“She didn’t do anything about it,” I said quietly. “Nothing to protect herself. Or to protect us. When his fraud went public and everything imploded, she just disappeared into herself. She was sheltered her entire life, you know? She had money. Connections. Staff. When that was all gone, she didn’t know how to exist in the real world.”
I swallowed past the lump of bitter emotion forming in my throat. “So I picked up the pieces. I had to.”
Alex’s fingers tightened slightly around his glass, but he still didn’t interrupt. I let out a long sigh, running my fingers through my hair and inspecting the ends just to have an excuse not to look at him for a moment.
“My brothers don’t see me as a sister,” I explained. “I’m more of a mom to them. Always have been. Colin is the exception. He’s the only one I feel like I’ve had any real sibling relationship with. Someone I could lean on and who could lean on me.”
I laughed then, but the sound was short and humorless. “It turned out eventhatcost me.”
Alex leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees as his head tilted. “How?”
“I bullied the board into appointing him as CFO,” I said. “I had to. I needed someone I could trust, but they never forgave me for it.”
His expression darkened like he already knew what was coming, but I said it anyway. “I ignored offers from all over. Google. Microsoft. Apple. They were good offers, too. Executive roles. I didn’t take any of them because I believed the board when they told me I was their next CEO. I thought if I just worked harder, proved myself, and kept the company alive long enough, they’d do the right thing.” I looked up at him again then. “Obviously, they didn’t.”
Alex’s jaw clenched. “Fuckers.”
“Instead, they gave it to my uncle,” I said. “A man I’d met maybe twice and whose only credential is a high school diploma he only earned because my grandfather donated enough money to make his failing grades disappear.”
Silence stretched between us in the aftermath of the confession, but even then, I wasn’t done yet. “I worked so hard. I did everything I could to save my family. Our name. Our reputation. And I kind of did. I managed it. Barely, but I did.”
I gestured vaguely toward the windows and the night outside. “I thought that by now, so many years later, people would’ve moved on, but tonight…”
My voice faltered, but Alex finished for me when I couldn’t. “Tonight hurt.”
I nodded, my voice still catching when I finally managed to force myself to speak again. “And now, you’re part of my mess.”
I took a sip of my wine, and when I looked at him again, he was closer. His hand rested warm and solid on my thigh, his fingers relaxed like they’d always belonged there. He was staring into the gas-powered fireplace, the blue-orange flames reflecting faintly in his eyes, listening in that quiet, focused way that made it impossible to pretend he hadn’t heard every word I’d said.
Heard it. Absorbed it. Filed it away. I was still mid-thought about what a good listener he was when he did something unexpected—and a little odd. He stood without explanation or comment, just rising from the couch and disappearing down the hall.
For a brief, ridiculous second, I wondered if I’d crossed some invisible line. Trauma dumped too hard and said too much.
I stared into my wine, bracing myself for the sting of being politely managed, but he came back holding a Scrabble box and my eyebrows shot up. “Oh.”
He set it on the table, sat down directly beside me, so close our thighs touched, and began opening it like this was the most normal next step in the world. “I figured we needed something to do with our hands.”
Laughter slipped out before I could stop it. Again. For a guy who often came across as serious, he really was pretty freaking sharp. “That’s fair, I guess.”
We set the board up on the low coffee table, our knees knocking as we shifted. Now that he was back, his hand was on my thigh again and he didn’t move it away. If anything, his thumb pressed into me a little as if he knew I needed the pressure to feel steady right now.
As he arranged the tiles on his rack, he suddenly started talking, his voice quiet but sure. “My mom’s name was Rochelle.”
I looked at him, shocked that he was talking about her. Although he’d mentioned her briefly in the past, it was an open secret that none of the Westwood boys ever really told her story.
“Charlotte was so young when she died and I just… left,” he said slowly. “At the time, I thought I was protecting everyone by getting out of the way. One less person for everyone to worry about, you know. I went to Texas first, then to California, and then, eventually, I came back home. By then, it was too late forher. She’d already learned how to be alone. The damage was done.”
I swallowed hard, wanting to say so many things to defend him even from his own thoughts, but then I remembered how he’d shut up and just let me talk, so I swallowed it all down and just listened.
“My brothers were too young to understand what was happening. Douglas was barely functioning. He was drowning but pretending he wasn’t. Charlotte lost the only woman in the family she could lean on.” He exhaled through his nose. “And I was gone.”
The fire crackled softly, both of us staring at the flickering flames for a moment until he glanced at me again. “Unlike you, who stepped in and became everything for everyone, I ran.”
“That doesn’t make you weak,” I said without thinking.
“No, but it does make me responsible for what she went through. Hell, for what theyallwent through.”
He leaned back slightly, the corner of his mouth tugging into a smile that wasn’t amused so much as self-aware and rueful. “The social circles we grew up in dubbed me the missing Westwood prince. When I finally surfaced and started making some noise in business, my skill and leadership didn’t matter. Only the gossip did.”
