“Please,” Cassie added. “Please guys. You know they’re good for each other. I know you’re hurting for her but you’re the ones who started packing all this up. It wasn’t her idea. She’d have done it herself if she’d wanted to. It’s just a fight. God, if you all only knew how many fights Shane and I had our first year together. Okay,” she grinned at Shane and he laughed, “still have. Tate is a strong woman and Matt’s easygoing but they will have disagreements. If you gang up on him every time it happens, they’ll never make anything work. Let them make up. If they don’t, you know where Matt works. If you can get to him before Polly does, you can kick his ass.”

Matt heaved a sigh of relief—ignoring the comment about his mother—his moving out hadn’t been Tate’s idea.

Her siblings moved and Matt nodded at them, reaching out and squeezing Cassie’s hand when he passed. He unlocked the door and opened it slowly. When nothing took his head off, he went inside and found her scrubbing the tile in the bathroom.

“Hey, Venus. Whatcha doing?”

“Scrubbing the tile around the toilet.”

He leaned around. “Tate, is that my toothbrush?”

“Hmpf.”

Ouch. “Oookay. Well, luckily there’s a spare in the medicine cabinet then. Will you talk to me?”

“I already did.”

“Tate, not that I don’t like the view and all, your ass looks particularly lovely and I can see your br**sts coming out the top of that shirt reflected in the shower door, but can we move this to the living room? Our bedroom? Someplace we can be face to face?”

“Matt, what are you doing here?” She turned and tossed the toothbrush, yep his, into the trash and took off the yellow rubber gloves, laying them under the sink.

“I live here. I told you I’d be back.” He held a hand out to help her up but she ignored it and stood, brushing her hands off on the front of her pants and left the bathroom.

He followed her into the living room where she took the chair so he sat on the table, leaning in and taking her hands in his.

“I’m sorry you had to deal with this insanity with your father alone for all these months. I can’t imagine how scared you must have been to keep it secret.”

“Fine.”

“Fine? That’s it? Your f**king family moves my shit out onto the porch and you scrub the toilet with my toothbrush after you hide something important from me for five months and all you give me is an okay?”

“Who’s got the f**k habit now, buster? Anyway, my family did that, I didn’t. And what’s more if you’d been here, they couldn’t have done it now, could they? And don’t you call them my f**king family, only I get to do that. I’m beginning to wish I’d f**king gotten in my car and headed to Atlanta for a few weeks like Liv did.”

“And Marc went insane with worry!”

“Yes, because it’s always about you people!”

“Back with that you people thing? Liv is from my side of town too!”

“Oh shut up! I mean you people with penises, not you rich people. God. Look, you asked me to tell you. I did. And then you ran off. You can’t expect me to just be all, hi honey, nice to see you, want a beer? when you come back. You’re the one who’s always all, I hate it when you try to run off and then you did.”

“You’re right. I was hurt and I needed to be away from here for an hour or so. God knows why I imagined hell wouldn’t break loose if I left.”

“You left, Matt. When things got bad you left. I may have been wrong for not telling you, and I’m sorry I hurt you, I am. But I’ve been trying really hard to make a go of this. Even with all the insanity, even knowing you don’t tell me everything to protect me, I stay and I try and today I trusted you enough to tell you and you threw it in my face and walked away.”

“I felt like a failure out there on our porch this afternoon. You hid this from me when you should have been able to come to me and let me protect you. It shouldn’t be the other way around.”

Her anger softened and her eyes searched his face. “You’re not a failure, Matt. My family is just too messed up. I’m messed up. You deserve more than that. Better.”

“I want you to stop that talk right now. There’s no breaking up here so quit it. I told you I’d be back. Okay, so I handled it wrong. I should have stayed and we could have talked it through without all the packing and yelling. But we’re together, Tate. We’ll work it out.”

She listened to him and took a deep breath. The tentative smile fell away and her eyes narrowed. “Why do you stink of booze? It’s hard to concentrate right now with you smelling like that. Bad memories I suppose but I’d really rather you not go out and tie one on when you’re pissed. I don’t mind drinking, I do mind coming back so bad off you smell like a brewery.”

He laughed and then tried to get serious again. “Sorry.” He put his hands up. “I’m not drunk. I had three sips of one pint of beer. Nathan threw the rest on me. Why don’t I go shower and change and we can continue this?”

The corner of her mouth slid up a bit. “Nathan threw a beer on you?”

“Yeah. I thought he was going to pop me one and I’d have had to pop him back and you’d have been really mad at me for giving your baby brother a black eye. Luckily, Shane interceded so no blows were thrown.”