Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
LOCH
Three months later
It’s hard to believe I used to sit a hundred feet away on a beach, chewing my lip, desperate to grab Alena’s luscious hips, and now they’re mine. All mine.
Well, almost.
T-minus five days and counting.
And I’m fully prepared to marry the hell out of this woman.
“Come on.” Alena straddles me on the sofa. I’ve got a hot handful of her, and I’m never letting go. Even as she insists, “They help with puffy eyes.”
“I don’t have puffy eyes.” I laugh, but I’m a smart man. I let my woman do whatever the fuck she wants to me. Like stick dumbass gold patches under my eyes, making me bat them at her. “I only have eyes for you.”
“Aw.” She tilts her head, kissing my lips. “Will you put that in our vows?”
“Babygirl, I will say yeehaw and do a line dance down the aisle for you.”
“Promise?”
“I’ve already practiced.”
I’m not lying. With all the hoops Nash and Axel have me jumping through to pull off this wedding. Making them my groomsmen and shit. All to keep Alena safe and blissfully unaware because all hell is breaking loose around us?
Damn right, I told my brothers we’re doing a groomsmen dance for Alena. Jace suggested we “Put A Ring On It.” Nick wants to “Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy).” Sire needs to bring “SexyBack,” while Axel said he’d shoot the DJ, and Nash said he’d just shoot me.
So we’re doing a mashup. Grant’s got the choreography down. We’ve been practicing all week.
How are we getting away with them being my groomsmen? It’s all the bullshit stories Nash has devised about who knows whom and how, and a plan for a non-existent, canceled flight that will prevent my fake family from joining us.
Honestly, I stopped fighting it. I’m too focused on making Alena smile.
And when there’s a crazed trafficker we were interrogating who’s escaped? One who’s on the loose and looking for revenge? For the first time, I agree with Nash—let’s keep Alena in the dark so she can have her dream wedding.
Normally, I think she’d see through the ruse, but she’s been so happy, she doesn’t suspect a thing. She’s too cute, twisting her lips, studying my face.
“Now, about your eyebrows,” she says.
“What about them?” I raise one.
“Can I just—”
“Nope.” Gently, I grab her fingertips about to pluck a hair. “A man’s gotta draw the line somewhere.”
Sweetly, she pouts. “But it’s for our wedding.”
“I like them,” Vale chimes in about my eyebrows. “They’re all masculine and thick. Leave him some hair and dignity.”
“Thank you, her bestie.” I smile at Vale, bowing my head slightly.
She sits, snuggled in her chair, sporting golden under-eye patches too. Relaxing in a pink satin pajama set, hers match Alena’s.
We’re staying in condos on the Charleston golf course we own, at the resort where we’ll have our nuptials and reception. It’s safe, secure, and the perfect Lowcountry wedding venue.
My mom’s relaxing in a chair beside us, sipping wine in her black silk pajamas. She’s here as Alena’s like a grandmother figure, proudly smiling with her golden eye patches.
But Mom’s gotta feel the twinge of guilt.
The way Alena doesn’t know the truth.
Except that we love her.
I’ve tried bonding with Vale, without Vale knowing who I am, and it hasn’t been easy.
Vale is Nash’s queen now. They could fight their secret love like gravity; you can’t. They fell in it—love, that is—and landed here. With Nash and Vale ready to tell Alena about their relationship after the wedding.
Still, Vale can’t know who I am, that I’m Seven, the youngest king. Because as best friends, Vale will tell Alena, and I respect that.
So I went to Vale’s initiation wearing a mask, praying she didn’t recognize me.
But just then, Vale tilts her head, studying me like I’m a serial killer in a lineup, and she’s the only witness who can identify the criminal.
Tickled by Alena, who really wants to pluck my fucking eyebrows, I snap out of it. She snakes my shirt up, going for my abs, and I squeal. I fucking squeal, which only makes Alena laugh harder, grabbing the lions inked down my waist.
“Excuse me.” Vale jumps up and rushes to the deck outside, saying she needs to make a call.
“Okay.” Alena giggles back, too focused on me.
“Babygirl.” Gently, I fist Alena’s hair, yanking her smiling lips to mine. “I really love making you wet, but not like this. You’re gonna make me pee.”
“Ahem.” Mom reminds us she’s here.
“Shh.” Alena titters against my lips. “You’re insulting my grandmother’s virtue.”
“Darlin’,” my mom drawls, “the only thing virtuous about me is the Bible next to my vibrator.”
Alena laughs, I roll my eyes—Jeez, Mom, way to kill a bridegroom’s boner. But I recover. “Come here.” And tug Alena into a cuddle. With my arms squeezing her like pythons, she can’t tickle me.
She settles in my embrace, letting me hold her before I get that eternal urge to make her happy, muttering into her strands, “You can pluck my brows if you want.”
But she angles back, blinking, loving. “Changed my mind.” Cupping my cheek, she smiles. “You’re perfect.”
I kiss her palm, about to kiss my ring on her finger, when Vale storms back through the open sliding glass doors with Nash on her heels. He’s been staying in the condo next to this one, the happy father of the bride, but no one looks happy now.
Vale’s crying.
Nash is seething.
My soul implodes, knowing—
It’s here. The moment I’ve been dreading.
“What’s wrong?” Alena slides off me, reading the pain on Vale’s face, then Nash’s. Fear fills her voice. “Dad? What happened? Why is Vale cr—”
“We need to talk, sweetpea.” Nash’s voice breaks with pain; he’s devastated. But it doesn’t match my annihilation.
My heart screaming.
No, no, no, no! Don’t do this! Don’t hurt her! Don’t take Alena away!
I surge, trying to stop Nash, “Let me—”
But he barks, “No!” Stopping me. “She’s my daughter. This is my doing, and it’s my fault, so let me tell her!”
“Tell me what?” Alena glances from me to her dad. “What’s going on?” She looks at Vale. “Oh, sweetie, why are you crying so much?”
Because this is going to kill you, Babygirl.
And I’d rather it be me.
Vale sobs. “I love your dad. I’ve been in love with him since I was eighteen, and I’m so sorry.” She spills the truth as I slide into its darkness. “We were going to tell you after the wedding. And I thought we were in love, and it would be okay, but then I found out he’s been lying to you and—”
“We are in love.” Nash fights for Vale. “Don’t you ever put us in the past tense, Poison. I won’t fucking allow it.”
“Wait.” Alena shakes her head. “What do you mean you’re lying and in love?”
Nash rages, admitting, “I love her. I love Vale and never acted on it all these years because I never wanted to hurt you. Ever.” He swears to Alena, “I was willing to die alone, without her, to keep you happy and safe until—”
But all I feel is the unraveling.
The strangling lies.
They’re finally snapping free, letting us fall into truth’s destruction.
“Until it stopped being safe,” I mutter. I can’t fucking breathe, feeling Alena slip through my grasp, and I can’t hold on, confessing, “Until I came around.”
She looks at me, eyes wide, wondering. “What? You? What do you have to do with them?” She asks about me, Nash, and Vale, having no idea how we’re connected.
God, if I could take away Alena’s pain, I would.
Please, give it to me. Not her.
But she stammers, turning back to Vale. “And… and you love my dad? Like love love him?”
Vale nods, sobbing. “I’m so sorry, but I do… I mean, I did. But he lied to you. To me. And now I don’t know what to feel.”
My gut twists at the most lethal word—LIES.
All they do is make you question love.
And it’s instinct; I reach for Alena, but it’s too late.
She pulls away. “Lied? About what?” She asks Vale and Nash, “If you two are… Whatever… Then yeah, it freaks me out. A lot. It’s weird. I never saw it coming, but it’s not a lie that you’re adults. You can do what you want.”
It’s ironic.
I stand in the truth’s wreckage, watching Alena prove the maturity Nash has always underestimated in her. I told him she’s stronger than he knows. If he had only believed me.
She reasons about her dad, loving her best friend. “So, am I pissed?” She shouts, “Yes! Will I get over it? Give me a goddamn chance to breathe, and maybe I will!”
And I just wait.
Wait for Alena to catch up. Wait for her to realize how deep the lies and secrets go, and how I’m dying at the bottom of it all.
I just wanted to love her.
“So why the hell are you freaking me out?” Alena challenges her dad. “Days before I get married, and what does this have to do with Loch?”
She turns to me, eyes pleading to understand. “What’s going on?”
“Alena, I…” I choke. I cry at the pain in her eyes, knowing I’m about to lose her. “Babygirl, I love you. Please believe it. You have to…”
I want to rewind the clock. To ask her when she was fifteen, on the beach, about what book she was reading. We would’ve fallen in love then. Simple. Fated. Forever. I know it.
But now?
“Nash,” Mom calmly directs, “go speak with Alena, and we’ll wait here. Then, she can speak with my son.”
Alena’s brown eyes widen in shock, and I close mine, bowing my head in shame.
“Your son?” Alena gasps, overwhelmed.
I’m right here with her. I can’t find my breath inside this pain. I don’t deserve to.
“Come on, sweetpea.” Nash pulls her away. “Just, please,” he urges, “let me tell you everything, and then you can hate me as much as Vale does.”
He’s trying to make Alena feel better, but it’s not working. Everyone she loves has lied to her. A betrayal the soul fights to survive.
And I know it’s the right thing for Alena’s sake. To hear it from her father first, but goddamn, I need my chance to fight for her.
She glances back at me as Nash leads her down the hallway to a bedroom, her eyes streaming with pain, and I finally let her see how I’m the man crying for her.
I knew this would happen.
But Love never accepts its loss.
It lives like it’ll last forever.
The silence is deafening until we hear her muffled wails, how Nash is ripping Alena’s world away.
“How could you DO this to her?” Vale shouts, and I snap my blurred glare at her, dropping every fucking mask I’ve ever worn.
“Because I love her, Vale!” I boom. Too many months and memories shatter my mind. They’re not a lie. “Just like I saw with my own eyes how much Nash loves you. And I will fight for her,” I seethe, glaring down at Vale’s pretty, furious face. “So, don’t get in my way and regret it.”
“Lyov.” Mom summons my royal name, trying to calm my beast. “That is not how you speak to a queen.”
I glower at Vale, and she snarls back at me.
This isn’t her fault, but how the fuck did she figure it out? Who I really am. The logic hits: my ink, my lions. All the kings have our totem on our skin. But why does it matter? The lies have escaped. They’re free. Roaming. Destroying.
Now what’s the truth?
Vale thinks this past year has been an act for me, when Alena is the only real thing I’ve ever known.
It’s why Vale’s mad at Nash. He didn’t tell her who I really am. It’s why she’s mad at me. She thinks my love for Alena is a lie. That I’m just her secret bodyguard, and not her soulmate.
So I fume, confronting her, “My apologies, but Vale, you read this all wrong. Does it matter how we fall in love with someone? Or does it matter more how we’ll love them until the day we die?”
Vale searches my eyes. She’s been initiated. She’s a queen. She’s one of us now. I will respect her. She has every right to challenge one of her kings, but she has to face the brutal truth in my glaring eyes.
Alena is mine.
It’s our bond—the kings and queens—she sees it, fuming right back. “Then, if you truly love her, it starts today,” she demands. “You’ll stop lying to her and fight to win her love again!”
“Will you keep that promise too?” Mom asks her. “For you, moya doch, are no different.”
Mom calls Vale her daughter in Russian, and it plucks an eerie chord inside me.
Why? Mom doesn’t have any daughters.
Though she treats the queens as hers, speaking directly to Vale, “Nash has revealed his greatest secret. There are no more lies, so will you let him fight for you, too?”
And this is the shit show I knew it would be.
Nash and Vale. Vale and Alena. Alena and my mom. Every relationship Alena has is upended.
Alena will be so hurt, but she has a loving heart. It’ll heal in time.
But with me?
That same loving heart?
I fear I finally touched it, like a blanket of green Lenten roses, but now they’re dying, poisoned by my lies, and they’ll never bloom again.
“It’s my fault,” Mom laments to Vale. “Please don’t hate my boys. And I mean Nash too…” She tells Vale our story, defending us. “My dear, all they’ve ever known is lying to protect the ones they love, and…”
But all I can do is stare at the bedroom door, behind which Alena must be devastated, hearing of our betrayal.
And the only story I remember is how the first time I kissed Alena…
I found my soul.