Chapter Theo
Theo
My brother is climbing onto the balcony’s rail. Somewhere below him, a woman is screaming. Is it Penelope? My mother?
I scan the crowd, and it’s only then that I realize—
I’m in Paris, and the screaming is coming from the room beside mine.
I leap off the pull-out and push open Bex’s door. By the time I’m inside, the screaming has stopped and she’s sitting upright—her eyes wide and terrified.
I fall back against the wall, my heart hammering. “Jesus Christ, Bex. I thought someone was attacking you.”
She swallows hard. It takes her a long moment to reply. “That’s completely illogical,” she finally says. “Obviously they’d want to kill you more than me.”
And then she bursts into tears.
I stiffen. Yes, I’ve seen Bex cry before, but this is different. She sounds broken…the way she did that first day I met her. I don’t think she could stop if she tried.
Gingerly, I pick my way toward her. She appears to have shed her clothes en route to the bed. Her shoulders are bare and a bra has been tossed over a chair. So she’s wearing little, if anything, which is not something I should be thinking right now.
I perch on the edge of her bed and pull her against me, grateful she’s holding the sheet to her chest. “It’s okay, Bex. You just had a bad dream.”
She shakes her head to tell me I’m wrong but doesn’t explain. I continue to hold her, my hand pressed to her bare back…another thing I shouldn’t be thinking about.
After a minute or two, she pulls away and wipes her face on the sheet.
I rise from the mattress. “I should—”
“Will you stay?” she asks. Her voice is so quiet and so young, a voice I haven’t heard from her before. Bex loves to make demands, but I’ve never heard her ask. I’ve never heard her vulnerable.
Fuck. It’s a huge bed, but there’s no bed in the world large enough that I should be sharing with her.
“Can you, uh, put on some clothes?”
She glances around the room. “My shirt’s on the floor somewhere.”
I pull my T-shirt overhead and hand it to her. “Here, just wear this.”
Her laugh comes out rusty. “What did I tell you? Slippery slope. First we have to get married, and now you’re sleeping in my bed and taking off clothes. The suggestion that missionary is also necessary is coming in three, two—”
“Bex,” I growl. “Put on the fucking shirt and stop talking, please.”
Because now I’m thinking about Bex in my T-shirt, suggesting missionary, and—
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THAT IS NOT A THOUGHT I NEED IN MY HEAD RIGHT NOW.
She pulls on the shirt and laughs again, more herself. “Sorry.”
She rolls over to the other side of the bed to make room for me.
Gingerly, I slide beneath the sheets, sheets warm from her skin, sheets she was basically naked in.
And she is still wearing far too few clothes, only inches away from me.
I grip myself once, punishingly, as if my dick is an accident-prone kid about to run into the street.
Stay. Behave.
I shove a pillow between us just in case it doesn’t listen after I fall asleep.
“What had you so upset?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Just this nightmare I’ve had since I was little.”
Fiona always wanted to tell me about her dreams, and I wanted to hear nothing less. Even the wilds of her subconscious were not interesting to me, a fact I couldn’t quite admit to myself at the time.
“What was it about?” I prod. I want to know everything about her. Even the things she doesn’t know about herself.
“I’m a kid and someone’s breaking into the house, so my family pushes me into this hole and covers me up,” she says with a hard swallow.
“But once I’m buried, I can hear them upstairs having a little party without me—there was never a burglar.
They just didn’t want me around, and I’m suffocating but they can’t hear me or are just ignoring me.
I think I just never knew if they really cared. ”
There’s this sharp tug in the center of my chest for the adult beside me who has suffered so much in her short life and for the little kid whose stepmother’s cruelty was extreme enough to infiltrate her dreams.
I reach across the pillow and grab her hand. “They adored you, Bex. I promise.”
Her tongue prods her cheek, and she gives a tiny shake of her head.
“You know why I moved to California?” she whispers.
“Because it was easier than the constant reminder that they didn’t want me around when I lived a mile away—catching them all out to dinner without me or swinging by the house only to discover they were having a big family party with Bronwyn and Jessie’s sisters and all the cousins—everyone but me.
Someone was being an asshole recently and said they died to get away from me.
I guess I’ve sort of felt like that too. ” Her voice cracks on that last word.
“Who?” I demand, because I’m going to destroy him. “Who said that? Was it Brian?”
“Caden,” she replies. “He sort of hit on me a few times and it turned ugly after Italy, but he apologized. I think tonight just made me feel like…I don’t know.
Eventually I always discover that the people I like are just putting up with me because they have to, and obviously, this marriage is fake but you not wanting me around made it feel like our friendship was too. ”
My stomach drops.
Caden hurt her, and I’m just as bad. I should have told her I hired Peter. And I should have told him to fuck off when he wanted to meet because he isn’t the person I wanted to spend time with. “It’s complicated, but that wasn’t what happened tonight, I swear.”
Her shoulders rise, a resigned shrug. “It’s fine, Theo. I’m a lot. I’d want to get away from me on occasion, too, if I could figure out how to manage it.”
There is silence for a moment, and my body is leaden. I’ve got to tell her a piece of the truth, even if I don’t want to.
“He’s interested in you,” I say hoarsely. “That’s why I didn’t want you with us. And that’s why I was trying so hard to meet him elsewhere.”
She rolls my way once more. “What?”
“He’s got a crush on you. Peter. Surely you noticed…He’s incredibly obvious. I think it’s the reason he stayed in Paris tonight when he could have gone home this morning.”
Her brow furrows. “But…he knows we’re married.”
Fuck. That’s a whole other story, one I’m not getting into now. “I think he suspects it won’t last and is biding his time. Anyway, that’s why I didn’t want you down there.”
She could easily ask why I care when this thing between us is ostensibly fake, a question I’ve avoided asking myself, but…I’m pretty sure I know the answer.
“You never mentioned he was working for you,” she says. “I tell you everything but it’s like you only reveal what you have to with me.”
“It’s complicated,” I reply.
I can’t keep using that as an excuse, but it is. It’s complicated. My whole fucking life is complicated and getting more so by the minute.
And she’s the most complicated part of all.