“This is your revenge,” he said, holding Evan’s gaze when he finally looked up. “For everything he’s done. You want to make sure he has to give up something of himself in return, and the business is the only target that will hurt.”
“Thank you. I knew you’d understand.”
“Oh, I don’t understand it at all,” he snapped, looking away. “I can’t for a moment understand how you’d willingly subjugate yourself to that asshole just to take a chunk of him when he’s dead. He’ll be dead, Evan. He’ll no longer have the ability to appreciate your epic gotcha.”
“He’ll know I won before he dies. That’s what matters.”
Heath buried his fingers into his hair and growled. “No, it isn’t! The only thing that matters in this life is living it. Making the most of whatever time we’re given. You’re wasting yours. You’re wasting it on someone who isn’t suffering for it in the least.”
“He—”
“He’s winning, Evan. He’s out there living his best life while you wriggle under his thumb. So what if you take your pound of flesh on his deathbed? He will still have won.”
Evan slid down the doorframe and pulled his knees to his chest, burying his face in his folded arms. It made him look young and small, and Heath could easily picture that scared ten-year-old trying to figure out his place in the world.
“What do I do?” he mouthed at Isabella when Evan’s shoulders shook and his breathing came in harsh, broken gasps. She scowled and pointed at him, then at the ground next to Evan with a stern snap of her wrist.
What if I’m the last person he wants?
He obeyed, sitting on the floor next to the man he’d just spent two weeks falling in lo—lust with, knowing it was the right thing to do, even if it felt awkward as hell.
“I can’t let him win, Heath,” he said on broken sobs. “I can’t let him get away with what he did to her. What he’s done to me.”
“But you said yourself she’d kick your ass if she could see you right now. She wanted you to be happy, Evan. This isn’t happy.”
“I know you’re right, but…”
“But you’re going to stay the course even though the storm’s bearing down?”
“We’ll make a sailor of you yet, Gilligan.”
“Goddammit, Evan.”
A rush flooded his eyes at the sight of his beautiful husband’s tear-stained face and red-rimmed, golden eyes. It didn’t matter that the truth was out. In his mind, Evan was still his until midnight.
It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, that we make our irrevocable decisions.
Isabella placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you take him back to the villa, and I’ll have a conversation with Liv? We’ll swing by in a bit.”
“Are you okay with that?” he asked Evan, who nodded and sniffed his way to standing.
“Take me home, pookie.”
chapter 30
. . .
“Evan, I’m really sorry. Never in a million years did I think a casual comment would turn into this.”
Evan rubbed his temples and stood from the couch, trying not to think about the things they’d done on it over the course of the week. “Liv, I wouldn’t have bet on these odds even with insider information. It’s not your fault.”
Who could have guessed that Lucien Baptiste, award-winning independent filmmaker of such classics asTen to OneandCaught in the Rain on the Plains,would be one of Olivia’s oldest friends and confidantes?
In a chance meeting while backpacking through Europe in her twenties, Olivia had adored Luc’s eccentricity and vision. She’d become his first patron and to that day, remained an enthusiastic supporter of his work, much to the chagrin of her somewhat less adventurous spouse.
“You can’t imagine what it’s like explaining his presence at holiday functions,” Nate lamented, garnering a scoldingtskfrom Olivia.
“Luc isn’t for everyone, but his art is vibrant and unique.”
