A smile lifted my cheeks. “I do love when you say that.” I looked up at Julia, my expression sobering. “I never asked Madison to marry me, just to stay. Lip’s temper wasn’t new or a secret. Madison never said he hurt her.” I remembered the paintings falling. “She didn’t need to say it.”
“Oh.”
“Sometimes, she would call me by his name. It was when she thought she’d done something I wouldn’t like. She’d apologize profusely. It was sad and sickening at the same time. Sometimes I’d convince her I wasn’t him. Other times, I’d leave her alone.”
“Alone?”
“I’d give her space. There were times when she’d be upset and say that I was holding her against her will.” I met Julia’s gaze. “The doors were never locked. She could have left.”
Julia sat back on the edge of the bed. “When you said that Madison had been hurt, you meant by Phillip?”
“I meant by all of us. No one in her circle is without blame. I used her.”
“For sex.”
I shrugged. “No. Sex isn’t that difficult to find.”
“Especially when you’re named most eligible bachelor.”
My jaw clenched. “I hated that shit. It was all PR to counteract the allegations regarding business practices. Make me more relatable they said.”
“How did you use Madison?” Julia asked.
This scenario never bothered me—ever, even when I was doing it. Now I saw it for what it was, and I was disgusted by the man I’d been.
“Van,” Julia said, “I don’t need to know this. I want to. It’s part of who you are.”
I looked down at my hands now in my lap. “I was awful.” I looked back to Julia. “I want to be better with you.”
“You are better. Tell me, how did you use Madison?”
“I used her to hurt Phillip.” I exhaled. “She’d already chosen him. I’d given up on the dream of a normal life with her. When she came to me for sperm, it was an opportunity presented on a fucking silver platter to royally screw my brother.”
“By screwing Madison.” There was no emotion in Julia’s voice.
“Yes. I never lied to you, Julia. I told you that I’d done terrible things. I should have sent her away when she showed up at the door. When I agreed to impregnate her, my main thought wasn’t about sex or even rekindling whatever we’d had. It definitely wasn’t about a baby. I had one focus—Phillip.”
“Why do you hate him so much?”
“There isn’t one answer to that question.” I tried to pinpoint a time in my life when I didn’t have animosity toward him. I couldn’t recall a time.
“I almost feel bad for Madison,” Julia said, “but you can’t blame yourself for her mental state. There’s more to that than her history with you.”
“Those paintings,” I said, “the ones on the third floor…?”
“Yes.”
“She painted them while she was staying with me. When we were younger—around your age—she wanted to paint. She studied art in college before she had to quit. It was the one thing that she was passionate about.”
“You kept the paintings.”
I nodded. “I hadn’t looked at them in years. They were just there.”
“She didn’t take them when she left?”
“Phillip wouldn’t have allowed it. If she had, he would have destroyed them.”
“And now she’s the one who destroyed them.”