Chapter 31 Dogfight #2
I didn’t have to look to know that his brother and sister were trading glances. When I did sneak a peek around the plant, I saw Brendan leaning against the wall, his hands rubbing his face while Ronan and Shea mouthed a silent conversation to each other.
My heart cracked at the despair in his posture.
Oh, my secretly sweet prince.
He dropped his hands. “You think I’m crazy. Why? Do you want it now, Ronan? Like actually want it? After years of screwing around Vegas and being Dad’s henchman, you want the top seat at the table?”
Ronan bristled. “It’s not like I haven’t earned it. You have no idea what that fucker has put me through. You think it’s been hard up in your glass office, managing his paperwork and the board? I’ve been doing his dirty work for years. It takes a toll you can’t even imagine.”
“I never said it didn’t,” Brendan cut back. “And you, Shea? You want to give up all the parties and the networking and whatever nonsense you’ve been getting up to in California and God knows where?”
“The music industry is not nonsense, you dick,” Shea snapped back with a toss of her hair. “And I have the numbers to back it up if any of you would forget I’m just a girl long enough to give me a chance to prove I’m as much a Black as any of you.”
I frowned. I didn’t know Shea, but there was a serious note under that flippant personality, just like the same one I heard beneath Ronan’s defensive stance. One I had a feeling I’d hear if Owen were in the conversation too.
Niall had purposefully left the question of his successor wide open.
And now all his kids were chomping at the possibility.
Just like he wanted.
“That’s what I thought.” Brendan sounded almost relieved.
Huh.
Then he straightened with an air of decision. All the Black siblings were tall, but he stood at least an inch above his brothers. Neither Shea nor Ronan cowered before him, but I recognized it as the move for dominance it was.
“If that’s how it’s going to be, then both of you’ll have to work a hell of a lot harder than you have,” he said. “I’ve carried this company on my back for the last twenty years. I’m not going anywhere without a fight.”
There was a silence, then it looked as though Ronan slapped him on the shoulder as if in congratulations. “Good. Dad loves a good dogfight. At least we’ll give him something that he wants in the end.”
“Yeah,” Brendan said. “I guess we will.”
Shea and Ronan walked away, giving Brendan a moment to collect himself. I wedged myself behind the ficus as they passed, but neither of them was interested enough in houseplants to notice me.
It was only after they’d turned the corner toward the main part of the house that I stepped out of my hiding place. That was when I found Brendan sliding to the ground, elbows balanced on his knees, with his head in his hands, apparently struggling to breathe.
“Oh, God,” he wheezed. “Oh, God, I can’t fuckin’ breathe.”
It took me a few seconds to realize what was happening.
Big, intense, always-in-control Brendan Black was having a panic attack on the floor of his father’s house, just outside his own engagement party.
And I was the only person who knew.
I raced toward him, kicking off my stilettos and uncaring of the fine silk of my dress as I joined him on the cold marble. “Brendan.”
He jerked when I touched him. “Simone?”
I slipped one hand around his back and placed the other on his knee, urging him to lean into me. “It’s all right. I’m here.”
“Fuck—fuck.” He sounded like he was in pain, still gasping.
I rubbed his back, guiding him to put his head lower, more toward his knees. “Breathe, sweetie. In three counts, out for four. And again.”
“I—fuck—this family, this life.”
“Don’t talk. Just breathe.”
He tried to follow my orders as I rubbed his back with one hand, helping him through the rhythms of box breaths, just like I’d seen the nurses do with patients panicking when they came out of surgery.
Then, all at once, he lugged me into his lap so I was straddling him just like I had in the back of his car. My dress ripped up one side, and the rest of it bunched around my thighs, but Brendan didn’t seem to notice. And honestly, neither did I.
His arms locked around my waist as he buried his face in my neck and hair and sucked in deep, long breaths. “Fuck,” he kept saying over and over again, even as his breath started to regulate. “Fuck.”
My fingers slipped into his hair, and I combed through it over and over, humming some nameless song my mother once sang to me when I was upset. Brendan wasn’t crying, but somehow this was more vulnerable. His arms were vises, his whole body a quivering mass of tension.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “It’s going to be okay.”
Several moments later, he exhaled one final breath, then managed to pull his head up and look at me. I brushed his hair off his forehead, and with closed eyes, he pressed his face into my palm and sighed.
“It’s a contest.” His voice was quiet but trembling with emotion that I wouldn’t have recognized if not for the remnants of South Boston peeking through his normally polished cadence. “He’s throwing us all into an arena to fight it out.”
I nodded. “I heard.”
“How long were you listening?”
“Long enough.”
His eyes opened, pools of mournful green. Still brooding but oh so sad. My heart broke for him.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I’ve been working so hard. So fuckin’ hard for so long.”
I pushed my hand through his hair again. “I know.”
“And my brothers. Maybe even Shea. They used to know what was going to happen. It was better for them that way. Everyone knew the pecking order. We all knew our places. Now we’re pit bulls in a ring, and he wants us to tear each other apart.”
My heart ached along with him.
“I don’t want to fight them anymore,” he admitted. “I don’t want to fight my family, Simone. I don’t want to be The Black Prince. I don’t want to be like my dad.”
“You’re not like him.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
I continued to finger-comb his hair. He seemed to like it when I did that. “This relationship might be an act, but…I meant what I said in front of your family. You’re a good person, Brendan. You deserve to be happy. Whatever that means.”
He blinked at me. “Do you know, you might be the first person who has ever said that to me?”
I stroked the side of his face, enjoying the roughness of his stubble under my fingertips. His eyes closed again with obvious pleasure.
“Simone,” he whispered. “What are you doing to me?”
I traced the line of his jaw from his chin to his ear. “I don’t know. What am I doing to you?”
Brendan took another deep breath, then exhaled slowly. Then he took my face between his hands like he wanted to look at me close enough to figure me out. Solve the answer to his own question.
“I don’t know,” he repeated. “But I do know that I want to kiss you right now. That would make me happy.”
My mouth fell open, and I was rewarded by a slight dilation in his eyes as they tracked to my bottom lip.
“Please. Not for my father or for an audience or to convince anyone of anything. Let me kiss you because I want to. Let me do it…just for me.”
I should have told him to stop. Should have said the lines were already so blurry between us, and a kiss like that threatened to destroy them completely.
But those fathomless eyes pulled me into their depths, and all I could do was stare. Stare and acknowledge my own need, the desire that had been clawing inside me since our first meeting.
“Okay. Kiss me.”