Thomas gave another sharp laugh, looking miserable. “Whose choice would it have been? Yours? I couldn’t tell you the truth. I couldn’t tell anybody. How could I let you love me when you had no idea who I truly was? How was that fair to you?”
“You could have just told me. You tell me everything else, even when I don’t want to hear it,” Aiden said, thinking of all those nights Thomas had called him, drunkenly confessing feelings he had no intention of acting on.
“What should I have done? Married my adopted son? Caused a scandal that would have had the world looking at us under a microscope?”
“So you did it to protect the experiment?” Aiden spit, not surprised but still bitter.
“No. Not just that. What would we have been? I’m not husband material any more than I was father material. I drink too much, I never stop working. I don’t just have two secret identities but three, sometimes more.”
“But you were a father. You raised six kids. You didn’t give them a choice in the matter. You just did it. Why couldn’t you have just tried? For me?”
Aiden didn’t know why he was bringing all this up now. It wasn’t the time or the place. They had so many bigger things to worry about, but he’d been putting his feelings to the side for decades and he was so fucking tired of it. If he was getting answers today, he was getting all of them.
Thomas set his glass down. “Do you know what they would have done to you in the press? To me? To your brothers?”
“So what?” Aiden shouted.
Thomas looked at him like he was crazy. “So what?”
“Yeah. So fucking what? What crazy rich family doesn’t have wild scandals? Hell, even the royals. Why couldn’t you have just been willing to bear the weight of a little bit more scrutiny? For me? Do you think a man marrying his adopted son would be a bigger scandal than half the shit Archer has done? His marriage alone was a bigger risk to your experiment than anything you and I could have brought down on this family, and yet, you weathered that just fine. You’ve taken it all just fine. Even Avi’s and Felix’s hotel bloodbath scandal. Why were they more important than me?”
“They’re not!” Thomas shouted back. “Don’t you get it? I did this for you. I’m no good for you. You deserve better. You deserve so much better.”
Aiden thought about hitting him, thought about how nice it would feel to have the cartilage give way beneath his fist. “I didn’t want better. I wantedyou. I still want you. Who knows you better than me? I know all your flaws. I know all your secrets.”
Thomas shook his head. “You didn’t. You didn’t know the truth about who I was or what I’d done. And I couldn’t tell you. It wasn’t fair to let you love a lie.”
Aiden wanted to scream. How was this man so goddamn stubborn? “What else are you hiding from me?”
Thomas closed his eyes for a long moment. “Nothing. That’s all of it.”
“Everything?”
Thomas opened his eyes and met his gaze. “Yeah, that’s everything.”
Aiden rose up on his knees until he was nose to nose with Thomas, close enough to smell the alcohol on his breath. “So, now I know. Now I know everything. What’s your excuse going to be this time?”
Thomas felt like he’d aged fifty years in the last two days. He was tired in his bones—in his core. He was tired of hating himself, tired of lying, tired of denying himself the only person he’d ever truly wanted. He ached to touch Aiden, to give in to his instinct—to the near gravitational pull of him. But Aiden knowing the truth didn’t change it. Just because he accepted what Thomas had done didn’t make Thomas’s involvement acceptable.
“Just because you can look past it doesn’t mean the others can. You alone can’t play judge, jury, and executioner,” he said as he leaned in, pressing his forehead to Aiden’s, wanting to cling to him. Always wanting to cling to him.
Aiden’s voice was so warm. “Why? You’ve been doing it for years. You’ve condemned yourself to this fucked-up mental prison and you’ve taken me with you. When is it my turn?”
“When is it my turn?”
Was that what Thomas had been doing to Aiden all these years? He’d thought letting him go would free him. But then, when had Thomas truly let Aiden go? He hadn’t. He’d clung to him, used him, and kept dragging him back over and over again. When would it be Aiden’s turn? Could he be happy without Thomas? Could he be happy with him?
Would there ever be a time when Thomas allowed himself to be happy? When he allowed Aiden to be happy? Did it matter? His sons still didn’t know the truth, and when they found out, they’d never look at him the same way again. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe they would simply banish him. Would Aiden choose him then? Would heallowAiden to choose him?
“Aiden…” Thomas breathed, closing his eyes, his hands reaching out and gripping his upper arms just to feel him, just to squeeze his muscles and reassure himself Aiden was there, flesh and blood. For better or worse, Thomas was addicted to Aiden—no, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t an addiction. It was like they were…fused to each other, so intertwined that no matter how far apart you pulled them, the connection never broke. It just tugged and pulled until they came back together.
Aiden’s mouth was on his, like he could read Thomas’s mind, a barely-there brush of lips that robbed Thomas of his sanity. It took him too long to realize Aiden was speaking, his palms cupping Thomas’s cheeks as he pressed the words against his mouth. “This isn’t going to go the way you think it is. Your sons aren’t going to see you as a villain. They’re going to see you as a victim and they’re going to respond accordingly. They’re going to turn their rage on whoever it is that’s trying to fuck with our family.”
“Ourfamily?” Thomas echoed, his heart skipping and cock hardening. How long had he longed to hear Aiden claim the Mulvaney name as his own? It was so fucked up. He was so fucked up. They both were. Fuck.
“That’s not the point,” Aiden murmured softly, his tongue slipping past Thomas’s lips to tease before retreating.
Thomas felt like he couldn’t catch his breath, like every touch, every kiss, every word was robbing him of his reason—of his tenuous grip on his sanity. He needed Aiden like he needed the blood in his veins, like he needed his heart to keep beating. He couldn’t explain it. He couldneverexplain it. It wasn’t fair to Aiden. But he couldn’t force himself to pull away from him and from whatever this was.
