I expelled a long breath. “You’re insane, you know that?”
“What would happen if madness and insanity became one?”
“Us.”
“Exactly.”
“Alaric,” I groaned. “I didn’t come here for this.”
“You’re beginning to sound like a broken record. We’ve established you didn’t come here to fall in love me. Too late. You already are.”
I gave him an exasperated look. “I am not falling in L with you. I don’t even believe in that word.”
He laughed. “You mean you’re afraid of the meaning. You can’t even say it.”
“Is this the part I remind you we don’t know one another?”
“I know you much better than you know yourself. Know how you want to be fucked and how to get you off. I know you’ve got a peculiar madness I want to see up close.”
Thoughts whirling, I grabbed onto one part of his confession. “My madness is ugly.”
“Its beautiful, like the woman repressing it. Besides, I’ve got some of my own.”
“I’m really starting to believe you when you say that,” I muttered.
“Good. So, you’re staying.”
I sighed and thought of home, my cozy little house and the steady sound of traffic. I’d be going back to Hamtaro and Chloe, but also my overzealous mother. The solitude there was different than it was here.
There wasn’t a private stretch of beach or a beautiful piano. There was no Alaric. The beautifully twisted man beside me would be left behind along with my growing curiosity. The sick fixation would haunt me.
“Okay,” I relented. “I’ll stay.”
“I know.” He stood immediately, scooping up one of my hands as he did. “Let’s go, we’re going back inside.”
I settled in the corner of the sofa with a throw wrapped around me, far away from the lounge I could still see us fucking on. Alaric claimed a spot a few inches away, looking more relaxed than I’d seen him thus far. We’d been talking since we came back inside.
It was pushing one in the morning but neither of us seemed ready to say goodnight. I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to fall back asleep, not after what had happened.
“I’m not that invested in Meg’s things, as terrible as that sounds. I feel like I’m sorting through a stranger’s belongings at the Goodwill.”
I admitted this when there was a lull in conversation.
“Some wealthy fucking stranger,” he replied sardonically. “And that’s entirely understandable. You two didn’t know each other. You’re not the first person in the world to go through losing an estranged sibling. It was your parents’ choices that made the two of you that way.”
“Meg told you?”
“Your father did, actually.”
“You said before he pawned her off on you?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, then brought his hand to rest on my knee.
“For a larger share of DG.”
I sat up a little taller. “Wait, you married Meg for shares in a company?”
“My family’s company. Your father never should have been cut in. It wasn’t my decision.”
“He’s a greedy, self-entitled prick who has continuously gone behind our backs and stolen our portion of profits and private clientele. Stashing your sister in a spare bedroom while only needing to supply her with a cash-flow was an easy sacrifice to getting it back. Well, before she became jealous and insanely possessive.”
Again, I couldn’t comment on their relationship, or lack thereof. That felt wrong to do when the other party couldn’t validate anything that was said.
“Where is she buried?” I asked instead. “Can I visit her grave? I feel like I should at least do that. I failed her in every other way coming out here.”
He gave me a quizzical look. “How did you fail her?”
“I’m not sure she would have been ecstatic about me falling for her husband.”
Alaric’s immediate grin was so wide it could split his face in two. I shook my head from side to side, feeling a tingling in my cheeks. “That isn’t what I meant, poor choice of words,” I corrected quickly. “I was thinking of what you said outside.”
“Then that’s exactly what you meant. I understand, I’d fall for me too.”
“Anyways,” I cleared my throat.
“I don’t know how many times I need to stress that the relationship your sister and I had was nothing more than a cohabitation.”
“Cohabitation would mean you were never married. And you just said she was insanely jealous and possessive. What did you to that made her that way?”
He thumbed his chin, his gaze fixed on the piano.
“Alaric?”
“No, you can’t visit her grave,” he replied a little too casually, evading everything I’d just mentioned. I expelled a sigh and rested my head on the back of the couch.
“Why not?”
“Because she’s in my freezer.”
I bit the inside of my cheek “God. You are unbelievable, you know that? You’ve got zero shame. That was terrible.”
“You secretly love it; I see you constantly trying to ward off the smiles I’m so determined to give you. Admit it, you can’t get enough of my twisted sense of humor.”