Chapter 20
Miley
“I went to see Dominic.”
I said it plainly. Standing in the foyer, dripping rainwater onto marble, looking at a man whose expression was already closing like a door being pulled shut.
I said it because I’d never been good at lying anyway.
My face was an open book. Always had been.
Anna said I had the poker face of a golden retriever.
But more than anything, I didn't wanna lie to him. He deserved the truth, even if it changed things.
Christopher didn’t move. He stayed in the armchair, hands on the armrests, his eyes holding mine with a force that made it hard to breathe.
The warmth I’d grown used to over the past weeks, the warmth from the ice cream shop and the office kiss, all of it was gone, replaced by an emotion that was older and lived deeper than anger.
“Dominic reached out,” I continued. I stepped further into the living room, leaving wet footprints on the floor. “He had things to say. About the family. About the past. Things you deserve to hear, Christopher.”
“Are you finished?” His voice was strained.
“I’m not going to apologize for listening to someone who’s trying to make things right.”
He stood, crossed the room, and stopped close enough that I had to tilt my chin up to hold his gaze. The height difference between us felt overwhelming, his six-foot-four pressing down on my five-foot-six, his eyes locked on mine with an intensity that made the storm outside feel casual.
“You don’t understand what Dominic is.” His frustration was breaking through.
“Maybe not. But I understand what he’s trying to do. And shutting it down without hearing it is your choice, but it shouldn’t be mine.”
“He got to you.” He said it like a verdict. “He made himself sympathetic and now you’ve taken his side.”
“I’m not on his side.”
“Then why were you there?” His voice was low and vibrating, a sound compressed from fury and betrayal. “Why did you go behind my back? Why did you decline my call? Why did you get in his car?”
“Because he’s your brother and he’s—” I stopped myself.
Cancer. The word was right there, sitting on my tongue.
But that wasn’t my secret to tell. Dominic had trusted me with information he hadn’t given his own family, and no matter how furious Christopher was, I wasn’t going to use Dominic’s diagnosis as a weapon in an argument.
“He’s trying to reach you, Christopher. He has things he needs to say and you won’t let him near you. ”
“Things he needs to say.” Christopher repeated it like it was poison. “Dominic has spent thirty years saying things. Sympathetic things. And every time, someone I care about, decides his version matters more than mine.”
“That’s not what’s happening here.”
“Isn’t it? You went to see him. You. The one person in this house I—” He stopped. His mouth closed hard on whatever word was about to come out.
“The one person you what?”
He didn’t answer. He looked at me and the fury in his eyes was starting to thin, and underneath it was something rawer. A feeling I recognized because I’d seen it once before, in the parking lot, in the car, in every moment where Christopher’s control failed and the real person showed through.
“My father chose him. Esmeralda chose him. The company chose him.” His voice fractured. “Seraphina chose him.”
Her name struck my heart like a thorn, drawing blood.
Seraphina.
The woman I now knew about from Dominic’s confession. The one who owned Christopher’s heart. Who ended up in his brother’s bed. But couldn't get erased from Christopher's memories. It sat in the room like a third person, invisible and heavy with history I couldn’t fully grasp the weight of.
“I know about Seraphina,” I said quietly.
He went still. Completely, entirely still. Like I’d touched a wound he didn’t know was exposed.
“Dominic told me. Not everything. Just that it happened.” I held his gaze. “And I’m sorry it happened to you. But I am not her, Christopher. I’m not going to do what she did.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How? How can you possibly know that?”
“Because I know who I am. And I know where I want to be. And I’m standing there right now, soaking wet, in your living room, looking at you.
” My voice was steady even though my hands were not.
“I went to see your brother because he asked and because I’m a person who can’t say no when someone is hurting.
But I came home. I came back here. To you. Not to him. To you.”
The room was so quiet I could hear the rain hitting the windows. I could feel his breathing and my own heartbeat going unsteady every minute now.
“You’re mine.” The words came out rough, almost angry. “You belong to me and I will not lose you. Not to Dominic. Not to anyone.” His breathing became ragged. His hands were at his sides, fingers curling and uncurling. “I can’t. I can’t do it again.”
Something in me broke open, and I snapped toward him, not away.
I leaned forward, my lips found his with every ounce of frustration, tenderness, and the desire I’d been swallowing for weeks.
He groaned against my mouth when my fingers curled in his shirt.
And his mouth moved against mine. The kiss wasn’t gentle.
It was the argument continuing in a more intimate language.
His mouth was hot and hard against mine and we tasted like rain and bourbon.
His hands found my waist, pulled me flush against him, and the rain-soaked fabric of my clothes pressed against the warmth of his body.
I didn’t care about anything except the way he was kissing me, deep and consuming, his fingers threading through my wet hair, tilting my head back so he could kiss me harder.
“Don’t stop,” I breathed against his mouth.
He didn’t.
His hands moved to the backs of my thighs and he lifted me. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he carried me through the house without breaking the kiss, navigating the hallway and the stairs with a certainty that told me he could find his way through this house blindfolded.
My back hit the wall once. He pinned me there, his hips pressed against mine, his mouth leaving my lips to trace the line of my neck, my collarbone, the place where my pulse was hammering so hard he must have felt it under his tongue.
I arched into him and his grip on my thighs tightened.
The sound he made against my throat was something between a groan and my name.
“Christopher.” His name came out breathless and shaky.
“Say it again.”
I said it again. And again. Each time his name left my mouth, his grip tightened, his breathing roughened, his mouth moved lower.
He carried me the rest of the way to his bedroom, and laid me down like I was both precious and urgent, like he wanted to be careful.
But couldn’t afford to be, and the contradiction was intoxicating.
He stood over me for a second. Breathing hard.
His eyes traveled from my face down the length of my body and back up.
The way he looked at me made my skin burn before he even touched it.
He got wet because of me. I could see a water droplet running down his neck, tracing the line of his collarbone before disappearing beneath his shirt collar.
I bit my lips, wanting to follow it with my mouth.
He pulled his shirt over his head in one swift motion.
The dim light from the hallway caught the lines of his chest, his stomach, the V of muscle that disappeared below his waistband.
I’d seen him shirtless before, that first morning, coming out of the pool at the resort.
But seeing and touching were different countries and I was about to cross a border I could never uncross.
He came back down to me and the feeling of his bare chest against mine through the wet fabric of my dress was so good it made me dizzy.
His hands braced on either side of my head, his body hovering over mine, close but not close enough, and he was doing it on purpose.
Making me wait. Making me feel the distance between his skin and mine and want it closed.
“Tell me to stop,” he said. His voice was wrecked. “If you want me to stop, tell me now. Because in about ten seconds I’m not gonna be able to.”
“Don’t you dare stop.”
His mouth found the hollow of my throat.
His lips pressed against my pulse point and lingered there, feeling my heartbeat with his mouth.
The intimacy of it made my breath catch.
Then lower. The curve of my shoulder. His teeth grazed the strap of my dress and he pulled it down slowly, painfully slowly, following the fabric with his lips, kissing every inch of skin he uncovered.
The other strap followed. He peeled the wet dress down my body like he was unwrapping something he’d been thinking about for a long time and wanted to remember every second of.
The cool air brushed my skin and then his mouth was there, warm, erasing the cold. His lips traced a line from my shoulder to the swell of my chest and my back lifted off the mattress on instinct. He pressed me back down with one hand flat on my stomach, holding me there.
“Patience,” he said against my skin and smiled mischievously.
His mouth moved lower. His lips brushed the curve of my breast and my breath left me in a rush that I couldn’t disguise.
He didn’t rush. His tongue traced a slow, deliberate circle around my nipple, teasing, not touching where I needed him to, and the anticipation built until my fingers twisted in the sheets.
Then his mouth closed over me, warm and wet, and the sound I made was raw and uncontrolled, pulled from my deepest core that I didn’t know existed.
My fingers found his hair and gripped and he groaned against my skin, a low, guttural sound, and the vibration of it sent a current through my entire body.