Uncle Roman thought him debauched?Thorne would show him debauched.
Drinking to excess.Gambling until he knew how to win every hand, whatever it took.Starting fights until he knew all the ways to end them, the dirtiest back-alley tricks and underhanded maneuvers.Racing horses, betting, overturning carriages, ruining reputations, spreading gossip and lies because none of it mattered anyway, it was all so stupid and pointless.Letting Wycombe house go to ruin because he couldn’t bear to step foot inside the hall.
Keeping Thornecliff only for Rosalie, because it was her family home too, and using it to throw lavish, depraved bacchanals that would make Roman sick when he received reports of them.
Throwing out everything Roman ever told him about how to manage an estate and doing it his own way, because fuck him.Needing money when the income stopped, trying on the mask as a lark, as a way to dare Fate and God and Uncle Roman (and weren’t they all the same thing?) to catch him this time.
Women.So many women.
Lucy.
Bold, defiant, too young.Even for someone as far gone as Thorne, she was too young.Too innocent.Too fucking tempting.
Telling her to grow up, furious that this slip of a girl could rile him so badly, hating himself for making her go.
Missing her.
Years of trying to subtly find out from her brother what she was doing in Europe, how she was doing.When she was coming home.Hating himself for caring.
Seeing her again.So jealous of himself he could scream.
Lying.Seducing.Somehow tricking Lucy into thinking he was worth something.Hating himself.
A kiss in the rain.One final chance to save Lucy from himself.The monumental effort of pushing her away.
I hate you.
He came back to the present with the floor hard beneath his knees and the sound of his own rasping breaths loud in his ears.He brought up a shaking hand to cover his hot, dry eyes while Dom cursed and tore out of the room, shouting for help.
Lucy hated Thorne.She’d always hated him.
He’d done everything he could to ensure it.
God.He’d fucked her, masked and pretending and lying and betraying her with every touch, every caress.And then he’d fallen.
And she’d discovered what he’d done.She knew all of it, all of him, all the ways he’d hurt her and her family, all the ways he’d deceived her…and she’d said they were engaged.
When theyweren’t.A short stab of pain, brief and bloody.
They weren’t engaged.They weren’t anything, except two people who had lied so much to each other that the truth felt as distant as a star.
I told her I loved her last night, he realized with an ache that cut through him.And she said?—
A noise at the door barely registered.The doctor, he supposed dully.
But then he felt a rustle of skirts against his legs as she knelt beside him on the rug.Cool, soft hands brushing back his hair.
He breathed in the smell of sugared lemons and held it in his lungs until they burned.
Lucy.
“Darling, are you all right?”Her voice wavered with worry.“Your cousin tore out of the house as though his hair was on fire, and now here you are on the floor—what is going on?”
He kept his eyes squeezed shut, like a child who believed if he couldn’t see the monsters, they wouldn’t be able to see him either.
A large part of him wished he could tell one more lie, and keep this strange, sweet fiction of a life where Lucy pretended to be his bride and pretended to love him—but he knew he couldn’t.
The time for lying and pretense was over.
