Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Enzo
I’d come so close to losing it all. For a few seconds there, I had felt it all slipping away.
Rick had brought a thug with him, and my dad seemed determined to give me up to God only knew what.
I was lucky they started trying to convince me to give up with words at first, and that by the time my dad had grabbed me and tried to physically push me at the thug, Shawn was rushing to my rescue.
Shawn and his dad. I was flabbergasted.
“You saved my life,” I panted as we stepped back into the warmth of the Pullman Center. “I can’t believe it, but thank you so much.”
“Why can’t you believe it?” Mr. Wythe asked, glancing around at the curious people waiting in the lobby to be let into the event hall.
We were gaining a lot of attention, so he gestured for Shawn to take me through a side door and into the relative quiet of the event hall itself, Walt and Anthony following us.
“You don’t like me,” I said once we were on the other side of the event hall doors. “You wanted to get rid of me. You even—” I stopped myself, not wanting to blurt out the offer Mr. Wythe had made before, since he had technically saved my life.
The event hall wasn’t empty. The booths were all set up now, and the people who were there to assist with the job fair, the gift giving, and the supper were all running around getting things ready for when the doors opened.
A few people were still putting up Christmas decorations as well.
We stood between a super tall, glittery trees with donated gifts under it and one of the booths for the fair, but I still didn’t really feel the Christmas spirit. Not when my heart was pounding so hard.
“I never said I didn’t like you,” Mr. Wythe said, sending his husband a sideways look, like he knew he would be in trouble if he continued to be a grumpy-ass pill. “I thought you were trying to take advantage of my son, take advantage of my family. I didn’t realize the two of you were bonded.”
I blinked at him, then looked up at Shawn, who still had his arm around me like he would never let me go. As soon as our eyes met, Shawn smiled at me. I felt his joy and his relief and his deep love for me.
I felt them.
“Whoa!” I gasped, breaking into a smile. “How did that happen? When did that happen?” I’d felt it earlier, but not as vividly as I felt it now.
Shawn’s smile tightened for a moment, then resolved into a look of awe. “The bond,” he said, eyes wide. “It’s fully formed all of a sudden. Like really, truly, fully formed.”
Just to test it out, I focused on some deeply sexy thoughts and all the ways I wanted to thank my alpha later for coming to my rescue. Shawn’s face flushed bright red.
Yep, he’d definitely felt that.
“I didn’t see the bond between you before,” Mr. Wythe said, as if he were apologizing.
“I did,” Anthony said, sending his husband a wry look, as if he were always the last person to catch on. He then crossed his arms, narrowed his eyes at Mr. Wythe, and said, “What did you say to Enzo that caused him to step outside and run into those people?”
Mr. Wythe cleared his throat. “It isn’t important.”
“I thought you wanted us to stop keeping secrets,” Anthony said, adding a raised eyebrow to his scolding look.
I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
My observations of Mr. Wythe so far were that he was an arrogant, hard, borderline cruel alpha billionaire who thought he was the king of his own empire.
What I saw in front of me now was an alpha who thought the world of his mate and who melted at even the slightest disapproval.
Maybe Mr. Wythe really meant what he said when he implied he would protect his family and his company with whatever tools he had.
“I offered to pay Enzo if he would go away,” he mumbled, shrinking under his husband’s stare.
“You what?” Shawn nearly exploded.
“Tristan,” Anthony scolded him. “That’s unforgivable.”
“He thought I was just some grifter who was after Shawn’s money,” I stepped in, actually defending the man. “I’m not going to say that didn’t hurt or that I’m not offended, but now that everything is okay, I can totally see that he was just trying to protect his family.”
“You don’t need to protect me like that,” Shawn insisted. “I’m a grown man and an alpha. I love Enzo, and if he’ll have me, I want to marry him and raise a family with him.”
I jerked to face him, trying and failing to hide a smile. “Did you just propose to me by telling off your father?” I asked, doing my best to imitate Anthony’s level of incredulity.
Shawn blushed all over again. “I—oh. Shoot. Sorry.” He cleared his throat, then said, “Enzo, will you marry me?”
I laughed. “You want me to marry into this weird family of yours?”
“Honestly, we’re not that weird,” Anthony said, stepping closer to his husband. “We’re just woefully dysfunctional.”
“You can say that again,” Walt mumbled. He stood slightly to the side with a grimace, a hand on his back and one on his belly, looking supremely uncomfortable. “I need to sit down, but I don’t want to miss any of this.”
I was ready to do something to help, but as it turned out, the alpha in the booth we were standing next to was listening in, whether he should have been or not.
“Here,” he said in a quiet, surprisingly soothing voice, whipping one of the chairs from behind his table and bringing it over for Walt to sit on.
Walt glanced up at him, looking shocked that anyone would help him. His face flushed when he met the alpha’s eyes, then glanced down at his supremely ugly Christmas sweater, then back up at his eyes again. He sat down hard, nearly losing his balance, but the alpha steadied him, his smile growing.
“I’m Brendan,” the alpha said. “Dr. Brendan Trove.”
“You’re a doctor?” Walt asked.
“Psychologist,” the alpha said. “I’m here to share about my counseling services.” He grinned, then added, “You wouldn’t happen to need counseling, would you?”
I nearly laughed out loud. “Yes, he absolutely does. But can we finish the family drama first?”
“Oh. Sorry,” Dr. Brendan Trove said, stepping back to his booth. Once he was there, he held up a business card and showed Walt.
Walt actually smiled back at him, though the expression looked new and fragile for him. I really hoped that we’d just witnessed the beginning of something, because, seriously, Walt deserved to be happy, too.
“So where were we?” I asked, focusing back in on the family drama.
Shawn smiled and pulled me into his arms. “You were about to answer my question about whether you would do me the honor of joining this weird family by marrying me.”
I smiled all over again, feeling warm and happy. “Well, I’m weird, too, so I might as well.”
Shawn laughed. “You could have just said yes,” he said, beaming at me, his eyes shining with love and affection.
“Yes,” I said. “I will marry you, Shawn Wythe.”
“Now that that’s settled,” Mr. Wythe said, smiling gruffly at the two of us, “perhaps we should get on with this event.”
“Not so fast,” Anthony said, holding out a hand to stop him before he could run away from the emotional moment. I was beginning to see that Mr. Wythe didn’t like emotions at all. “You still haven’t apologized for being an ass, Tristan.”
“Me?” Mr. Wythe looked surprised.
Anthony sighed, but took his husband’s hand.
“Life hasn’t been easy for any of us, despite our wealth,” he said.
“I’m not trying to play a game of ‘woe is me’, because I know other people have had things much worse than us,” he looked at me with an apologetic smile, “but we’ve had our scars, too.
We don’t talk much about how your father and I came to be together,” he said, glancing between Shawn and Walt, “but maybe we should have. Maybe we should have told you more about how we were ridiculed and ostracized, and about the conditions our families placed on us so that we could be received back into their homes again.”
“Conditions?” Walt asked incredulously from his chair. “Who would impose conditions on their own children just for being a part of the family?”
Anthony and Mr. Wythe exchanged a look. “It was a different time back then,” Mr. Wythe said.
“I can see that now, see that we’re not in those days anymore.
I…I shouldn’t have been so strict and controlling of you two boys.
I shouldn’t have made you compete against each other in order to achieve excellence.
That was how I was treated by my parents, but that’s no excuse for doing the same for you. ”
There was a cough to the side, and Dr. Brendan Trove murmured, “Generational trauma.”
I grinned a little and leaned into Shawn. “You can say that again,” I mumbled as well.
Funnily, the emotions I felt radiating from Shawn through our new bond were still relief and contentment.
I didn’t feel a lick of resentment or anger from him at all, and it could definitely be argued that he had a right to be furious with his parents for letting their trauma get all over him.
My alpha really was a goody-two-shoes, but I loved him for it.
“I know we’re all motivated to get our emotional baggage out on the table so that we can start healing,” I said, though really, I was barely a part of the family yet, “but we’ve got a Christmas Eve extravaganza to pull off. I say we put our energy into that first.”
“That’s a wonderful idea, Enzo,” Anthony said, smiling at me like I’d just handed him the best Christmas gift of all.
“I’m eager to see if this job fair is a success,” Mr. Wythe said with his usual stiffness. “I still have my doubts, but if the attendees find the whole thing useful, perhaps we could consider offering other improvement services under the umbrella of the Wythe Foundation.”
“That’s a good idea, Dad,” Shawn said, then imitated his father and added, “Well done.”