Grabbing Amber’s hand, I pushed past my brothers and tried to ignore the way their glares made my skin crawl. Running up the stairs, my shoulders slumped and I had the ridiculous urge to start crying when I saw him standing there.

Connor hadn’t come for me. Bryce had.

The loss I’d been dealing with over the last twenty-four hours since Connor had thrown me out of his life seemed to double. That little glimmer of hope that he’d changed his mind had been crushed when I saw Bryce instead of the man I loved standing there next to my dad.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Bryce. His family vacationed here every winter, just another reason why we’d been close for so long. But when he’d texted me to see if we could talk while we were here, I’d thought my ‘Fuck off’ response had said it all.

“You lying bitch,” Dylan said under his breath as he and Craig shoved past me, pushing me into Amber.

“Hey, baby,” Bryce said, a smile lighting up his too-perfect face.

“Baby?” Amber and I said at the same time.

“Oh, hell no. I thought we were finally done with you,” Amber sneered.

Bryce sent a glare her way before looking at me again. “As always, Amber, what a pleasant surprise to see you.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

I held my hand up to keep them from going into one of their fights, and stepped forward. “Bryce . . . why are you here? I told—”

“I was just telling your father about our plans.”

Plans?

“Maci,”—my Dad began—“this young man has just informed me that you’re going to be getting married within the year . . . ?”

“What? No!”

“You don’t have to keep lying just because your brothers are here,” Bryce said as he stepped up to me. One arm went around my waist, the other cupped my cheek. His eyes roamed my face before zeroing in on my nose. When he spoke again, it was soft enough that only Amber and I could hear him. “I thought we agreed you were going to take that thing out? And please tell me your hair will be blonde again soon, I was planning on announcing our engagement at the beginning of the year.”

“You are such a little piece of shit.”

Bryce kept talking like Amber had never spoken. “I told you, Maci, no one will take you seriously when you look like this. You’re the mistress . . . remember? I need a wife. It’s time to grow up, baby.”

The air in my lungs left in one hard rush. It had hurt the first time Bryce had said that, but now, after Connor? It was killing me. He was right . . . all I was, like this, was a f**k buddy. I wasn’t relationship material, and, according to Bryce, I wasn’t marriage material either.

“I know,” I said as I nodded my head in his direction. Suddenly, I felt a large presence behind me.

“I suggest you leave,” Dylan said.

“Now. And if you don’t stop touching my sister, I swear to God you will spend Christmas in the hospital,” Dakota added.

Okay, make that two large presences.

Bryce actually had the balls to look up over me and say, “I’d like to speak to my future wife, if you don’t mind.”

“Nah, man. That’s not about to happen. You’ll leave; we have to talk to her. Seeing as you just dropped this on our whole family when none of us even had a clue about you, I’d say this is the wrong time for you to be here.” Dylan grabbed my arm hanging limply at my side, and pulled me back toward him, and away from Bryce.

“Maci?” Bryce looked at me.

“Let me walk you out,” I choked out, and wrangled my way out of Dylan’s grasp.

Not looking back to see if he was following me, I turned and headed toward the front door. Once I got there, I waited until Bryce was near me before jerking the door open and stepping outside with him.

“Mac—”

“Leave, I don’t want to see you again. I thought I’d made that clear to you before, apparently I was wrong.”

“Don’t you realize how well I’ll be able to take care of you? After how much history we have, Maci, you can’t tell me you don’t want this. If it’s because I’m telling you to change your appearance, I’m only helping you. I’ve told you no one takes you seriously looking like this, you aren’t going to find a man that wants to make you his wife when—”

“Stop,” I cried out and slapped a hand over my mouth as I tried to collect myself a little bit. “You need. To leave. Don’t call me, don’t come back here . . . and don’t come to my apartment when we’re back in Mission Viejo. You need to find someone who would be happy in your life, but I’m not her. God when did you even turn into this person?” I asked and waved my hand at him. “You’re turning into your dad!”

“Maci,” he said as he reached toward me, but I stepped back.

“No. Go. We’re done. Good-bye, Bryce.”

Walking back inside, I shut and locked the door behind me before turning to face my family. My mom and sisters-in-law looked confused, Amber looked annoyed, Dad looked disappointed, and my brothers all looked pissed beyond reason.

All at once, my brothers started yelling at me about keeping something like that from them, how much they couldn’t stand him, and how I wasn’t supposed to see him again.

I looked to my mom and dad for help as Amber came and stood by my side. She grabbed my hand, and waited out the screaming with me as my parents tried to get my brothers to stop talking. Tears were steadily falling down my face from having heard those words from Bryce again, having my heart broken and wishing Connor had been the one to come for me—and realizing he wouldn’t—and having to listen to my brothers trying to run my life again.