hit the back exit, pushing the heavy metal door open and stepping out onto the concrete loading dock.

The humid night air offered a marginal reprieve, yet the scent of the salt marsh was a massive improvement over the suffocating joy inside the pub. I ambled to the edge of the dock and gripped the rusted metal railing. Breathing in slow, measured counts failed to slow my racing heart. The heavy metal door groaned open behind me, casting a rectangle of yellow light onto the concrete.

"You know, for a guy who fixes things for a living, you’re doing a remarkably terrible job with your own life right now." Eli let the door swing shut, plunging the dock back into shadows. My brother leaned against the brick wall near a stack of empty kegs. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his shorts. He didn’t posture or offer his usual sarcastic grin. He just watched me with a tired, exasperated sigh.

"Go back inside, Eli." Turning my gaze back to the dark water of the canal, I tightened my grip on the railing. "I’m not in the mood for a pep talk."

"Good." Eli pushed off the wall but maintained a respectful distance. "Because I don’t have one for you. I’m just out here trying to figure out how long you’re going to keep playing the tragic martyr."

My spine went rigid. The muscles in my shoulders bunched tightly together. "Watch it."

"No," Eli shot back, his voice level and brutally calm. "I’ve watched you walk around like a zombie for a week. You treat everyone like they’re invisible because you’re too busy feeling sorry for yourself. It’s getting really old, Ben."

I spun around, my temper finally flaring hot and bright. "You don’t know what you’re talking about. I did what I had to do. I protected her."

"Did you?" Eli didn’t raise his voice, a tactic that somehow made the words cut significantly deeper. "Because from where I was standing, I’m not so sure."

"I had to cut her loose." The defense was automatic, worn smooth from a week of repeating the mantra. "You saw the news. You saw my mugshot broadcast to ten million people. I was the liability. If she stayed, I would have destroyed her life."

Eli let out a short, humorless laugh. "Is that what you tell yourself to sleep at night?"

"It’s the truth, goddammit."

"It’s complete bullshit and you know it," Eli countered, stepping into the ambient light of a nearby streetlamp, making his hair even lighter. He met my glare without a single flinch. "Sutton Vale is a global powerhouse. Not some fragile bird that needed you to manage her entire existence. If she wanted to run from you, she would have. Instead, you shoved her out the door."

"To save her from Nash!"

"Because you were scared," Eli fired back, his tone laced with absolute certainty. "You were scared that if she stayed, she’d eventually wake up and see you exactly the way you see yourself. You were so afraid of her realizing you aren’t perfect, that you quit before she even had a chance to try."

The accusation hit me square in the chest, stealing the oxygen from the humid air.

He shook his head. "You didn’t protect her. You made the decision for her.”

My hands dropped from the railing. The fight evaporated from my veins, leaving me hollowed out and freezing cold. Arguing was impossible. Defending my honor required a belief in my own nobility, and Eli had just dismantled the entire illusion. His words mirrored the exact accusation Sutton had hurled at me in the hallway of the cottage.

“If you decide for me that I have to leave, if you override my choice because you think you know what’s best for me—then you are no different than Nash.”

She had known. And Eli was entirely right. Protecting her from the media and Nash was a convenient excuse. The real objective was protecting myself from the inevitable pain of losing her later. Engineering the breakup on my terms ensured I wouldn’t have to face a rejection I considered inevitable.

Eli turned and walked back toward the kitchen door. He paused with his hand on the metal handle. "She’s a grown woman, Ben. You decided she wasn’t strong enough to make the right choice. If you actually give a damn about her, maybe you should stop sulking and figure out how to fix that."

The door swung shut. Standing alone in the dark, the truth crashed over me in a suffocating wave. The hero complex was a complete sham. Taking away her choice because I was afraid of my own inadequacy made me nothing but an arrogant coward.

Walking around the side of the building, my boots hit the pavement with heavy, urgent purpose. I reached my truck in the gravel lot, yanked the door open, and climbed behind the wheel. Jamming the key into the ignition, the diesel engine roared to life. The drive home offered little comfort. The ocean stretched out behind me, a vast, black void under a starless sky. The dashboard lights cast a faint green glow across the cab. Reaching over, I cranked the volume dial on the radio, desperate for noise to drown out Eli’s words in my skull.

A heavy, synthesized bass line flooded the speakers. The beat was driving, fast, and engineered for a crowded dance floor. Electronic trills layered over an aggressively auto-tuned vocal track. My knuckles turned white against the leather steering wheel.

The song was “Neon Heart.”

The radio DJ had clearly thrown Sutton’s biggest hit into the rotation, capitalizing on the lingering buzz of the scandal. The song bumped along at a frantic hundred-and-twenty beats per minute. It sounded expensive and glossy, like a product designed in a boardroom.

“Lights go down, the city screams my name...”

“I’m burning out, a moth inside the flame...”