Chapter 29
AND I CAN NEVER LOVE ANYONE
Margot
I cry the entire flight back to New York.
We land sometime after two a.m., and Cyril escorts me into my Manhattan penthouse shortly before three, just as he has thousands of times before in my normal life.
The city lights sparkle below me, and the half moon hangs low in the sky, on its way to bed shortly, with the sun chasing it by a few hours.
I live on top of the world, a thousand feet in the air here in Manhattan, where I’ve furnished my space with plush, comfortable furniture, decorated in warm pastels that might not be the current style but make me happy.
And today, I don’t feel like I deserve to be happy.
I hurt people.
I went to Snaggletooth Creek, saying I didn’t want to hurt anyone—that I wanted to avoid collateral damage—and instead, the brothers I desperately want to have in my life are dealing with a family crisis because of me.
Because of my arrogance in thinking that I could pretend to be someone I’m not, that I could lie to them without consequences.
And Rhys—
My god, Rhys.
I’m not whole enough on my own to be the partner he deserves.
I’m not good enough for him.
I probably never will be.
For a while, I convinced myself that we were just having a fling, but every time I looked at him—I knew.
I knew he was catching feelings.
I knew I should’ve called a stop to it after the first time, because I was also catching feelings.
Feelings that I can’t indulge in.
Knowing that I hurt him too, that I hurt the kindest, most understanding, most patient, biggest-hearted man on the planet—that wounded look in his eyes will haunt me for the rest of time.
That’s the worst part.
The part where the best man I’ve ever known—the man who will likely haunt every waking moment of my life and my dreams too—is collateral damage to my innate personality.
“You need to sleep,” Cyril says behind me as I stare at my dimly lit living room and into the city lights sparkling in the night beyond.
“I need to make this right. As—as right as I can.”
“After you sleep.”
“You’re off duty. Go home and sleep yourself. The rest of the team will cover me this week.”
“You ask them to help with your plans here?”
I flinch. “No.”
“Would you?”
“My plans have changed.”
“Hmm.”
I eye his reflection in my windows. “I said, you’re dismissed.”
“You didn’t cheat. You didn’t spend thirty years lying to your kids about their genes. You’re not the bad guy here.”
“I lied to them.”
“Having insecurities that they wouldn’t like you because you don’t like yourself isn’t the same as having malicious intentions.”
I flinch again.
“You’re a good person, Margot. I’ll see myself out.”
The door shuts before I can formulate an answer.
I slip into my office and power up my computer.
There’s work to be done.
But I fall asleep at my keyboard before I’ve made enough progress, and I wake up a few hours later to hundreds of pages of nonsense, courtesy of my face on the keyboard.
I make myself a cup of tea to calm my stomach and try again.
But it doesn’t work.
No matter what I type as I’m trying to decide what I want to say to my father, none of it feels right.
I check my phone.
No texts from Rhys.
No texts from Lucky.
No missed calls.
No one checking on me.
No one yelling at me either.
I wouldn’t mind being yelled at. Pretty sure I deserve it.
No, you don’t, I hear Rhys saying in my head.
Even in my imagination, he’s too good for me.
My nose tingles and my eyes get hot again as I call Daphne.
She picks up on the third ring. “Hey, you. How’s Colorado?”
“I’m back in Manhattan.”
There’s a pause, then, “Are you okay?” whispered so softly, with so much more care and concern and love than I deserve, that my only answer is to sob.
“Margot,” Daph whispers. Then, louder— “Oliver, we’re going to Manhattan.”
“No,” I protest.
Daphne hates the city.
Bad things happen to her when she’s here.
I don’t want to be another bad thing.
She’s had enough bad.
“Stop me,” she says.
“You—you hate—the city,” I cry.
“But I love you, and you need me, and I’ll be right there.”
I try to argue, but instead, three hours later, she’s barging through my door. “Margot?”
“In here.” My face hurts from how much I’ve cried, and my voice is thick and froggy. I’m buried under a fluffy peach blanket on my couch while I watch that ghost show that Rhys and I watched together the night that I made him popcorn.
Daph throws herself on me and hugs me so tight, I almost can’t breathe.
I hug her back even tighter.
I don’t want to breathe.
I just want—to not be alone.
“Will you always love me even when I don’t deserve it?” I ask her as the tears start all over again.
“You always deserve it.” She kisses my head. “All of us always deserve it.”
It was just a month ago that she was crying in my arms and pouring her heart out while I brought her home from the road trip where she fell in love with Oliver, and now here we are, with me crying in her arms.
The last time I cried like this?
Never.
Merriweather-Browns are business people. We keep our emotions locked up tight. The world is watching at all times.
But the world wasn’t watching me the past two weeks.
The world hasn’t seen my secrets the past four years.
And here—here, I know I’m safe to let it all go.
Because even though she shouldn’t, my sister loves me.
She hugs me tight while I cry myself out, and once I’m almost under control, the scent of bacon tickles my nose.
“I brought help,” Daph says. “Bea and Oliver are cooking breakfast.”
And I break into sobs all over again.
“Hey, Margot,” Bea calls from the general direction of the kitchen. “I love your stove. This griddle is perfect for pancakes.”
“We didn’t want Daphne coming to the city unchaperoned,” Oliver adds. “We’re not listening to a thing though.”
“Unless you want us to,” Bea agrees.
“We all love you and won’t judge,” Daph says. “But they’ll leave if you want them to. They won’t go far because they don’t trust me—”
“She might stow away in some random person’s car again,” Oliver says.
“Or lead the wrong kind of protest,” Bea says.
“Or try to rescue the polar bears from the zoo,” Oliver continues.
Bea makes a thoughtful noise. “Does the zoo here have polar bears?”
“You’re Daphne’s best friend, and you don’t know if the zoo has polar bears?”
“She forbade me from acknowledging the city exists. Being here with her is new territory, and I forget what I’m supposed to know and not know.”
Listening to them is oddly normal, like they’ve been doing this for years instead of only getting to know each other for the past few weeks.
And it’s comforting.
Like life will go on after my broken heart stitches itself back together.
As much as I’ll let it, anyway.
“The triplets hate me, and I fell in love with one of their best friends,” I tell Daph.
“Your roommate?”
“Yes.”
She watches me carefully. “Does he hate you too?”
“He should.”
“No one should hate you.”
I grimace. “I—I broke up with him last night. I mean, we weren’t technically dating, but we’re definitely not now, because I told him it’s over.”
“Why?”
“Because I—because he—he deserves so much better, Daphne.”
“Margot Francesca Merriweather-Brown, how fucking dare you.”
“Francesca? That’s what the F stands for?” Oliver says as he sets a plate of pancakes, scrambled eggs, fruit, and bacon on my coffee table, complete with napkin and silverware.
“You didn’t know Margot’s middle name?” Bea calls from the kitchen.
“I always thought the F was for fucking. Because she’s Margot Fucking Merriweather-Brown,” Oliver replies.
Daphne giggles, tries to stifle it, and then giggles again. “You did not.”
“He’s really obnoxious now,” I tell her. “Annoyingly obnoxious.”
“Oh, no, not annoyingly.” She grins. “Just the right amount. I freaking love it.”
“Want me to kick them out?” Bea asks me.
I shake my head, then wince.
Head hurts.
Rhys would—fuck.
Rhys would’ve already handed me painkillers. He would’ve seen it before I did.
Because he’s a million times better of a person than I am.
And now my eyes are watering again.
Bea appears with a mug. “Fresh tea,” she says as she hands it to me. “Peppermint.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
Daph grabs the plate and forks up a bite of eggs, but she doesn’t eat them.
She waits until after I’ve taken a sip of tea, and then she tries to feed me. “Eat. And then we’re talking more.”
“I don’t deserve you either,” I whisper.
“You have ten seconds to tell me what the ever-loving hell you did to make you think you’re a terrible person before I’m stealing your phone and finding another way to get answers.”
I don’t think she could crack the passcode on my phone, but it’s Daphne.
You never know.
So between sips of tea and small bites of breakfast, I talk.
I start at the beginning, all the way back to my first communication with Lucky through the MatchDNA site, through arriving in Snaggletooth Creek, meeting Rhys in the middle of the night, him figuring out who I was, our negotiations for his silence, him teaching me to split firewood, getting to know the triplets, the GrippaPeen convention and almost getting made by a former fling and Jonas Rutherford, up to last night, when Mrs. Sullivan made it clear that she knew who I really was.
“And I—I left before I could tell them that you’re innocent and they’d love you,” I finish.
Which isn’t finishing.
Because I haven’t told her—them, actually, since Bea and Oliver are both in the living room with us now—that I broke up with Rhys because he deserves someone who’s already whole enough to be in a real relationship.
Someone who doesn’t fuck up when she tries to start any kind of new relationship.
Not the way I fucked up with my brothers.
“Margot, you don’t need to tell them I’m awesome. I’ll prove it to them soon enough.”
“They were so mad. I—I might’ve fucked it up for both of us.”
“Then they don’t deserve me or you. Family forgives.”