“Yeah, I promise. I do.”
Bruiser watched Elliot shuffle from the room and wondered how the hell he would ever be able to keep a promise like that.
Chapter 17—Coaching Strategies
On a rare day off, Mac stared in the mirror as Shanna trimmed her hair with confident precision. It’d been almost a week since her talk with Brett, and she’d been torn between ducking and hiding and facing Bruiser and his secrets head on. First, she needed more info, and Shanna was the one to give it to her.
“I didn’t know Bruce had a twin brother.”
Shanna’s scissors stopped in mid-snip. Mac caught her surprised expression in the mirror. “Bruce told you about Brice?”
“No, a friend of his did.”
“Figures. I’ve never known him to talk about it. None of us do. Our family is weird like that.” Shanna tugged on the hair on both sides of Mac’s face to make sure it was even.
“Why is that?” Mac pushed it, having no doubt Shanna would nail her if she stepped over the line.
Shanna shrugged and picked up the curling iron. “We’re experts at denial.”
“Especially Bruiser.” Mac planted the bait and waited for Shanna to bite.
“Look, I don’t talk about my brother to just anyone. He might seem like a public person, but he’s not, not one damn bit. He lets people see what he wants them to see and no more. But I think you’re different than his usual girlfriends.”
Mac opened her mouth to dispute the statement, but Shanna stopped her cold. “Hear me out. You’re good for him. You ground him, and God knows he needs that. He’s ten times smarter than those bimbos he dates, but you’re his equal.” Shanna studied her in the mirror, tapping her scissors on the chair.
“What happened to his twin? I know he was in an accident and then—”
Shanna held up a hand to stop her. “We don’t talk about the accident. If you want to know, he’ll have to tell you. But I will say Bruce lives the life he believes Brice would have lived, as if Bruce doesn’t deserve to live his life for himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Growing up, Bruiser was the quiet, studious one. Brice was the daredevil, attention seeker, and athlete of the family. Not that Bruce wasn’t athletic—of course he was, but not like Brice. Brice overshadowed everything Bruce did. Our parents never hid the fact that Brice was their favorite. After Brice’s accident, Dad couldn’t deal with Brice’s injuries, nor could he look at Bruce because he was a constant reminder of what Brice used to be. So Dad left. And Mom, well, she blamed Bruce—not directly, but she has her ways. She reminds us every chance she gets of Brice’s absence in our life. I think she tortures Bruce for living because she doesn’t know how else to deal with the grief.”
“That’s awful.” Mac couldn’t imagine a parent holding such guilt over a child’s head. Or maybe she could. Maybe in a way her father did that same thing.
“Yeah, it took me a long time to forgive Mom and Dad. They’re superficial people; their lives and their livelihoods depend on appearances. Neither of them could bear looking at Brice. He did look pretty hideous, the stuff of nightmares, but he was their kid.”
Mac wiped an unexpected tear from her eye, getting a yank on her hair in return.
“Don’t move,” Shanna chastised Mac. “Anyway, Bruce found Brice after he’d shot himself. After that, it was weird. Bruce took on his twin’s personality. He became Brice, but it didn’t matter to our father, and Mom just buried herself in the business. I think it was too painful to look at Bruce and see the mirror image of the son she’d lost.”
“Are you saying that Bruiser has been his brother all these years?”
“I’m saying that he’s been the person he imagined Brice would be for so long that I don’t think he knows how to be Bruce anymore.”
“Wow.” Mac couldn’t seem to wrap her head around how screwed up his whole situation was. Her heart was breaking for him.
“He hates doing all those endorsements, especially the modeling. I mean, he despises modeling. But every penny he makes on endorsements goes to his charity for burn victims.”
“I assumed he spent it on designer clothes and stuff.” When she thought about it, she realized with all the money he made he had to be doing something with it besides buying clothes. She’d bought right into the image he’d sold to everyone.
Shanna laughed. “Bruce is a tight-assed bastard. He hoards money. Most of his clothes come via the endorsements, or he gets them on sale, or they’re last year’s designs. He wears them so well no one notices.”
Mac shook her head in amazement. “I never knew.”
“No one knows. He needs to maintain his man-about-town persona.”
“He has terrible nightmares.”
Shanna locked eyes with her in the mirror. “And you know this how?”
Mac’s face turned bright red. “I—uh—well—”
“Hey, don’t fret it. I know how he is with women. Never met one yet that could resist him when he turned on that boyish charm.”
Mac hated being just one of his many women. Brett was wrong. Bruiser couldn’t miss her. Maybe the sex, but not her.
“Funny, I thought you might be different. That’s why we invited you to Sunday dinner. You’re real, and Bruce needs a real woman, not some piece of arm candy without a brain in her fucking head. He’s so damn gun-shy when it comes to women.”
“Gun-shy?”
“His divorce. Surely you know about that one?”
“I know he’s divorced, and the marriage didn’t last long.”
“I never liked the bitch. Let me put it this way—she was looking for a man who’d be somebody, so she latched on to him in college. She was smart, clever, and devious. He never saw through her. Totally fell for her. They married their senior year, lived in student housing, and she worked two menial jobs, which she thought were beneath her. When she caught the team quarterback’s eye, they had an affair.
“Bruce
