His face ripples with ferocity as he lifts himself to sit. “You think this is about your fucking love? This was an apology you turned into melodrama. It’s a nightgown, not a declaration.” A light sting of rejection tints his face, and I know I’ve struck another nerve. “You think I won’t fuck you if I feel like it?”
I plant my bare foot on his chest from where I lay, my jean shorts riding up my thigh. “Then fuck me, Tobias, call my bluff. Go ahead, you mean, silly monster,” I taunt, wrinkling my nose. “Let’s get fucking dirty and turn this into a real shitshow.”
He scoffs. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“Of course, I am.” I lift to sit. “I’m just a stupid little girl.”
He grips my jaw, his eyes dropping to my lips. “I said lonely, not stupid.”
“Lonely people make stupid decisions. Allowing you into my bed is proof. Apology not accepted, get out.” I pull a school brochure from the mail pile on my bed and begin flipping through it.
He’s silent for long moments before he speaks.
“You drew the right conclusions. I knew about you. It was my decision, my call, to keep you out of it. I’m the one that hid you.”
He pulls the brochure from my grip and tugs my hand to rest between his. “I’m the one that made the decision years ago to keep you out of it. I
failed you. I got distracted, and I dropped the ball. I promised myself long ago that no matter how far I decided to go in bringing down your father, you wouldn’t suffer for it. I was never going to let you pay for his mistakes.”
I try to rip my hand away and he hauls me toward him, so I’m forced to look at him. “I failed you. Not Sean, not Dominic. Me. And when I found out you’d been pulled into this…and just how far.” Ire laces his voice when he speaks. “I was too late. So, when I told you, when I tell you that you were never supposed to be a part of this, I mean it. I failed you, Cecelia. I handled it in a way that I’m not fucking proud of. In a way that could potentially destroy everything I’ve been working for over half my fucking life.”
We sit, face to face, the draw becoming undeniable as he releases me and scrubs his face with his hand to sit at the edge of my bed. He’s made it impossible for me to sympathize, but I understand his frustration, his fight, the need to believe that we are a cataclysmic mistake. Neither of us is to blame for the attraction we feel. Much like the last year of my life, as cliché as it may be, it just happened.
And we wanted it to happen, but for our own selfish reasons.
But I would be a fool to believe him. He’s done nothing up to this point that rings sincere.
And it’s not my place to comfort him. Because in the wreckage that is Cecelia Horner and Tobias King, we are still reeling, clinging to our purpose as enemies and our loyalty to the people we love. The same two people who can never know we happened, because if those men do care for me, it will cause nothing but destruction.
“You haven’t told them.”
Silence. The battle is clear in his expression, with himself, and the question he can’t bring himself to ask me because he has no right.
But it’s me who says it out loud.
“You don’t want them to know.”
Tobias stays silent for several moments, his reply low. “It would make you an accomplice, not the victim, which you are, and I don’t think I can live with that.”
“I knew exactly what I was doing.”
He jerks his gaze to mine, and I know I’ve probably said too much.
“Well, I didn’t,” he admits in a rare show of vulnerability.
“You didn’t force me. And if this is a secret I decide to keep, make no mistake, it will be my decision. It will be my decision to keep it from them, not yours.” It all boils down to that. The very foundation I’m standing on, the foundation he’s built his life around, secrets and lies and a bond with his brothers that trumps everything else.
Can I keep another secret?
Do I want to?
Do I want to lessen Tobias’s punishment? Do I want to guilt myself anymore for sticking to the principles I’ve been taught by the very man who ripped the safety of them away from me?
Do what you want, when you want, no regrets.
Sean’s words.
I study Tobias trying to weigh if this is just another ploy by him to do his bidding.