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So I’ve tried to distract myself with work.

It hasn’t helped.

Especially every time I pass a woman holding a baby.

I’m happy for Wynter. I truly am, especially after she shared how she’d struggled to conceive.

But there’s still a part of me that wishes I could have been the one to give it to her.

“Is that the real reason?” Bennett asks, dropping into the chair beside the fire. “Or are you just trying to avoid my sister?”

My hand freezes, and I slowly lift my head, heat washing over my face. “What are you talking about?”

“Exactly what I said.” He stretches his long legs out in front of him. “Are you working this much because you need to be here? Or because you don’t want to be somewhere else?”

I search my brain for something to say. But Bennett’s one of my best friends. He’s also one of the most observant people I know. He calls it an occupational hazard of being a bartender. I think it’s because he’s one of the few people who actually pays attention to the world around him instead of constantly looking at his phone.

“How did you figure it out?” I ask with a long exhale, collapsing into the chair opposite him.

“It wasn’t too hard.” He shrugs. “The last few times she stopped by, I noticed how you looked at her. And how she looked at you. In my experience, you don’t look at someone the way you two did unless there are feelings there.”

I rest my elbows on my thighs and stare at the carpet. “Except in our case, those feelings were just one-sided.”

“I don’t know if I’d say that.”

“I told her I loved her. Told her I didn’t care if she’s preg—” I stop short, unsure how much Bennett knows.

“That she’s pregnant, and the baby is Wyatt’s?” Bennett finishes. “Don’t worry. She told me. And for the record, if you’d hurt her, I would have buried you under that Norway spruce.”

I push out a subtle laugh. “Well, you don’t need to worry about that. Because she’s the one who hurt me. It’s like she didn’t even hear me. Or didn’t care. Kept insisting she needed to give Wyatt another chance, even after he cheated.”

The worst part is I don’t believe she set out to hurt me. She didn’t choose Wyatt because she loves him more. She chose him because she convinced herself it’s what she’s supposed to do. Or what’s expected of her.

I don’t know how to compete with that.

“That’s Wynter. She definitely has eldest daughter syndrome.”

“Eldest daughter syndrome?”

“Always doing what other people expect of her instead of what she actually wants. That’s all this is, too. One day, she’s going to realize that constantly trying to make everyone around her happy is a lost cause. That the only person she should try to make happy is herself.”

“When will that be?” I bark out a sarcastic laugh.

“Who the hell knows? But maybe she could use a little…nudge.”

I frown. “A nudge?”

“Maybe you just need to remind her what she’ll miss out on if she walks away. Because she deserves better than that fucking douche-canoe she’s been with.”

“You’re right about that,” I huff out.

I never gave Wyatt much thought before. From a distance, he and Wynter looked like the perfect couple. But the more I learned about what she sacrificed for him, the more I realized how wrong I was.

I hate how she’s willing to be with someone like him just because she’s pregnant with his child. Hate how she’s willing to sacrifice her own happiness because of some misplaced societal expectation of what a family should look like. It’s bullshit, but I have no idea how to change her mind.

“I already tried to make her see reason,” I tell Bennett. “Hell, I poured my fucking heart out to her, and she stomped on it. I’m pretty sure she’ll slam the door in my face if I show up on her doorstep again.”

“She just might.” His mouth curves into a mischievous smile. “But she’ll never say no to me.”