Ronan handed him a cup. Gabriel wrapped his hands around it but didn’t drink.
“What happened?” Ronan asked, settling onto the couch.
“She found The Oath.”
They both knew what he meant.
“How?” Knox asked.
“She went to get a pen from my study.” Gabriel shook his head. “I should’ve burned that thing the second I realized I was falling for her.”
Ronan turned toward him. “You should’ve told her right away. You can’t keep a secret for months and then say it wasn’t important. The secrecy makes it important.”
“That’s what she said.”
“Because she’s right.”
“I know.”
“But you’re not a lost cause.” Ronan sat back. “The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
Gabriel stared at his cup. “I don’t know. She told me at the door not to follow.”
“Then follow her once you have something worth saying,” Knox said.
“That isn’t the part she’s going to forgive.”
Knox raised an eyebrow. “What is?”
“My mother.”
Both of them went still.
“Camille told her at seventeen she wasn’t Sterling material. What she didn’t know, until last night, was the Oath. The framed copy. The firm named for it. That my mother had known I was seeing someone for weeks and never learned who. And that Knox—you, in your own way—were the one who told her. I hadn’t corrected the omission.”
Ronan exhaled. “That’s a different kind of trouble.”
“Yeah.”
“Your mother has known you were seeing someone for weeks.”
“Yes.”
“And doesn’t know it’s Tessa.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because the conversation I’d have to have with her to introduce them is the conversation I’ve spent my entire life avoiding. The one where I tell her she doesn’t get a vote.”
Knox set his cup down. “You’re going to have to have it.”
“I know.”
“And the Oath is going to have to die a public death.”
“I know that too.”
