And Penelope knew why. Sunday was Cole and Bobby’s day; any other Sunday, Cole would have been there when Bobby wanted to get the flowers. Could have gone with him. Could have stopped him from stepping into the street.

But Cole had rescheduled for another day.

For her.

“Will you sign my cast?” Bobby asked. “My doctor says I have to wear it for weeks but that I can have everyone sign it if they want to.”

“I’d love to.”

“Okay,” Bobby said happily. “You can sign it after Carly. And after Cole.”

“Uh-huh, I see where I rank,” she teased.

“Penelope, can I talk to you for a sec? Outside.” Cole’s voice was gruff.

Uh-oh.

“Sure,” she said, smiling at him. He didn’t smile back.

“Bob, can you keep yourself busy watching TV for a few minutes?” Cole asked.

“Definitely,” Bobby said, attention already turned to the television. “Do they have ice cream here?”

“I don’t think so, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks for the balloons, Penelope!” Bobby called as she left the room.

She turned to face Cole as he followed her out, but he shook his head. “Not here. I need air.”

The walk to the elevator was silent. As was the ride down.

Not until they stepped outside into the warm sunshine did he speak.

“I told you not to come.”

Her footsteps faltered at his hard tone, and she turned to face him.

“I know,” she said quietly. “I just didn’t want you to be alone.”

“Are you kidding me, Penelope? He’s the one who shouldn’t have been alone,” Cole snapped. “I should have been there.”

She knew it was coming, but the sharpness in his tone still stung.

“It’s not your fault,” she said quietly.

He ignored her. “Do you know what he told me when I asked why he walked into the crosswalk when there was a no-walk sign?”

Penelope shook her head.

“He said that I do it all the time,” Cole said, his eyes wild. “That I never wait for the walk sign to indicate it’s okay to cross, so why should he?”

“Cole—”

“So let’s recap, shall we?” he said, voice louder. “My brother looks up to me for everything, and I teach him how to jaywalk. And then, on the one day out of the week that I’m supposed to be there for him, I’m at a fucking baseball game with a—”

Penelope narrowed her eyes. “With a what?”

“A woman,” he said tersely.

Penelope inhaled. She wasn’t exactly loving his tone. Still, the guy was having a rather massively bad day. He needed patience, not for her to go all diva on him.

Cole closed his eyes briefly. “I never should have canceled on Bobby.”

She took a step closer and reached out a hand. He backed up, which stung even more than his sharp words, but she let it go.

This wasn’t about her.

“I’d be feeling the same if I were in your shoes,” Penelope said quietly. “But I wouldn’t be any kind of friend if I didn’t tell you that this isn’t your fault. You do your best by Bobby, but you can’t put him in a bubble. You can’t be there every second of every day.”

“Yes, but—”

She pressed on. “What if this had happened on a Tuesday morning? Or a Thursday evening? What if he’d decided that Carly needed to have her flowers at midnight on Monday? The fact that this happened on Sunday is a coincidence, Cole.”

“Maybe,” he granted. “But Penelope, he’s up there with his leg in a cast, and bruises up and down his torso, and—”

“And he’s fine.” She found his hand and squeezed. “I’m not minimizing what happened, but he’s okay, Cole. And we’ll talk to him about crossing the street, and we’ll be more careful about—”

Cole stepped back, shaking off her hand. “We?”

Penelope faltered. “Well, I mean, I don’t want to insert myself, but I care about Bobby too—”

He laughed. “Today is the second time you’ve ever even met the guy, Penelope. Him dumping his popcorn all over you at a baseball game hardly makes you part of the family.”

She blew out a breath. “Wow.”

His words hurt; she suspected that he meant them to, but once again she tried to remember Cole wasn’t being himself.

“I’m not trying to insert myself into your family,” she said.

“And yet you came, when I specifically asked you not to.”

Penelope held her palms out to her sides and then let them drop. “What’s going on here, Cole? I’m having a hard time seeing my crime. I brought Bobby balloons, which he loved. I came to be here for you—”

He cut her off. “I don’t need you to be here for me. I don’t even— We’re not even—”

“We’re not even what?”

“We’re not together,” he said quietly.

Right. There was that.

“Not officially,” she said, “but I thought…things seemed like they were changing between us—”

He shook his head and cut her off. “You made a promise, Penelope. So did I. This was never meant to get serious, and this is why.”

“By this, you mean the off chance that your brother was going to get hit by a cab while we were at a Yankees game? That’s why you promised you wouldn’t fall in love with me?”

“Mock all you want, but he’s all I have,” Cole said.

“He’s not,” Penelope shot back before she could think better of it. “He is not all you have. You have friends, and colleagues, and me. You have me, Cole. You may not like that I’m here, but that doesn’t change the fact that I came for you, and that I’d do it all over again.”

His eyes were flat, his expression betraying nothing. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

Penelope ignored that. “Also, for what it’s worth, you’re not all Bobby has either. He loves you like crazy, Cole, but honestly, I wonder if he’s not better adjusted than you are, because he seems pretty okay with the fact that you two can be brothers and have your own lives.”

This time his eyes did flicker to life, and when they locked on hers they were full of anger. “Hey, here’s an idea, Penelope. You’ve got a sister, right? How about we wait until she’s in the hospital, and then we can have this little chat. Better yet, make sure that she’s entirely financially reliant on you, and that her well-being sits on your shoulders, and then come find me.”

This was not going well.

“Do you want me to leave?” she asked.

He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

It was no less than she’d expected, given his current mood, but ouch.

“Okay,” she said. “If you need anything, I—”

“I won’t.”

She met his eyes steadily. “Tell me you’re not actually doing this, Cole. Tell me you’re not that guy who goes all Jekyll-and-Hyde when something unexpected happens.”

His face crumpled for a moment before he put a hand over it, covering most of his features as he took a long breath. “I’m sorry, Penelope. I am.”

She stepped forward, putting her arms around him, the embrace slightly awkward because she was still wearing her Yankees hat.

He stiffened, and though he didn’t push her away, he didn’t exactly return her embrace.

“I should get back,” he said gruffly.

Penelope retreated a little, letting her arms fall back to her sides and trying not to feel humiliated by the one-sided hug.

“Okay.”

He started to turn away and then paused, hesitating before he met her eyes. “Believe it or not, I do get that I’m acting like an ass. I just…I can’t do this right now. It’s only ever just been me and Bobby, even when my parents were alive, and I don’t know what I’d do without him. Or him without me. He has to come first.”

“I see.” She managed to keep her voice steady. “You’re just realizing this now?”

He hesitated. “I’ve always known it, but lately…you made it easy to forget, Penelope.”

The statement would have warmed her heart if it hadn’t been uttered as he geared up to walk away from her.

She tried one more time. “Your heart’s bigger than you think, Cole. There’s room for me and Bobby. And Cole, you have to know that…”