Chapter 21
WREN
F ucking fuck fuck fucksticles.
I have no words for the self-loathing, anger, and all-round disbelief for what just happened.
I drive home in a daze, simultaneously feeling satisfied and disgusted. It churns in my gut.
Flashes of Darcy bent over his desk keep showing up uninvited in my head, and if I thought that’s all I wanted from him, that having him would cure me of this sick lust I have for him, I was fucking wrong.
Because despite being angry at him for keeping this from me, despite still technically being brothers but with no blood relation, I want that to happen again.
We were able to separate emotions from the hot sex in the moment, but now, doing the drive home of shame and realizing we could be Game of Thrones characters, all I feel is … regret.
Maybe I should’ve stayed so we could talk it out, but there was no way. I had to get out of there.
Arriving home, I open the door to find Remy back from his shift at the firehouse. His hours are all over the place, so I haven’t checked in with him for a while, and one look at my face lets him know I messed up.
“What’s wrong?”
I still don’t have the words because how are you supposed to say, “I had sex with my brother who’s not really my brother, and it turns out I was the rightful heir to the MediaCorp company, its shares, the money … it was all supposed to be mine, and Darcy took it from me.”
Oh. I guess exactly like that.
“Holy fuck, Wren. That’s … a lot.”
And as if getting that validation from Remy opens the floodgates, I drop to my knees right here in the entry to my living room.
Remy rushes over and helps me to my feet, but even though he’s a paramedic firefighter, he’s small, and I’m a heavy guy, so it takes a while for us to stumble to the couch.
I’m lead.
I’m sinking while trying to swim against a tide that’s too powerful to fight.
If I thought the identity crisis I went through when I found out who my biological father is was bad, it’s nothing compared to now.
“Wren, it’s okay. It’s?—”
“It’s not okay. I shouldn’t have snooped. I shouldn’t have wanted Darcy so badly that I had to prove we weren’t related. Because now what? Now …”
“Now you dethrone that motherfucker,” my very unhelpful cousin says.
“I don’t want to dethrone him. I don’t want the company. And if it gets out that Darcy isn’t a Ritcherson?—”
“It’ll go to your wicked half brothers, Disphit One and Dipshit Two.”
“Actually, Tobias isn’t so bad now.”
“Good to know.”
“I’m pretty sure he still hates me, but he doesn’t show it as much as Junior.”
Remy smiles.
“What?”
“I think you like being part of that family.”
I go to protest, but I can’t. Because he’s right. Toby’s growing on me, and Darcy … Ergh, I can’t fight what’s between us. Whatever it is.
Lust. Connection. Brotherly … love?
I shudder.
“Okay, I didn’t think you’d react so violently to that,” Remy says.
“It’s not that. It’s that I think you’re right, and sleeping with Darcy has gone and fucked everything up.”
“How?”
“Because … I already said I don’t want the company, and neither of us want Junior to have the company, which means Darcy has to keep up pretenses that he’s Warren’s son. Or he loses everything.”
The anger inside me dims. I know he said that. He said that he has fought his whole life to get where he is on top of the burden of knowing he wasn’t the one who deserved it by birthright.
And how nonsensical is that anyway? Darcy is the right man for the job, regardless of blood.
The whole will and inheritance system is messed up.
“If you two want to be together …”
“It won’t matter. Because it can’t happen.”
“Damn, that sucks.”
Yeah, tell me about it.
* * *
I don’t go into the office the next day. Or the one after that. And other than researching how to fake your own death, get a new face, and pretend to be someone else so you can fuck your brother, I haven’t done much at all.
Just quietly obsessed while trying to distract myself with trashy TV. It hasn’t worked.
I know I’m going to have to face him eventually, but I don’t know what to say, and obviously, neither does he because I haven’t heard from him either. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s run off to London again, and this time, I’m not chasing him.
When a knock comes at my door early Friday afternoon, I assume it’s Remy’s boyfriend because Remy said Sanden would be by before he got home from work and to let him in.
But it’s not Sanden.
My breath catches in my throat when I open the door and find Darcy standing there in his work suit and looking like shit. Can’t say I look any better. I suddenly regret being too depressed to shower because I’m sure I stink.
We don’t speak. Neither of us wants to be the first to crack. But he did take the first step in showing up.
It’s up to me to make this right, but how? It’s an impossible situation, but I’m going to take the next step. I move aside and let him in.
I want to touch him. Reach out and cup his face. Hug him. Do something. But that’s what got us into this mess. So instead, I focus on closing the front door.
“Where do we even start?” I ask with a humorless laugh.
He doesn’t return it. “Maybe we should’ve started by not fucking each other.” Darcy’s eyes widen suddenly, and he glances around, probably worried we’re not alone.
“Remy’s not here, and, uh, he kinda knows anyway.”
“What?” Darcy panics. “He can’t. No one can.”
The urge to reassure him far outweighs my self-restraint, and I touch his arm. “I trust him more than anyone else on this planet. He’s not saying a thing to anyone.”
“If he did?—”
“Both of our lives will implode. I know.”
“We shouldn’t have … I mean, I wanted to, but we shouldn’t have done that. What we did.” He stares at his arm where I’m still gripping him.
I take my hand back. “I know that too.”
Darcy runs his hand through his hair. “What have we gotten ourselves into?”
“A mess therapists would salivate over?”
“I want to laugh. Really, I do, but …”
“Let’s sit down. Talk some shit out.”
Darcy nods, and we move to the living room.
“First though?—”
Darcy flinches.
“What was that flinch for?”
“Oh, I was expecting you to hit me. I deserve it.”
I know where he’s coming from, know this whole situation is messed up, but I hate that he’d ever think I’d do that to him. We’re in a mess neither of us asked for. “No, you don’t.”
His eyebrows shoot up into his hairline.
“I … no, wait, drinks. That was my plan. Sit.” I head to the kitchen and pull out some whiskey and Coke.
He eyes it as I take it over to the coffee table.
“It’s not as high a quality as the stuff you have in your office, but it does the trick.”
I pour him a drink, and he opts for it straight while I at least dilute mine a little. Darcy drinks his down before I’ve even taken a sip. This is going to be messy.
“I thought you’d hate me forever,” he says once he’s swallowed it all.
The memory of him telling me to suck him off is right there in the front of my mind. It’s an uncontrollable thing, and it’s so damn dangerous.
“I thought I would too,” I admit.
“Ever since I found out about us, I feared the day you’d discover who you really were.
Who I really am. And every day since then, guilt has eaten at me.
It’s pushed me to be the best CEO MediaCorp has ever had because I’ve wanted to show the man who raised me, your father, that I was deserving of his love.
That I was deserving of being a Ritcherson in name even if I wasn’t by blood. ”
I sip my drink as I realize the sucky thing. “You did such an amazing job that we’re all screwed now. I’m untrained, unqualified, and I don’t even want to take the company from you, but also … I want to be with you so badly, and it’s killing me that we can’t … it can’t …”
Darcy lowers his head. “It can’t happen again.” He blinks a couple of times, maybe on the verge of tears, and all I want to do is go over to the couch he’s on and hold him. But I stay strong.
“When Father died and you came into our life, it got so much harder to pretend to be someone I’m not. The guilt, the care … everything I didn’t want to feel for you … it hit me like a freight train and flattened me.”
“I think the same freight train hit me too,” I admit.
We meet eyes, that hopeless silence flowing between us again. It’s hard to want each other this much but not be able to do anything about it. We’re both consenting adults with no real reason to stay away. No reason other than a billion-dollar empire, anyway.
An empire that means so much to him.
Not letting ourselves go there again is the right move. It’s smart. Logical. It’s the right thing to do.
Then why does it hurt so fucking much?