“Don’t you think we should catch up?”
“No,” I said flatly. “There’s no reason to.”
“Well.” Alex shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I still feel the need to apologize for what my father did to you.”
“Why?” I asked, genuinely perplexed. “I don’t feel the need to apologize for what my father did to your mother.”
Tyrone—accidentally or not—killed Lyosha’s mother before Tiernan and I were born. This was why we were kidnapped to Russia in the first place.
“Many of the things you went through happened right in front of me,” Alex said in a clear, confident voice. He didn’t let my hostility affect him one way or the other. “And I want you to know that, after a sufficient mourning time when you and your brother escaped, I eventually rooted for you, and I’m glad to see you happy and settled.”
Finally, a twisted smile curled my lips in distaste. “Is that what you think I am? Happy and settled?” I turned to him fully, narrowing my eyes. “Do you know, Alex, that I’ve had thirty-three therapists in my lifetime? Only the last one stuck. With all the others, I simply couldn’t get there. The minute they wantedme to seriously open up, I failed. Someone I’d once been close to advised me to forget everything that’d ever happened to me. Bottle it in. Turns out it was bad advice.”
He watched me silently.
He’d meant well and was just a kid himself, but that mattered little. His face, his existence, his last name were still a bitter memory for me.
“Do you know what it’s like to have your innocence stripped from you layer by layer? To reach the brink of starvation and be tipped beyond it? To watch your humanity slip between your fingers and not even know what it means, because you are too tired, too hungry, too beaten to think?”
Alex’s eyes never wavered from mine. “I was there, too.”
“Yes, as the heir and successor. You didn’t go through all the bullshit.”
He nodded. Well, at least he was honest. “I fantasized about saving you sometimes, you know,” he drawled. “When you were going through those things, I was desperate for your approval. With Tiernan, I had it from the get-go. We were always thick as thieves. But you never gave anyone your trust, your sympathy. Only to Tiernan.” He took his hand out of his pocket and reached for my face, running his thumb over the exact same spot he’d wiped a tear from fifteen years ago. As though it were still there. “I wanted your affection. Wanted to be seen by you. But every time I tried to come to your aid…”
“I pushed you away,” I finished quietly. “Yes, I know. You were a boy. I didn’t like boys. Boys hurt me a lot.”
He inclined his head. “When I told you to bottle it up, I meant it as a coping mechanism.”
“You were only a child,” I whispered. “You don’t have to explain yourself.”
“Under any other circumstances, I think we’d have made good friends. Don’t you?”
“Sure.” I smiled. “And in a way, we still are, everything considered.”
“Are we?”
I nodded.
“Last we spoke, you wanted me to kiss you,” he reminded me.
“I wasn’t spoken for at the time,” I said. “Guess you and I will always be unfinished business.”
“Well, I’m here now. Let’s finish this fucking business.”
I shook my head. “I’m a taken woman.”
“I know.” Lyosha put his hand on the junction between my cheek and neck, using his thumb to angle my jaw up. “Achilles offered you to me.”
My entire body iced over in shock. “W-what?”
“Achilles,” Alex rasped slowly, dragging his gaze from my eyes down to my lips. His hand a necklace on my throat, loose but heavy. “He told me you were in the market for a no-strings-attached hookup. A one-off in a controlled environment. Something about proving something to you.”
That fucking fucker, I seethed.How dare he confide in Al?—
“He told me because I already know too much,” Alex explained, reading my mind. “I’m discreet, can take a rejection like a man, and will never judge you.”
This was why Achilles had been drinking so heavily tonight.
