“The one who ran away.” I snickered. “I didn’t forget. He just doesn’t count.”
“You are far too smug.” She pushed me and the towel away, walking to get her own. “And waiting for my brothers to be out of the picture to try to take me is weak. I don’t do weak.”
Is that what she thinks?
“Dona.” I laughed, using that same towel to dry myself off. “I would have confronted Ethan at any time. Ethan isn’t my problem. You are.”
“And how so?”
“What are you doing?” I hated seeing her like this. She was the one being weak, not me. “You always knew Ethan was going to get married. That Wyatt would get married someday too. You always knew this day would come. So why are you acting like—”
“Because he didn’t tell me!” she screamed. “He, like Father, like Mother, like every other goddamn person, dictated to me what the plan was and expected me to just go with it. The pool house isn’t where things go to die, it’s where I go to die! I was seven when my mother picked me out of bed and threw me into the pool and told me to swim! For hours I swam until I felt like my arms were on fire. Why? Because she thought I was weak. So I pushed myself every day for hours. And one night I was swimming and Ethan came to tell me Mother was dead. And Father told me not to get soft. I pushed myself hard and then one day while I was swimming Father came and told me I was going to a boarding school for the next four years. They threw my life into chaos with no warning, with no respect, and then called me a brat for being upset!”
Her chest rose and fell over and over again as she tried to calm herself down, running her fingers through her wet hair. “Ethan wants to get an ex-convict, that’s his choice. But he didn’t trust me enough to let me know…until the day before he got married? I have plans too. I have shit I need to do too and when I don’t know what is going on I look like a fucking idiot.”
“Dona—”
“I come here.” She pointed aroun
d her at the pool house. “To drown myself. To kill the Dona of that moment and restart. To re-plan, to rethink, to re-everything. Excuse me if I’m a little brattish as I do so. But I didn’t ask for you to come in here with me. I did not ask for your love—”
“That’s where you are wrong,” I cut her off, too stunned to yell. For a second I almost believed she was hurt that her brother had moved on. No, at the end of the day, she was still scheming for herself. “You did ask me to love you.”
“When did you get that idea?”
“September 8th,” I reminded her, even though from the look in her eyes I did not have to. “The night before you left for Italy. After your brothers, your aunts, uncles, and everyone else begged your father not to send you and failed. You called me. You told me I better not fall in love with anyone because—”
“Shut up.” She glared. “I remember. You don’t have to say it.”
“Because I belonged to Donatella Aviela Callahan.”
She frowned. “I was fifteen and stupid.”
“You are selfish, power hungry, frantic one moment and cold the next. You drink far too much wine and break even more glasses—”
“You’re supposed to add positive traits in there—”
“And you always have to get a word in even when we are legitimately talking about you.” I laughed. “I could write a novel on all the shit you do that annoys me. However, the one thing you will never be is stupid. You weren’t then and you aren’t now. You told me to love no one else and for over a decade I’ve done just that. So if you want me to stop, tell me to stop.”
Her green eyes bunched together as if she didn’t understand me. “You could stop loving me if I simply told you to? When did you become so fickle—”
“Don’t pussy foot it, Dona. You want me to go, then say it. Tell me to go find another woman…someone, as you say, on par with me.”
I could see she was going to call my bluff and so I kissed her, like I’d been dying to since she came back, wrapping my arms around her and hugging her body to mine. And only when she kissed me back did I pull away again.
“Sorry. Now tell me.”
“Fuck you. I don’t take orders.” She snapped, grabbing her bottle of wine and marching out of the pool house.
“Jesus,” I muttered to myself, wishing I’d kissed her longer, my pants getting tighter as my dick hardened.
Eleven years.
That was how long I’d been walking on the path to her.
And I’d keep walking for another eleven. Hell, even twenty-seven years. It didn’t matter as long as in the end she’d be mine, in front of everyone.
I was willing to do anything…be anything for her.