I want to ask more, want to push for answers. But it’s not my place. Not now. Not yet.
The last comes unbidden, makes my hands clench into fists and my brain haze over—with annoyance and anger and an arousal I can’t seem to get a grip on, no matter how many times I tell myself it’s a bad idea.
No matter how many ways I remind myself that she was Garrett’s first. That doesn’t seem to matter, though, not when every instinct I have is screaming that she might have been his first, but she can be mine now. At least for a while.
We drive a few minutes in silence. I’m just getting ready to call the whole thing off—obviously, we have nothing to say to each other now that Garrett is an invisible specter between us—when she says, “When you were eleven, you covered for him when he broke a Fabergé egg.”
I turn to look at her so fast I nearly get whiplash. “What did you say?” I ask hoarsely.
“It was one of the crystal ones, from the Imperial Collection, if I remember correctly? You were home from boarding school for the summer and he was kicking around a hacky sack in your mom’s office, trying to keep it up as long as you could. But he wasn’t anywhere near as good as you were. He kept messing up and then, because he was mad, he kicked it too hard and it bounced off a lamp, straight into your mother’s favorite Fabergé egg. Which then crashed to the ground in a very ignominious heap.
“And you, being a good brother and the son most likely to get into trouble, took the blame for him so that he wouldn’t miss Wildemar’s tennis championship, which was being played the next day. Instead, he let you miss it, and he let you take all the heat with your parents.”
I’m reeling, the bottom dropping out of my stomach as she pulls the car to a stop. It’s not that I didn’t believe she knew Garrett—I saw the photos, after all—but that story is a long way from a few silly photos in a photo booth, no matter how cozy they looked.
That story has always been just between Garrett and me. Anastasia doesn’t even know the truth about what happened, and neither does my father, even now. So if Savvy knows it, her relationship with Garrett was a lot deeper than I originally thought it was.
Fuck. Shit. Damn. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
She told me she was in love with him, but lots of women have been in love with him through the years. That’s nothing new. The fact that he told her something so personal, however, the fact that he let her in? That means he probably loved her, too.
The thought makes me want to punch a hole through the dashboard.
Makes me want to burn down the whole damn block.
Makes me want to pound my chest and yell that I saw her first.
But that’s not true. Garrett saw her first. Garrett kissed her first. And it’s only been a couple days, a couple short conversations. I could pick up my phone and have a dozen women waiting for me by the time I get back to the palace. This mess shouldn’t matter to me at all.
It does, though. It really does, and I don’t know why. Savvy’s not the first woman I’ve wanted. She certainly won’t be the last. Hell, she’s not even the first woman Garrett and I have both been attracted to—though he usually tends toward the delicate red-headed types, a beautiful woman is a beautiful woman.
And Savvy is very definitely beautiful.
“You were together six months,” I say as she pulls into her driveway.
“Yes,” she answers, though it wasn’t a question.
“He obviously cared about you quite a bit.”
“Yes.” She turns the car off, but keeps staring straight ahead.
“And you cared about him?” This time it is a question even though I know what the answer’s going to be.
This time, when she answers, it’s barely a whisper. “Yes.”
Finally, finally, she turns her head to look at me. Her eyes are wide and shimmery, like she’s trying not to cry, and she’s worrying her lower lip between her teeth. She looks beautiful and fragile and I’m not sure what it says about me that I still want her, even now, in the midst of this discussion about her relationship with my twin.
But her voice is steady when she says, “Just say whatever it is you want to say.”
“You obviously had a relationship with my brother, one that was important to both of you. So why have I never met you? Why did I never even hear about you? And what the hell would have happened if you hadn’t decided that I needed rescuing the other night? If you hadn’t dropped those glasses of champagne on me, would I ever even know that you existed?”
Chapter 11
Savvy
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to all that,” I tell Kian after he finishes questioning me.
“You’re supposed to tell me the truth. If you’d asked me last night, I would have said I was closer to my brother than any other person on the planet. And that goes both ways. But now, here you are, and I don’t know what that means.”