Chapter Six
Marcus
Iwas picking my way through the corridors, wandering aimlessly, relearning my childhood home when Mrs. Pym found me. Her shrewd, green eyes bore into mine with a wariness she was careful to conceal.
It has never been clear just how long the Pyms have been serving the Usher Family. She had been our housekeeper since I was a boy. And like my father, I left the raising of my boys to her.
“Home, sir?”
“Seems that way.”
She hummed softly and folded her frail, sturdy fingers together. “Would you like some food or a drink in the study?”
I shook my head. “I’d like to know what I missed, if you have time.”
She inclined her head and followed me to my office.
In the hour that followed, I learned just how much I missed in my absence. I learned that the children — no longer children — were grown enough to run the house without me. I learned that they’d grown … close, despite Mrs. Pym’s attempts to discourage their bond.
“I did do my best, but ultimately…”
“They are grown,” I finished for her.
That evening at dinner, I arrived at the dining hall to find both my boys already in attendance.
Both dressed in their dark trousers and clean, black tops.
Not over the top formal, but respectful.
Ames was showered, his strands unbound and wild around his face.
Eliah still had a faint hint of blue discoloring his left cheek, but he’d done his best to scrub clean.
My boys.
The future heirs to the Usher empire.
Both so grown and so different. Seeing them, a feeling of unimaginable pride swelled in my chest, knotting with the guilt and regret I would never shake. Everything they were, everything they had become had nothing to do with me. Both were strangers with my face and my name, and it gnawed at me.
“Perhaps, after dinner, we could talk,” I offer.
A flimsy olive branch for the years when they needed me and I failed them.
Eliah smiled, unhampered and fully to his eyes. “Yeah, sure.”
Ames’s heavy brows remained twisted with suspicion and impatience. But then lifted. Wiped away as if it never existed with the quiet clip of heels and Lenora’s arrival.
Twice in a single day, her presence kicked me in the sternum.
It hit me with an uppercut that left me winded as she stepped into the room.
A fucking vision in a simple, off the shoulder dress in plum.
The neckline dropped low across the generous swells of her breasts and hugged every goddamn curve to her knees.
Unbound, her strands gleamed with every stride.
A riot of soft, heavy curls that made my fingers itch to fist.
She met my eye first and beamed.
“Sorry I’m late.” She gave a soft chuckle. “I couldn’t find my shoes.”
The shoes in question matched the dress with fuck me heels that made her legs appear endless and my cock stir.
“Because your closet is a mess,” Eliah teased, moving past me to offer her his arm.
“It’s messy organized,” she countered. “I know where everything is.”
“Clearly not,” Ames muttered, moving to her other side and dropping his mouth down to hers.
Eliah’s gaze immediately sprung to me, uncertain. A little scared.
I said nothing.
Instead, I returned my attention to the stunning woman between us.
“You look beautiful.”
Pink crawled up her throat and filled her cheeks. “Thank you.”
It’s not at all what I actually wanted to say, but Ames was already moving her to the table. To the head of the table. To my spot. The trio seemed to realize it, too, when they glanced at each other, then at me.
“I can sit here,” Lenora said quickly, placing a hand on the seat to the left.
“No.” I moved to the spot that had been my grandfather’s, then my father’s before becoming mine and pulled it out. “This is yours.”
She hesitated. Glanced at the other two nervously before accepting.
I didn’t speak throughout the meal. I watched and listened, assessed the dynamic I had walked into. I saw the way they were with her. The little gestures that passed in the blink of an eye.
Ames scooped all the tomatoes out of her food while she chatted about the garden.
Eliah moved the wine away and placed two glasses of water next to her plate.
In return, she watched them like they hung the sun and the moon.
Every word had her focused. Enraptured. They could announce cheese was falling from the sky and she would have agreed.
She loved them.
Not with subtle indulgence, but a blazing passion I could feel on my skin.
I blow out a breath and open my eyes.
The memory of that afternoon continues to swallow me up. Gnaws at my soul. I barely got seven years with them. seven years of building … something. A bridge of straw. So tenuous and fraught, but layer by layer every day.
I engrossed myself in their passions. In the little things that made them each their own person.
I listened to Eliah describe the different layers of green in a single blade of grass.
I went hand to hand on the mat with Ames.
At dinner, I consumed every word they spoke like it was gospel.
I stopped going on trips. I unpacked my bag and dedicated my time to forging a bond with my boys.
And it was working.
I was so close…
Curled against my ribs, Lenora stirs. Her quiet exhale washes across my chest. Her silhouette is tucked beneath my sheets, body fitted perfectly along the length of mine. I try not to think about how we fit. How good she tasted. Felt.
How right.
I try not to think about how I had betrayed my sons’ memories by taking their woman before they were even cold.
It doesn’t matter that I hadn’t meant for it to happen the way it had.
It doesn’t matter that I’d been pacing my room like a caged animal, fighting the onslaught of darkness pressing down on me, the waves of grief and madness threatening to swallow me whole.
Every fiber of my being had wanted to pace the corridor between the solarium and the gym, to check all their favorite places in case …
in case it was all a nightmare and they’d be there.
Eliah spattered in paint, grinning with the sun tangled in his eyes and Ames bent over one of the machines, sweat slicking his hair back.
Twenty-seven years.
God gave me two and a half whole decades to be in their life. To be the father they deserved and I…
“Ames?” Lenora’s fingers glide across my ribs, down my stomach. Her face turns into my skin, and she nuzzles before lifting her head. “Eliah?”
I know even before she comes fully awake that her heart’s about to break all over again. And I’m proven correct when she glances from me to the space behind her and not finding what she was looking for. I feel it in the hitch, the catch in her chest as it all comes back to her.
I say nothing when gathering her up into my arms. When I crush her against my chest like that might keep us both together.
“I know,” I whisper into her temple as she circles my neck and squeezes so hard I almost can’t breathe.
Her sobs run through her and burn through me. Each wheezing heave of her back only twists the knife in my gut deeper. No amount of useless assurance is going to fix either of our pain. There is only one thing we both fucking need and it was already a fully-fledged mission before she ever asked.
“I will make this right,” I promise when her desperate, howling wails are no longer carving into my soul.
“All of them,” she snarls against the hollow of my throat. “Promise me. All of them.”
I nod. “All of them.”
Her small, damp face cradles perfectly between both of my palms and I search the deep pools of chocolate brown begging me to put our family back together.
Her tears burn my skin. They mark the very foundation of my soul. I would cut out my heart to stop them, but all I can do is hold her and wipe each one away while she watches me with those doe eyes.
“Can I stay with you today?” she asks softly. “I don’t want to be alone.”
The request shatters what’s left of my heart and I kiss her. Light. A sipping taste of her mouth that she opens for. Slips her fingers through my hair and holds me to her like she needed that as much as I did.
“You can be anywhere I am, mon p’tit,” I assure her. “You need never ask.”
Cool fingers drift down to brush the side of my stubbled face. The pad of her thumb ghosts the bottom curve of my mouth.
“Can I stay with you again tonight?”
Without taking my eyes off hers, I turn my lips into the palm of her hand. “I would like that.”
The hint of her old smile touches the corners of her lips, but it’s gone before I can be sure.
“Would you like me to leave while you shower?”
With the greatest care, I slip my hand beneath the sheets and lightly cradle the warm curve of her hip. Not to be suggestive. Not to initiate anything. Simply to hold her.
“I’d rather you joined me.”
It does not sip my mind that she’s grieving.
That her need for companionship and contact stems from years of having two men perpetually present.
Always touching her. Always holding her.
Even at night, they were with her. She would not be in my arms, soft body pressed into mine if my sons were still here, nor would I have touched her.
Not once in the seven years since my return have I made any inappropriate advances. I kept my feelings bottled and tucked away even when it bubbled so close to the surface I could taste it.
She belonged to them and I accepted that.
Even now, I know it’s not me she wants. Not truly.
It’s the idea of someone who looks like them.
Someone real and alive to hold her down when she feels adrift.
The idea of being a placeholder would frustrate a lesser man, especially given the magnitude of my feelings for her, but I accept my new role.
I embrace my new place in her life in whatever capacity she requires.
That is all I have ever wanted — to be needed and holding the power to solve her problems.