She turned on her heel and stomped from the room, but not before Hux saw her tears begin to fall. He bent his head.
“You aren’t going to follow her?” Richard asked softly.
Hux turned to him. “Perhaps she needs to be angry with me. Perhaps she needs to hate me.”
Richard let out a long sigh. “You’ll protect her to the end.”
“I would protect her to my dying breath if I had to,” Hux snapped. He sat down hard on the settee she had abandoned and scrubbed a hand over his face. “What do you think of this man, this investigator?”
“Hard to say, I only spoke to him for a moment. He was hard to read.”
Hux arched a brow. “Fitzroy.”
Richard ducked his head. “I think he is a resolute person who likely takes his duties seriously. He has been paid, probably handsomely, to find you both. I doubt he’ll stop until he has something to report to the person who hired him.”
Huxley shook his head as the truth sank in. The future laid itself out in front of him and there was nothing good about it. He sighed. “I…I have always been reckless. Danced along the edge of ruination. Sometimes that was the only thing that made me feel alive.”
Richard’s brow wrinkled and he stepped closer but didn’t join Hux on the settee or touch him. As if he knew Hux needed the space still. “Why?” he asked.
Hux stared at the flames dancing in the fire. There had been confessions between them before now. Richard about his late wife. He knew Zara had told Richard her history. But he had remained silent, not wanting to risk vulnerability. But now that he was on the cusp of losing everything, it seemed vulnerability was the only path.
“My mother was a lightskirt before she met my stepfather. He got her hired on as a cook,” he said softly. “But he was a cruel drunk who would never let her forget what she was and how he judged her for it. I would have done anything to escape their house and their violence. When she killed him…” His voice caught.
Richard did sit next to him now, his hand coming to cover Hux’s. The warmth and weight of it was so comforting. He wanted to sink into him like he’d watched Zara do a moment before. To give him everything and anything if it meant he wouldn’t lose him. Lose her.
But that wasn’t possible now.
“She killed him,” he continued slowly. “A clear case of self-defense. But there was an investigation and she didn’t intend to stay for it. She ran. She left me behind and she ran.”
Richard let out a sharp breath. “How old were you?”
“Nine,” Hux admitted.
“Hux,” Richard whispered. “What did you do? Did you have family to turn to?”
Hux smiled at him even though there was no pleasure to this, no warmth or humor. “You really are almost an innocent to the ways of the real world, aren’t you? There was no one. So I scrapped. I was always good at scrapping. At surviving. I learned how to pickpocket and steal and please enough to get close so I could strike. I learned to seduce and play and lie. And I liked it. Ilikeknowing I could come to the edge of destruction and control it enough to stay on the right side.”
Richard nodded, and it was like he…understood. Not possible considering how far apart their lives had been. No two men could have been more different in their original circumstances. And yet he felt no judgment from Richard. Nothing but acceptance, the same kind he always felt from Zara.
“It was fine to be that way when it was just me,” he continued. “But I never should have continued on once Zara came into my life. Once I took responsibility for her well-being, I never should have been…been me.” He said it and it was like he’d burned a little part of himself away.
“She would not want you to be anyone else but you,” Richard said. “Youknowthat. You must feel it when she looks at you as she does.”
Hux bent his head. He did know it. It only made it worse.
“But I’m not worthy of what she is. What she could be. If I were gone—” he had to stop and take a deep breath. “If I were gone, either by arrest or escape, would you take care of her?”
Richard made a strangled sound in his throat, and for a moment Hux thought he would argue. But instead he whispered, “I would protect her, yes. I would take care of her.”
“Would you marry her?” Hux asked. Richard stared at him, eyes wide. “Don’t look at me that way. You know that a man of your influence could protect her from my consequences if she were your wife.”
“I would marry her if she would allow it,” Richard finally said, and there was a firmness to his tone. A determination. “Whatever else happened, I wouldn’t let her ever come to harm.”
Relief mixed with grief and they flooded Hux’s system until his eyes stung with tears. “Good,” he said softly. “Good that will make whatever comes next easier.”
He moved to stand, but Richard kept his hand on his wrist and held him steady. “And who will protect you, Huxley?”
CHAPTER12
