Page 175 of Theirs to Tempt: The Marriage Claim

“Everything is a problem to solve.”

“No. Sophie isn’t.”

I turn toward him.

His expression is grim.

“You’re already doing it,” he continues. “I can see you calculating. What can you send? Where can you appear? How long do you wait before contacting her so it feels like enough time without being too much?”

“Fuck you.”

“Am I wrong?”

I say nothing. I have spent the last twelve hours scrambling to find the next, correct move.

There isn’t one.

Or worse, there are hundreds, and I no longer trust myself to know which are legitimate and which are simply control wearing better clothes.

“I love her.”

The words leave me before I realize I intend to say them.

Caleb goes utterly still.

I stare down at the coffee.

I have spent most of my life regarding love as a weakness people use to justify stupidity. Richard Langford nearly destroyed everyone around him in its name. Malcolm Voss turned love into possession and expected us to accept the definition.

And now here I am, drunk at Braes before even eating breakfast because my wife left me.

A more rational part of my brain scoffs at that thought. My wife didn’t fucking leave me. I drove her away. “I love her,” I repeat.

Caleb’s voice is quiet. “I know.”

“I don’t know how to do this.”

That admission costs more than the first.

He waits.

I tighten my hand around the cup.

“I know how to protect her. I know how to give her anything she wants before she knows she wants it. I know how to destroy anyone who threatens her. I know how to make certain she never worries about money, safety, her mother’s treatment, her practice, any fucking thing for the rest of her life.”

None of it matters.

Because Sophie did not leave for lack of protection.

She left because I kept stripping away her right to decide what happened to her own life.

My throat burns and so does my determination. “I can get her back.”

Caleb’s expression hardens.

“Give me a week, and I could manufacture ten reasons she has to see us. A month and I could make half of Houston conspire to put her in the same room with me without her ever knowing.”

“And then?”