I struggle to keep my expression placid.
Hiking and fishing? I didn’t even know Brooks liked to do those things.
“Have you been to the cabin?” I ask her. “Is it a good investment?”
“I’ve been there a few times,” she says, her smile going soft and fond. Maybe she’s remembering romantic times with my brother, and that’s not something I want to think about.
“I don’t get it,” I say, before she can answer my question about investment potential. My tone is slightly accusatory.
Harlow scowls. “Get what?”
“You and my brother.” I think about that condo and how it wasn’t like him at all. I think she might have had a hand in helping him with it. “I mean, that condo wasn’t his taste at all. It was so neat and nicely decorated, things he never really cared about. And you—”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you.” I wave my hand in a flourish to indicate her, the dog, the office. “You’re educated. Successful by all appearances. Brooks never gravitated to that. Never wanted to settle down. He was more apt to have a puck bunny on each arm than play house with a businesswoman. You don’t seem his type.”
Harlow’s eyes flare slightly before they get a warm burn of what I think might be empathy. I don’t like it. I feel like I’ve miscalculated something.
“I think you’re very keen in some observations, but others, not so much. I am absolutely not your brother’s type. We were just incredibly close friends.”
“So you and he weren’t…?”
She shakes her head, a long lock of dark red hair falling loose from her ponytail. She brushes it back, tucks it behind her ear. “I know this is going to be a bit of a shock, but when I tell you I wasn’t Brooks’s type, I mean, he wasn’t into women.”
I hear what she’s saying, but I’m not sure I understand.
She clarifies. “Brooks was gay.”
“No fucking way,” I murmur, shaking my head. “I would have known.”
“Would you?” Her pointed expression makes it clear I wasn’t a part of Brooks’s life for a long time. I didn’t know things.
“I’ve known him his entire life,” I growl in disbelief. “We may have been estranged the last few years, but I would have known. He would have told me.”
“Your brother struggled with it since he was eleven,” she says, and her tone is so sure and level, I know she’s telling me the truth right from Brooks’s mouth. “He was afraid of your dad. Couldn’t come out to him. As he got older, that fear increased. I hadn’t met your father until the funeral, but Brooks said he was strict… intolerant.”
I nod, because that’s accurate. “Very conservative.”
“And when Brooks played college hockey and then made it into the league, it wasn’t feasible for him to come out. It’s just not done. So, he put on a persona, and everyone thought he loved the ladies, but he most certainly did not.”
“Jesus,” I grumble, rubbing my hand along my jaw. How could he not have told me? He had to have known I wouldn’t care. I mean, I understand why he didn’t these last few years because we hardly talked, but prior to that… “He should have told me. He had to have known I would’ve had his back.”
“You and your brother liked to play the blame game,” she says softly. “Many times he would tell me you should’ve done something too.”
She may have a point.
More guilt piles onto my shoulders as I try to think of what I might have done in our youth to make him think it was something he had to keep secret. Was it because, while we were close as kids, I was the apple of our dad’s eye? I was the oldest, the one with the greatest potential to make something of myself in hockey. Attention was poured into me, and I’m not going to lie—I relished it.
Did that make Brooks believe I was more aligned with my father than he was? Because I wasn’t. My dad was a tyrant on the ice and in the house. I busted my ass in hockey because he made me.
Brooks was the good part of my childhood.
In the course of just a few hours, Harlow Alston and this damn trust left by my brother have managed to throw my emotions into disarray. Everything I thought I knew, and now I realize I knew nothing at all.
“I’ll take the cabin,” I murmur.
“Good,” she says softly and shuffles more papers as I stare down at my lap. “I’ve got everything prepared for you to sign, hoping you’d take everything he wanted you to have.”
I nod, thinking about arranging movers to get me over there. Poor Bethany just spent all that time this past week making my cheap little apartment look nice. She left this morning, proud of her accomplishments. I’ll call her later and fill her in. She’ll want to rush back and help, but I’m going to insist she not. I want to tackle this myself because I don’t know exactly how this is going to go.