Before tonight, he had only wondered at his attraction to her, at the way his senses felt so wired into whatever she did, that it was nothing more than a reaction of his body to hers. He had been wrong. There was nothing simple about the way he reacted to her.
“It might never go as far as a custody battle, right? I mean your mother said they just want to see Emily.”
Her smile, her obvious delight that his problem was solved shifted something inside him. He had trained himself to not need anything from anyone, and her concern in the face of his harsh words seeped into his blood. Like a whisper of a gentle wave that could easily become a sweep of a violent storm that he couldn’t contain. Like a drop of poison that could pollute the whole stream.
Because seeing Isabella and Nicholas together had already made a dent in him. It was as though the self-control, the discipline he had acquired over the past twelve years had disintegrated into dust at his feet. His mind had flipped back to his childhood, shuffling through a reel of pictures, drowning him in memories he didn’t want, crumbling the defenses he had built.
His parents’ constant fights, Nick’s vicious anger, Isabella’s elaborate power plays to keep his father’s attention, Alexander’s own innate need to protect her, his failure to do so, his pathetic attempts to win her love, to be better, smarter, to excel...as if it might buy her love, as if it might divert her attentions for one second from his father to him.
God, the list went on and on....
Sweat trickled down between his shoulder blades.
And as a man who had always acknowledged his own limitations before he destroyed them, Alexander admitted the truth to himself.
He wanted Olivia with every cell in his body, with every breath he pulled into his lungs. It would be sex, it would be escape, but it would also be so much more. Because he’d had a taste of what she could give.
With one kiss, she had dragged him back from the edge. From the fury, from the dark, shameful spiral of his own thoughts. And he had kissed her, reveled in taking everything she gave like a sinking man who had been thrown a lifeline.
She could have just stood there, watched him lose the tenuous hold he had had on himself and let it all go to hell. Yet she had stood by him, pulled him back from the edge in a way only she could have thought of. Her loyalty despite everything he had said to her clashed against his belief that she was selfish to the core.
Even now, her concern, her stubborn stance in seeing him through this, they washed over him, prying open things he had locked away a long time ago, things he never wanted to feel again.
No.
He stepped back from her, the hollow sensation in his gut blaring like an alarm. He didn’t want her, he didn’t need her concern, on any level.
It was only by emptying his life of any need that he’d survived. He could go even so far as to say he was a slow learner, couldn’t he? Because it had taken the worst to happen before he had stopped clinging to that hope that one day his mother would leave his father as she had promised so many times, to shed the fear that he would one day lose her, to overcome the guilt that he wasn’t enough to protect her and himself.
Control, over his fear, over his guilt, over the debilitating need to gain his mother’s love, that’s what had helped him survive.
“You will let them see her, won’t you?”
He dragged his gaze back to her, steeling himself against the worry in hers. “Stay out of it, Olivia.”
Of course, she didn’t. She moved closer to him, her fingers gripping his forearms. He felt her tremble, saw her fight to draw her next breath, her dismay at how easily the need between them flared into life, unraveled them. And still, she didn’t run away. “You’re hurt, Alexander.” Looking at the warmth brimming in her chocolate gaze, he braced himself. It was more deadly to him than anything else he’d encountered. “She didn’t even ask after you. She didn’t—”
“Stop. Just because I admitted to wanting to screw you—” with each word he fought for control until the emotion sifted out of him “—doesn’t mean I need or even welcome your concern.”
“But—”
“Enough. Don’t you think you’re taking this pretense a little too far?” He watched like the heartless bastard he was as her face lost its color. “You’re, after all, a stand-in. You’re not obligated to hold up the whole through better or worse. I appreciate what you did for me back there but it doesn’t have to continue here.”
She drew back in the slightest of movements, an imperceptible jerk of that stubborn chin. Her hands shaking, her slender shoulders held stiff, she moved to the door. “Of course not. I mistook you for a different man, someone who could still feel. But thanks for the reminder that you’re incapable of that emotion.”