“I had to protect him from being forced into something he didn’t want and wasn’t ready for. I couldn’t let him be steamrolled into something he’d resent them for. He’s my family, Eliza. My identical twin. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for the guy. I really thought that this was best because it would also bring him back to us.”
I let that information sit for a moment, turning it over in my head. “So instead, you letmebe the one forced into something I didn’t understand.”
To his credit, Will didn’t avert his gaze from mine. He didn’t argue, or interrupt, or try to reframe it. He simply held my gaze and nodded again. “Yeah, I did. I never meant to hurt you and I know that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen, but I didn’t plan for any of it to go the way it did. When I agreed to stand in for him, I thought it was going to be a couple days at most.”
A searing pain shot through my chest, like my heart had decided this was the moment to really commit to the emotional breakdown that had been looming all day. I finally looked away, bringing my gaze back to my unhelpful hands. If I kept looking at him, I might do something deeply embarrassing.
Like cry. Or forgive him. Or both, which is probably a dangerous combination.
“Jesse really isn’t a bad guy, Eliza. He’s not the bad guy in this situation, either. I need you to know that. He was clear about what he wanted and where he stood from the very beginning. I know you got a weird vibe from him at the engagement party, but give it time.”
I almost laughed, but not because it was funny. Rather it was because we were now discussing the moral character of theother version of the man I’d fallen in love with. He was trying to encourage me not to judge that guy for what had happened and to convince me to give him a chance.
Bloody hell, what a time to be alive.
“We were all victims here,” he said quietly.
I raised an eyebrow, scoffing softly. “Were we? That feels like atrulygenerousinterpretation of the situation to me.”
He held my gaze. “Everything that happened between us was real. Everything except my name. I lied to you about that, butnothing else, and I know it’s going to be hard to take my word for it, but I hope that one day, you’ll see that it’s true.”
I so badly wanted to sayno, it wasn’t real. I wanted to tell him that it couldn’t have been and that someone who’d built a relationship on a lie didn’t get to claim truth like that, but the problem was that it hadn’tfeltlike a lie.
Not when he looked at me the way he was even now. This man had taken care of me in a way no one else ever had. He’d seen me in a way no one had ever bothered to.
My throat tightened, but ultimately, he had, in fact, lied. For a long time. During which loads of things happened. “That doesn’t make it okay.”
“I know,” he said immediately with no trace of defensiveness or hesitation in his words or on his features. “I’m not asking you to forgive me. You deserved the truth. That’s why I’m here.”
Well,that, and to fall on your sword.It looked like that part of what I’d learned about him hadn’t changed.
What was worse was that just the one flicker of the man I’d thought I knew was enough to nearly tug at the last thread holding me together right now. I swallowed, forcing myself to speak past the lump growing in my throat. “I need you to leave.”
The light in his eyes dimmed just slightly, but he immediately took a single step back. “Okay.”
“I have to think,” I said, knowing that I didn’t owe him an explanation, but still. “There’s a lot to think about.”
“Yeah, there sure is.”
When he turned toward the door, something in my chestlurched. This moment felt too final to be real and it flooded me with a sense of panic so extreme I could barely breathe. I almost said his name—his real name. Almost asked him to stay, to wait, to just sit with me or hold me while I fell apart. To prove that the safety of his arms hadn’t been a lie.
My lips even parted to do it, but no sound came out. As I watched, he reached for the door handle, but before he twisted it, he spoke without turning back to me. “You can pull out of this at any time, Eliza. You don’t have to marry him. I just thought you should know that.”
My eyes slid shut as he left. The knowledge that he was still trying to look out for me, even now, even after everything that’d happened, wedged itself like a weight in my chest. That was the man I knew. The one who wanted me to know that I had a choice and that I wasn’t trapped.
It was wonderful. Marvelous. Except Iwastrapped. I didn’t have a choice.
The castle needed this marriage and so did my family. This whole ridiculous, archaic arrangement wasn’t just about me deciding whether or not I trusted a man who had been lying to me or his twin.
It was so much bigger than that, and although I truly, fiercely wished right now it wasn’t true, our financial situation hadn’t changed. Neither had the fact that Eugenie and Winnie weren’t about to produce an heir—or even care about whether they ever did.
It was still up to me, just like it always had been.
CHAPTER 39
WILL
Afew days after I’d gone to talk to Eliza, the wedding was uncomfortably close and I still hadn’t heard anything from her again. I also wasn’t taking Jesse’s calls, so I didn’t know if they’d had their one-on-one yet.
