Free Fighting to Stay (Fighting Madly Book 2) by S.L. Ziegler Page B

blew up in her face because I didn’t want to show her the bad that lives in me, the awful part of the life I lived when she wasn’t in it.
    I did nothing to put Hadley back together after that. She did it without me, without her family, the ones she thought she always needed. She did it.
    With my best damn intentions, I swear to myself right here, I will be her friend if she wants that. I will build that trust back up. I will earn it. I will get it. And afterwards, I’ll get her back, because we belong together for all of this life with nothing hidden between us.
    No one will take her spot. Hadley’s my place. Now I need for her to get that too.

 
    A drunk Matt I can handle. A Matt wasted, not so much. He talks more and more out of his ass with each drink he orders. With each drink he pounds down, more useless words come out. He fell deep for some girl when I was gone, and now the poor sap can’t figure out his feelings enough to make any sense of what his heart says. I talked to Matt almost every day and he only ever mentioned some new girl, Stephanie, at work. She annoyed the shit out of him, but he never told me Stephanie was the same girl he was falling for. He’s in love and wants to fight it.
    “I mean, look what love did to you. And God, fucking Mark was the worst. All happy and did all the romantic shit with a girl in high school, and then bam , got his heart ripped out and stomped on. It was like the idiot turned into an ass overnight. All because he couldn’t deal with it, and never was the same when that one ended. Because news flash, Hads, it always ends, always .” Matt puts his head in his hands and his shoulders slump.
    “Mine was the exception not the rule, and Mark found Sarah and that’s not ending anytime soon. So it doesn’t always end.”
    “You almost died. I mean, you spiraled so far out of control with this stupid love. You were gone from us for so damn long. And Mark didn’t find Sarah till years later. I mean years, and even Sarah doesn’t help his assholeness. His shit story, man. I was ten and I still remember what he went through. I mean, the tension around the house was crazy.”
    “Again, I’m back in the land of the living and he found Sarah. So your points aren’t valid. You are thirty-six with thirty-seven creeping up. Don’t you think it’s time to settle for one girl? You are no Hugh Hefner.”
    “Nope, I’m Matt Thomas, and by the way, our family’s net worth was higher than his last year. Didn’t you see the list?” His face perks up with the first true smile he’s shown me since he started talking.
    “Okay, on that note, I think it’s time to stop all the drinking and go home.”
    “Not on your life, sis. Stephanie has me all twisted. Why do you girls do that to us? She doesn’t understand that I need time to see if us being together is worth the risk. Maybe that’s what I get for falling for a thirty-year-old single mother.”
    “She’s a mother? And did she let you near her kid?”
    “Kids, and nope. Stephanie says I’m not stable enough. That’s funny—me not stable? Come on, I’m stable like this table.” Matt slurs and slams his fists on the table, and sure enough, the damn thing moves.
    “Yep, totally stable. I can see that one. Let’s get you home and in bed.”
    “You used to be the fun one I could count on to get wasted with. But not now. You’re living like an old hag,” he whines.
    “That’s what growing up is all about. Now pay your tab before you pass out, because I can’t carry you and the only person that can help is Mark. And I don’t want to make that call.” I love babysitting my ten-year-older brother.
     
    “One foot in front of another, please, Matt,” I urge him, but silently I’m pleading for him just to fall asleep on the stairs.
    “Andrea was such a damn bitch to Mark, just like Reed was to you, and just like Stephanie’s being to me. That’s the Thomas curse—to get bent over and ass fucked by people we