Chapter 13 #2
The truth washed over him in a slow surge. She doesn’t like the thought of this ending. She might not want to keep them in any real way, but it would hurt her to walk away.
He stroked a hand over her temple without opening his eyes.
It would be so easy to get her to stay. No games.
All he’d have to do is tell her the truth.
I’ve gone and fallen for you, princess. I think we both have.
It would be a long road, but at the end of it, it would be the three of them together.
Theo couldn’t do it.
His wants didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. He wasn’t his own person. He wasn’t free to choose.
That truth had never mattered all that much to him. It was just the way things were. He always knew things with Galen would get complicated, but they’d always been complicated in their own way. That was just another truth he worked around as necessary.
If he wanted to have his cake and eat it, too, he’d convince Galen to marry Meg. Galen was titled, but he had a shit ton more freedom than Theo did. It would tie her to them, would allow them to stay together…
Until Theo married.
He was a lot of things. A cheater wasn’t one of them.
Any woman he married would expect him to be faithful, and rightfully so.
A theoretical wife who didn’t mind that her husband snuck away to fuck his best friend and his wife…
No, it was an impossible dream. One that would turn to ashes if he tried to force it.
That way lay resentment and the fracturing of his and Galen’s relationship, to say nothing of bending Meg until she broke.
Theo could be selfish. Fuck, he was born that way. But this thing between the three of them was too precious to poison with his plans. It would hurt to let Meg go. It might even break something in him.
But he’d do it.
There was no other option.
The next two weeks passed in a blur that consisted of the hum of the car’s engine and the scenery sliding by too fast to really enjoy.
They drove through countries that peppered Meg’s pin board, but the most she got to enjoy them was hitting gas stations and drive-thrus to keep them going.
Galen was too paranoid to let them stay overnight in a hotel, so the only bed she got was an hour here and there when they’d make pitstops to shower.
During those stops, he disappeared to do whatever it was Galen did to keep them safe.
A direct route only should have taken them about twenty hours to make, but something happened between her falling asleep that first time and when she woke up.
The plan changed. The easy camaraderie between them dissolved into tense silence and tenser conversations.
It wasn’t quite hell, but it was definitely hell-adjacent.
She woke to the realization that the car had stopped. When had she fallen asleep? Sometime after they crossed the border into Greece, the lull of Galen’s big body wrapped around her too comfortable to deny. He was gone now.
Meg opened her eyes. She lay across the backseat, her head pillowed on Galen’s jacket. She started to sit up, but stopped when the men’s voices reached her.
Theo cursed. “It doesn’t make any sense. The birth certificate is just a birth certificate. It’s not anything special. There’s no secret clue that’s revealing why Phillip didn’t include it. Maybe it really was that the clinic burned down and he couldn’t be bothered to search a copy out.”
“You’re wrong. It means something. We’ll figure it out.”
“We keep saying that, and we keep fucking up. Phillip is acting erratic and paranoid enough that he might just send someone with a rocket launcher after us if we don’t do him the favor of dying in a so-called accident.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“You aren’t a god, Galen. You can’t control everything, and if you throw yourself in front of a bullet for me, I swear to all that’s holy, I will bring you back to life so I can kill you myself.”
Galen was quiet for a beat. Two. “My life is yours, Theo. It has been since I was sixteen.”
She shouldn’t be listening to this. Eavesdropping when they were withholding information was one thing, but listening in on what was obviously a private conversation was something else altogether.
The raw truth in Galen’s voice tolled through her.
He wouldn’t want that vulnerability witnessed, and he wouldn’t thank her for having done it.
Fuck. She couldn’t sit up now. It would ruin everything.
Theo’s voice moved closer, lower. “Knock that shit off. You don’t owe me shit.”
“Your father was going to send me into exile with them, and you stepped in. Fuck, Theo, that’s a debt I can never repay.”
Theo cursed. “And look where it took you—right into exile with me. Being mine hasn’t done you any favors, so you can climb right off that self-sacrificing cross of yours. My life isn’t worth more than yours. It never was.”
Galen’s parents had been exiled?
Meg obviously needed to up her research game.
She knew about the fallout surrounding Theo’s parents’ marriage, but apparently the political upheaval went back further.
She hadn’t been aware that exile was so commonly used in today’s world.
She sighed. Damn it, what she needed was a week and a computer with good Wi-Fi just to catch up.
Above her head, the car door opened. She rolled carefully onto her back and stared up into Theo and Galen’s faces. “Oh. Hey.”
Galen shook his head. “What did we tell you about eavesdropping?”
She had no self-righteous anger to hold her steady this time. “I woke up and you were talking, and there didn’t seem to be a good time to interrupt.”
“Mmmm.”
“What? You were having a moment. I wasn’t going to be the asshole who ruined the moment.”
“And yet here we are.”
Theo surveyed her. “How are you feeling?”
Surely, he couldn’t mean to have this conversation with her flat on her back and them standing over her?
She struggled into a sitting position. “I’m fine.
” Meg caught sight of impossible bright blue behind them.
She nudged Galen out of the way and her breath caught in her throat. “That’s… That’s the Aegean Sea.”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes burned and she rushed to climb out of the car.
Theo was there with strong hands to help her to her feet, and he held on a few extra moments as if she might topple over.
Maybe she would. Meg couldn’t bring herself to care, not with the sight before her.
She took a cautious step forward, half sure it was a pain-induced mirage that would dissipate if she got too closer.
But no. It was real.
Once upon a time, she’d been infatuated with the idea of living in Greece. It was before the political upheaval and shit in the last ten years, which had dampened her desire to visit but hadn’t managed to remove it from her pin board.
They had parked the car next to a house that looked about as one would expect—very square and very, very white—but never in Meg’s dreams did said house include an infinity pool.
And it certainly didn’t include what appeared to be a private dock into the Aegean itself.
It was all stark low cliffs that the house was built into and the almost painful blue of the water and…
Meg pressed a hand to her mouth. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Arms wrapped around her as Galen came to stand behind her. A few seconds later, one of Theo’s hands settled on her hip, and she knew without looking that he’d taken up position pressed against Galen’s back the same way Galen was pressed against hers.
In that moment they just…were.
There was no future lined with pitfalls and danger. There was no past littered with pain and betrayal and bullshit. It was just the three of them watching the sun creep toward the horizon.
She moved first, turning in Galen’s arms to look up at both of them. “This is your house.”
“This is Galen’s house.”
Galen shrugged. “It used to have something else on this land, but I wanted somewhere private so I had the house built.”
Not just a house he’d purchased, but one he’d picked for himself from the ground up. Meg’s curiosity perked up. She turned to look at it with new eyes. “Show me?”
“Sure.” He led the way around the side of the house and up to the front door. It was bigger than she’d expected, and it looked sturdy enough to repel a small invasion. He keyed in a number into a security pad next to it and pushed it open so she could walk through.
She gave him a look. “Are you sure you don’t want me to hide behind you so you can clear this house?”
“I have cameras set up inside that are linked to my phone. No one’s been here but the maid, and nothing has been messed with.”
“Security systems can be hacked.”
He paused, closed the door, and turned to face her. “You don’t trust me to keep you safe.”
It wasn’t that at all. She didn’t think anyone could have kept her perfectly safe from the odds they faced, not that Galen would ever admit that.
Every time he looked at her, his gaze touched on her arm as if reminding himself how he’d failed her.
He did the same thing to the impressive bruise that had bloomed and faded on Theo’s face.
She glanced at Theo, but he had taken up a perch on the staggered stone wall that seemed designed to keep the steep hill behind the house from toppling the whole building into the sea. There would be no help from there.
Fine.
She lifted her chin. “It was a joke, Galen. People make them sometimes. You make them sometimes.”
“Not about this.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “And to answer your question, no one can fuck with my security system because I have someone who handles it, and they’re one of the best there is. You won’t be hurt again.”
Now they got to the crux of the issue. “My being hurt wasn’t your fault.”
“Wrong, Meg. It is my fault. It’s my job, and I’m trained for it. I should have seen the attack coming and maneuvered to avoid it.”
God, she wanted to shake him until he realized he wasn’t infallible.
“Hmm. In that case, maybe you should just stage a coup of your own. Take over Thalania for Theo since you’re a one-man army who has thought of everything, and who is responsible for everyone.
” She motioned to the rock wall. “Should Theo sit there? Because what if that rock scratches him and you have to go to battle against it, brooding all the while?”
“I protect, baby. It’s what I do.”
“Sounds like you need a hobby.”
He moved toward her, backing her against the door and bracketing her in with his hands on either side of her head. “Sounds like you didn’t learn your lesson before.”
“My lesson was not to eavesdrop. No one ever said anything about having a, gasp, opinion.” She flattened a hand against her chest and gave him her best damsel in distress look.
“Should I go sit over there next to Theo so you can babysit us properly? Maybe you can get us an adult-sized playpen to keep us from getting into trouble since apparently you’re the only one here who is responsible for the lot of us. ”
He cursed long and hard, the gruff tone doing delicious things to her body. “You’re impossible.”
“Only because you know I have a point.” She leaned forward and planted her hands on his chest. Meg couldn’t change Galen, no matter how much she wished she could relieve him of the burden he carried—one just as heavy as Theo’s.
She couldn’t take it from him, but maybe she could convince him to lay it down for a few hours.
She gave him a soft smile. “You won’t believe me that you’re not super human, and I guess that’s something we have to live with. But this is your place and your territory and we’re safe here. Put down the burden for a little while.”
“Don’t coddle me, Meg. I don’t like it.”
She rolled her eyes. “God forbid you actually be human.” She reached up and cupped his jaw. “Show me your house, Galen. Please?” She wanted to get another look at the man beneath the harsh exterior, the one he kept offering tantalizing glimpses of.
And once he relaxed, she’d work on a really effective way of distracting him.