“Except my brother is gay.”
“And if he wasn’t? You think you’d have developed a romantic attachment to him?”
I grimace. “Yeah, probably not, but Quinn is beautiful. Even scarred, she’s?—”
“—not you.She’s.Not.You. And I’m in love withyou.” He pats his abdomen. “I know you don’t buy my mom’s whole ‘feel it here’ theory, but that’s where I feel it, Electra. Every time you walk into a room. Every time you touch me. Every time you so much as look in my direction, my stomach cramps.”
“I give you indigestion? Lovely.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “You give me butterflies, babe. Not indigestion. You’ve got quite the cynical streak for such a love-story addict.”
“That’s what happens when you’ve been disillusioned one too many times.”
Reeve gathers me close and breathes yet another apology against the column of my throat.
“I forgive you, Reeve.”
“I’ll never forgive myself.”
“You’ll have to, because I won’t let the man I love hate himself.”
He looks up, his lashes lifting over eyes gone wide with something fragile and disbelieving. “You love me?”
“Yeah.” I brush a stray brown lock from his brow. “I mean, how could I not? You’re a god in the sack. The shower. The car. The kitchen.”
His fingers dig into my waist and tickle me in retaliation.
As I burst into giggles, he asks, “Am I to understand you love me only for my dick and culinary talent, Miss Serran?”
I cup his face, entirely serious now. “Reeve Rafferty, I love you in spite of everything you were…and because of everything you’ve become.”
Epilogue
Reeve
“You forgot to explain the broken heart,” Electra tells Quinn as they heap their plates at the buffet Mr. Serran cooked up for the whole island.
To say I was impressed would be an understatement. Everything is so delicious, I’ve already gone back for seconds. Electra’s father naturally noticed, since he and his wife have been watching me like hawks.
I don’t think they like me. I don’t blame them. I’d hate me too.
“That was the state of my heart when Reeve left six years ago.” Quinn’s answer snaps me out of my head.
“You make it sound likeIabandonedyou, Hayes.” My fingers throttle the thick edges of my ceramic plate. “I begged you to leave with me. If you’d said yes, I would’ve found a way to get you out. You know I would.”
Quinn stares steadily at a bowl heaped with quartered heirloom tomatoes like she’s trying to count the flecks of oregano floating on the olive oil. “Trent intended to have you killed. He asked my father to do it. Neither trusted you to keep the organization’s secrets…a secret. It’s Hudson who told meabout their conversation. You know how he can’t keep his mouth shut.”
Her lids click, and then her soft brown eyes rise to meet mine. Those eyes have seen so much. Too much for a twenty-six-year-old.
“I confronted Dad about it. Told him I was also planning on getting out. Asked him if he would hunt me down too.” She shakes her head from side to side as though to clear her mind of the memory. “He said yes. Didn’t even hesitate. So I went to see Trent and asked him what it would take to keep you alive. He made me an offer, and I took it.”
Her eyes slip off me, but their trajectory isn’t Electra; it’s Malachi Hadez, who stands beside Electra without a plate in hand. He obviously didn’t join us at the buffet for food.
“What offer?” Malachi asks.
“Staying with him.”
I curse under my breath, my plate shaking from rage. “You passed it off as your choice! You said you wanted to fix him! You said?—”
