Gage swallows hard as if doing his best not to lose it.
I blink over at him, bored. Stay strong, you bastard. You can do it. Crying is for pussies. I nod as if I had just conveyed the thought with words.
“It’s no joke,” he croaks it out. “How about that champagne?”
“How about whiskey? It’s quicker and less than ten feet away.”
“Sounds good.” He heads over to the bar with me while Chloe rambles out something about how uncouth it will seem to polite society to have married brothers.
I glower at this stone-faced version of myself. “Why are you here?” I ask as I pour us each a double and he knocks his back and drops the glass in front of me for more.
“Logan. I heard he was looking for me and I appeared. He’s still my true brother.”
“Unlike me.” I swallow a laugh. “I would walk through a fire for you,brother.” I lift my glass his way. “How about a simple thank you?”
His jaw moves side to side as if he were chewing on my words. “Thank you for being by my side when I needed it most.” He lifts his glass as Laken and Chloe meander over.
“Don’t you dare drink without me.” Chloe pours herself a generous amount and a glass of seltzer water beside that. “For the nursing mother.” She hands Laken the glass and we all hoist our drinks in the air. “Wesley, why don’t you do the honor? Seeing that we’re both with the ones our heart desires, it’s only fitting you bless this new union.”
“Agree.” I lift my glass another notch, my eyes still unmoving from his. “To my brother and his new wife. May you have a long, satisfying union that brings you both so very much joy.” I saidjoy, but the inflection, my heart saidmisery. “To a fresh start and true love.”
“True love.” Chloe chooses what she wants to hear as she lifts her glass ever higher.
Laken looks up at me with those soft eyes, the hard edge of suspicion veiled beneath them. “To true love.” She glances to Gage and Chloe. “If this is what you really want, I hope you both find peace in it. Be mindful of the broken hearts in your wake. And be careful not to trample others on your way to happily ever after. I hope you enjoy all of the happiness that Wesley and I have found in one another.” Her gaze shifts to my brother, and her affect hardens as she narrows her attention. “And if this is a farce, I hope you live to rue the day you thought it a good idea to tear the beating heart out of the girl you once professed to love. May you rot in your misery, roll in agony in your bed at night knowing you have trampled a pure light under your heel, that I now question if you ever deserved.”
Chloe scoffs. “This is the moment you choose to be petty? Oh Lakey, Lakey, Lakey-Poo. One day you will rouse from this mental block—a far less sanitized arousal than the one you’re having now, and you will rue the day you opened your legs to Wesley Edinger and closed your heart to Cooper Flanders. And then I will remind you of your indiscretions, your foolish parade of affection, and it will be you who rots in misery. It will most certainly be you rolling around your bed in agony knowing you’ve trampled under your heel a pure light that I too now question—along with everyone else— if you ever deserved.”
Shit. I close my eyes a moment. My head is still pounding from this migraine that started as soon as I set foot in that demonic kingdom of my brother’s late last night and it hasn’t let up since.
“Enough.” I nod to Gage. “Take your bride. Go and enjoy one another. Have a feast of the flesh.” My lips twitch with a sick sense of pleasure. “Take an extended honeymoon.” No skin off my nose if you never come back. “Chloe, I’d ask you to apologize, but I realize you’re incapable. Now if you’ll both excuse us, Laken and I have a daughter to tend to—two of them, a bed of our own to warm. It’s been a long night and an even longer morning.” I take a deep breath as I glance past Gage as they start to take off. “We’ll get together after the holidays and strategize.”
That’s when my powers will be fully restored, and I am counting down the hours. The Justice Alliance took them away five months ago—a six-month suspension for screwing with Coop. It was worth it. And the fact that I still have Laken by my side makes everything seem worthwhile. I’d go a lifetime without a single extraterrestrial power if it assured me she would never leave me, never look at me again with the disdain she had in her eyes, in her heart, for the monster she thought I had become.
Yes, she is still with me, but she is also slowly rousing from that fog her brain has been in for the last solid year. She remembers Coop, their marriage, but with about as much emotion as you might have after watching a movie. It hasn’t hit home yet, this great usurping of her spirit. It hasn’t sunk into her bones, this tragedy that’s given us the greatest blessing of all—each other.
And will it still be a blessing, or will it be a curse when her heart catches up to her mind? Will she look at me with disdain again? Take my precious daughter, Charlie, away from me—and she is mine, despite what the masses want to believe.
I love Charlie with the same ferocity I love Tobie.
And then there is Eli, my only son, my heir to this wickedness that has absorbed me. I suppose the girls are, too, but it’s Eli that I’m afraid for most. Demetri likens girls and women to pets, but the men—you are either his charge or his enemy. Eli will have to fit into his mold and become the ardent Fem that Demetri will undoubtedly flesh him out to be.
Yes, I will have a say in it, in as much as I agree with Demetri. Just like I was forced to agree with Gage last night as that shit show unfolded. He did it. A wedding—marriedto my own wife, ex-wife. Chloe.
Laken presses a firm kiss to my lips, heated as a fire. “I need to lay Charlie down. Come straight to bed. That is a command, Wesley Edinger.” Her lips curve with devilish intent. “I’m pulling you out of that dark place, with my thighs if I have to. Let’s make more babies, Wes. Let me prove to you that I won’t fly away. I’m no bird with a broken wing. I’ve chosen you over Cooper, and I’m ready to seal our union properly.” Her heavenly blue eyes hang over mine before she whisks off with Charlie.
The fire crackles and pops loud as a gunshot, and I look to the flames, unable to pull my gaze away. They dance and they flicker, burn with a relentless fervor, but eventually they will go out in a whimper. If I’ve learned anything from my short tenure on this planet, it’s that nothing lasts forever.
Success, money, fame, it will eventually melt away like snow or end up with someone else. Everything is temporal. Unsecure.
The flames rise like demons in the night, licking the walls, threatening to step outside of their bounds.
Gage and the maddening wine of his power have already become a blemish, a bruise on my existence. His exertion of authority has already become a coat of flames around me, placed over my shoulders by my brother himself.
So help me God, if Gage costs me Laken. After all we’ve been through, finding our way back to one another, creating life together in a harmonious union of our love. If Gage costs me Laken because of his burgeoning need to solidify his power, I swear on all that is holy that I will turn on him. And if my father doesn’t like it, I’ll turn on him, too.
If Laken cuts me out of her life because of what Gage has determined to be my fate, then my brother will have hell on his hands that his ex-wife only wishes she could give him.
I will destroy Gage Oliver. I will crush him under my heel. And then once my father turns on me, and he will undoubtedly do so once his favorite son is extinguished, I will crush him twice as hard.
