Ben whips his head around and charges at Luke, getting up in his face, snarling like a caged animal. “Man the fuck up? Who the fuck are you to say that to me? Weren’t you the sorry ass motherfucker bailing on my sister last year because you couldn’t fucking handle how you felt about her? And you’re telling me to man up?”

“I came back!”

“Yeah, after I called you, dickhead. And now look at you. You’re still fucking scared to make that shit permanent. If anyone needs to man the fuck up, it’s you two idiots.” Ben glares in my direction.

“What the fuck did I do?” I ask, moving away from the tree.

Luke pushes against Ben’s chest. “Shut the fuck up! When I ask Tessa to marry me is none of your fucking business!”

Ben snorts. “Right. Well, until you do, you ain’t got shit to say to me about this.” He looks at me. “Neither do you. Are you just going to stand there and do nothing while CJ takes out your girl?”

I grit my teeth. “Leave her out of this.”

His jaw ticks with a smile. “Did I hit a nerve, Reed?” He moves closer, tilting his head, that fucking grin stretching across his face. “What are you going to do about it? Huh? Are you going to let him move in on that pussy you’re strung-out on? Does she even know how pathetic you are over her yet?”

“Ben,” Luke warns. My hands curl into fists.

I help him eliminate the space between us. “I’m pretty sure she’s figuring it out. What’s your point?”

His smile fades, a distraught frown replacing it as he looks between Luke and myself. His shoulders drop.

“My point is that until you two assholes wise the fuck up and lock down your women for life, neither one of you will know what this shit feels like. I could get a phone call any second telling me Mia, my Mia is going to die. I can’t fucking handle that. I can’t think of my life without her in it, because I don’t fucking have one. What am I supposed to do if something happens to her? You’re both telling me to go inside and be there for her, and I can’t. I can’t let her see me like this. I’m supposed to be strong and I’m fucking terrified. I won’t let her worry about me when she’s the one . . .” Pausing, he wipes at his eyes, then rubs his hand over his face. His head stays tilted down as Luke and I exchange worried looks.

“I have to think that this is it,” Ben says, the pain strangling his voice, making it sound like he’s been swallowing broken glass. “I have to start thinking she won’t be here with me. If I let myself believe anything else, and someone tells me I have to say goodbye to her . . . I told her I would never do that, two years ago after I got shot, I promised her, but I always knew something could happen to me. It’s the fucking job. But her being taken from me, leaving my boys without their mom, I’ve thought about how she would go on without me, but I never thought I’d be the one trying to figure this shit out. I can’t do it. If she dies, I die.”

A soft gasp cuts through the air.

Everyone’s attention is drawn to Mia.

Standing at the tree line, she stares directly at Ben with a hand to her mouth. Her pain is silent, no cries, no whimpers, while Ben just announced his unintentionally in front of her. She heard him say he can’t do it. If she dies, he dies. Stuff she doesn’t need to be hearing right now.

“Mia,” Ben chokes out, but doesn’t go to her. Doesn’t move an inch.

Paralyzed by his own suffering, he stays glued to the ground as his breathing becomes violent, as the air between the two of them begins to pulsate with his agony. She must see it, his devastation, crippling him and keeping him captive. It strips the discomfort from her eyes.

Slowly lowering her hand, she nods, as if to say she understands, or it’s okay, or I love you, then stares at Ben for another long second before turning and walking back to the house.

Ben drops his head, pinching his eyes shut through a groan.

I realize now there’s not a fucking thing I can say to help him get through this. Not after that.

He turns and picks up another 2x4. I press my back against the nearest tree, slide to the ground, and rest my forearms on my knees. My head falls back as Ben strikes the trunk. Luke mimics my position a few feet away. Wood splinters in the air. Another 2x4 is broken, then another. Time passes as the pile of fragmented wood stacks high off the ground. I retrieve more lumber when Ben needs it, but doesn’t ask. Above the house, the sky burns in oranges and reds as the sun moves closer to the earth. Tessa walks down to the tree line at one point and asks if we need anything. Ben answers for the group.

“Go back inside, and don’t come down here again unless you have news for me.”

Luke glares at Ben, knuckles white, but doesn’t say shit to him about upsetting Tessa. Just cracks his neck from side to side and resumes looking at the dirt.

Another ten boards are broken before I close my eyes.

I try to think about anything that’ll take my mind off this horrible fucking mess, but nothing settles me. Nothing fills my head but images of Nolan and Chase missing their mom, crying over her, getting older and wondering where she is. Or Ben, a ghost of the man he is now, never getting over it, never accepting that she isn’t still here with us. He’s preparing himself for the worst, and fuck, maybe I should be to. What if this is it? What if Mia dies and we all lose her? What the fuck then?

“Ben.”

Mia’s voice snaps my eyes open, grabbing all of our attention so fast, it’s as if she’s shaking each one of us with it. The three women are standing at the edge of the yard where the tree line begins, Tessa and Beth flanking Mia’s side.