CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Athan knew she would leave. He could have stopped her. He considered it. But in the end, he thought maybe he should just give up. What had fighting gotten him?
All that fire, all that determination, and it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Let his father be a criminal. Let Constantine kick him out of AC.
Maybe all this time, deep down, he had known. AC didn’t matter as much as he wanted it to. It was Lynna he’d wanted to make things up to.
And he’d finally pushed her and himself to the point where they both had to accept that was impossible. The mistakes he’d made—from childhood on—defined him. Were unforgivable. And he realized fully in this moment, knowing she was gone, that he’d still held out a small kernel of hope that there was forgiveness, absolution to be found.
More fool him.
Eventually he got himself together enough to return to his room, get dressed appropriately, and then texted his assistant to meet him in his library.
There were things that needed to be done, and as much as he might have been happy to let it all go, let it all explode in his face, he would rather go handle his business than sit in his room feeling sorry for himself.
Plenty of time for that later. With a bottle of Scotch to drown it all out.
He went into his library, found himself inexplicably caught in the memory of the way Lynna had swept in their first night here while he’d faced off with Constantine and been…perfect.
Beautiful and savvy, and even though he’d made the mistake of physically lashing out at his father, she had only taken it in stride.
The way she took so much. Too much, likely. Piled on her own shoulders, and he knew better than to want to take the weight off her shoulders. It was there because she wanted it to be.
But he liked to think, sometimes, he’d distracted her from it. Relieved her of it for a time.
What a fictional world you’ve created for yourself , he thought sourly, skirting his desk and sitting down behind it. He’d left most of his belongings at the office, and that was where he should be now, but how could he face it?
When Niko entered, Athan leaped into orders immediately. The sooner he tied up any loose ends, the sooner he could go drink himself into oblivion.
“I will need you to cancel tonight’s dinner. Also, set up a meeting with Ophelia here when she has a moment. Lastly—”
Christos appeared in the doorway. Instead of the normal blank expression, he appeared harried. “Mr. Akakios—”
But a blustering young man pushed past the butler, marching right toward Athan, blue eyes flashing. His security would have intervened, but there was something about the man that had Athan standing as he waved off anyone on his staff who was poised to act on his behalf.
Even as the man—boy?—reared back and punched Athan square in the jaw. “Where is she?” he demanded.
It took a few moments to fully recognize his assailant, to put him in the context of everything that was happening.
“Rhys.” Athan rubbed his jaw. It had been a solid blow. He’d likely had some boxing practice.
Lynna’s brother. All grown-up—or close to it. Nineteen and rangy, angry and determined.
But that did not explain his sudden appearance. “Well, this is quite the unannounced visit.”
“Where is she?” Rhys demanded again, his fists still clenched like he might punch again. “Get my sister in here immediately.”
“She’s gone.” Athan touched his finger to his lip. It came back with a smudge of blood. Fascinating.
“What the hell does that mean?”
Athan studied the youth, trying to make sense of what was happening. Then he decided sense didn’t matter. Why not just lead with the truth.
He was done playing all these foolish Akakios games. He just wanted some…reality.
“Well, she’d had enough of me, and she left. I assume back to London, though it’s possible she went to see your mother. She was upset.”
“Then she would not have gone to Mother,” Rhys muttered. He paced the entry, a whirlwind of energy and emotion.
“While I’ll admit most blows are only my due, to what do I owe the pleasure of this one?”
Rhys whirled on him. “How could you marry her? How could you involve her in any more Akakios bullshit? I don’t know what she was thinking.”
Athan could not quite follow. “That was weeks ago.”
“Yes, and apparently my mother and Lynna did everything they could to hide it from me. I’ve been busy with exams, but once I heard… What was she thinking?”
He clearly asked this of the ether, not Athan himself. It surprised Athan though. Lynna had been adamant about telling the people she loved the truth about their marriage. But she’d kept it altogether from Rhys?
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Rhys demanded, of him this time.
Athan couldn’t say he cared for a teenager demanding things of him. “A great many things, Rhys. None of them any of your business.”
“Lynna is my business, and what she does in her incessant need to make things right for me are my business. What did you promise her? How did you manipulate her? Why can’t you leave my family alone?”
Valid questions, all. And an interesting way of phrasing. Incessant need to make things right. Yes, that was Lynna to a T. Even when she didn’t want to, she seemed unable to let a wrong thing stand.
But the bigger question was why couldn’t Athan leave the Carews alone. And now he knew why, and it had everything to do with Lynna. And very little to do with the boy currently accusing him.
“Sit. Have a drink.”
Rhys eyed the chair, then Athan. There was a clear internal war.
“We will discuss all your questions,” Athan said, moving around his desk and toward the decanter and glasses housed on the counter.
On a huffed-out exhale, Rhys slumped in the chair, suddenly looking much more his age. A little petulant, a lot confused, but plenty of anger and determination still snapping in his blue eyes.
Athan did not think the truth of the matter would stop that anger any, but maybe just like earlier today with Lynna, he wanted to see how far he could push things. Prove that this really was all a mess he could not clean up. So he wouldn’t be so damn determine to try.
He poured them both a drink, handed one of the glasses to Rhys. He took it, seemingly more out of rote manners than any want as he did not take a sip.
Athan did. To fortify himself. To get a head start.
“Your sister agreed to marry me in order to attempt to wrestle control of AC International away from my father. This included a loan payoff for her, a position for you at AC once your studies are complete and a public apology to your father, clearing his name.”
Rhys gaped at him, reminding Athan a bit of a fish.
“Loan. What loan?” the boy finally managed to demand.
Athan considered telling him, but then figured this was a step beyond his place. Though if he stepped out of his place, would Lynna return to yell at him?
That was too tempting, a desperate urge to have her back, and he could not give in to it. Perhaps he was beyond help and forgiveness, but he would not be pathetic .
“Maybe it is your sister you should be asking.”
“Of course it is! But she keeps all of this from me. Treats me like I’m still a baby. She needs to take care of everything herself. And I have tried to tell her, now that I’m older, I don’t need it. But she doesn’t listen.”
Athan heard what he didn’t think even Rhys realized he was doing. Confiding in Athan—though he be the enemy—unloading his burdens and frustrations. Not smart, really, but Athan appreciated it all the same as Rhys continued.
“ I am the man of the house, and she treats me like a…like a fragile pet. So much so that she married you .” Disgust dripped from his enunciation. “Her sworn enemy. All to…take care of everything when she didn’t need to. Why does she do it?”
Rhys was older than the last time Athan had seen him, and he was definitely capable of taking care of some things, but still too young and immature in some ways to carry the whole weight of it.
And so, he was laying it at Athan’s feet, and for a moment Athan felt bowled over that anyone should come to him whether they meant to or not.
“Because she loves you, Rhys.”
Rhys’s gaze was sharp then. Some of that childish bluster tucked away as he straightened in the chair, looked right at Athan. “If she’d talked to me, she would have found that I have no desire to work for the company that killed my father.”
As barbs went, it landed no doubt as the boy had intended. “Companies can’t kill people, Rhys. Only people can. My father and I took care of that.”
Rhys scowled at him, but with a surprising eye roll. “I don’t blame you. Or only you. I don’t even blame your bastard of a father or only him either. My father’s death was caused by an ego failure of every man involved, and I will not repeat history.”
Athan found himself…oddly moved by that. It wasn’t forgiveness , but a dismissal of blame. A failure , yes, but not a murder.
“So I want nothing to do with…” Rhys waved a dismissive hand up and down Athan “…whatever this was. You’ll release her.”
Athan wasn’t keeping her, but he supposed he didn’t need to make that distinction to Rhys just now. “And what of your father’s name?”
“I don’t care about my father’s name. I don’t care about your money or influence. I will build my own, on no one else’s sacrifice.”
Rhys did not say this with bitterness, but because Aled Carew’s name meant so much to Lynna, it was a shock, and a painful one, to hear Rhys dismiss their father’s legacy so simply.
“Your father was a good man. A good father.”
“I know. Lynna has made certain I know. But he was not a good father to her in his final days. Or the good husband he’d been to my mother. They think I was too young to understand, and maybe in some ways I was, but I have seen it clearly since. Lynna idolized him. And even in his final mistakes, he was not a bad man. But he had failed her. At, I think, the worst time.”
Athan could not help but think how adamant she’d been today. That he’d been a boy. That his parents had failed him. He knew she had not wanted to absolve him of anything ever, but her sense of fairness had not allowed for anything else.
Maybe she had balked at the comparison of his parents to hers, and maybe it hadn’t been fully fair, but it was not… unfair . It was not wrong . Lynna had been failed.
If her brother would say it, how could he think differently?
“When my father died,” Rhys continued, “I was too young. To understand, to feel betrayed. Mother and Lynna had to deal with the reality of not just losing someone they loved but losing their image of him. I only lost a father. They lost…a world.”
It was very thoughtful and insightful for a nineteen-year-old. “Lynna mentioned you were brilliant.”
His grin was a flash, quick and handsome. No doubt on the cusp of devastating once he grew into his shoulders, his face. “I cannot disagree.” Then the smile died and he sighed. “I care nothing for the past you’re all embroiled in. So I came here to tell Lynna that. To stop this ridiculousness and divorce you immediately. Since she isn’t here, I’ll tell you. It ends. Now.”
Athan felt an odd twin surge of emotion—on opposite ends of a spectrum. On the one hand, no one ordered him around. Rhys did not get to swoop in and end things—regardless of whether Lynna and he had done that already.
But there was a little swell of something like pride or relief, that Lynna did have someone in her corner willing to fight for her. Even if it was a bit too late for all this bluster.
“I am afraid that what Lynna decides to do is up to her. But if it comforts you any, she has left despite the fact that I find myself desperately in love with her. And as she will never forgive me, or even have a discussion about the emotion, I will likely spend the rest of my days a failed lovesick moron.”
Rhys straightened a little, studied Athan as if he wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. “That all sounds a bit dramatic.”
“It feels it.”
Rhys studied him with narrowed eyes, but some consideration in his expression. “What would an Akakios know of love?”
“Nothing, I assure you. I’m as surprised as anyone. Well, except perhaps your sister. She didn’t take such confessions well.”
Rhys snorted. “She wouldn’t. Nor would she appreciate dramatics.”
“No, indeed.”
But Rhys did not stand to leave. He did not say good riddance. He sat in the chair and studied Athan with surprisingly empathetic eyes.
“She gets her way because she stonewalls every other way out. She controls things because she’s had to, and now she’s afraid to let go.”
Afraid . Athan blinked at that word. Lynna did not appear to be afraid of anything. Ever. She had always stood her ground. Maybe she pushed certain things away, but…
No, not just pushed. She had run away from him. Not because he’d done anything terrible. But because she hadn’t wanted to hear his words. She hadn’t wanted to have a rather simple conversation, all in all, because it involved feelings. Complicated ones. Grief—that pointless emotion as she’d once called it.
She’d always held her own in a fight. Snapped back with barbs equal to the task. But when it came to the soft, she fled. Time and time again.
This was a revelation, but it did not change the bottom line. Athan looked at his desk, unable to meet Rhys’s blue gaze any longer. “She will never forgive me,” he muttered.
“Maybe. Does that change how you feel though?”
“Not me, no,” Athan agreed. “But one doesn’t simply…bully their way into a relationship, Rhys. I hope that is something someone has taught you along the way.”
Again, the boy rolled his eyes. “Of course, but you’re missing the point. One of Lynna’s very adamant lessons is that we must do the thing regardless of how we feel. I happen to think she’s taken it to extremes, but I give her leeway as she’s taken so much on her shoulders. You, on the other hand, have no leeway. So, you must do what needs doing regardless.”
“And what needs doing, pray tell?”
Rhys shrugged. “ That is up to you.”
Athan had spent every moment since he had witnessed Lynna crying at a funeral making decisions that were up to him and only him. Every plan, every retaliation against his father, every step had been his.
Was he really so ineffectual as to give it all up simply because he’d realized why , and his why of loving her didn’t matter because she didn’t love him back?
But she had come to his bed. She had let him touch her with all that soft vulnerability she was so afraid of. Maybe there was no forgiveness, but maybe there was love. Maybe there was something.
Maybe…
Athan studied Rhys. Up to him? Maybe it was time to make some changes. “Perhaps it will be up to us.”
“Us?”
The idea began to form, like all the best ones did. Quick and on the fly, with nothing but obstacles in the way. “I’d like you to come with me.”
Rhys frowned suspiciously. “Where?”
“London.”
“Why?”
“I think I have a plan for you, Rhys Carew. Are you man enough to find out if you’re up for it?”
* * *
Lynna had arrived at her flat in London in a cold, dark drizzle. Fitting. Everything felt cold and dark and a little too oppressive, but she’d been exhausted enough to fall into her bed and go to sleep.
Not for long. She awoke when it was still dark, far too early in the morning, and couldn’t go back to sleep.
Athan’s words haunted her. It was like he was here, whispering the same thing to her over and over again.
I love you, Lynna.
Why would he say such a thing? Why would he think such a thing? She wanted to believe it another manipulation. A betrayal. She would be falling for the same tricks her father had fallen for if she believed him.
But…
Athan was not Constantine. He never had been.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lynna told herself, out loud, so she’d be more inclined to take it on board.
She tried to distract herself by making an elaborate breakfast, and it worked for a time. Until she got to plating, and realized she’d been thinking of a breakfast for two.
She ate two bites, then threw the rest away. A waste, she knew, but she couldn’t talk herself out of it. She’d never be able to eat it without feeling now.
She needed work. Real work. She’d go into the office, get some accounting done and try to set up her next destination job. Somewhere far away. Maybe she could go to Los Angeles. Tokyo. Somewhere, anywhere outside of Europe.
It was still early when she headed into the office. Even if one of her friends came in today, it wouldn’t be so early. As they so often worked remote, the office was just a home base of sorts. It wasn’t rare that they were all there together, but it was getting to be more so with Auggie and Maude involved in whole other lives besides just their work now.
So she was more than a little shocked to walk into the offices, very early, and find all three of her friends there. Sitting in the cozy little main room, almost as if they were waiting for her.
She closed the door behind her, studied them. “What are you all doing here?”
“When you texted you were coming back to London yesterday, we knew something was wrong,” Auggie said. “So, we figured you’d be in early.”
“Nothing is wrong.”
“You look terrible.”
Lynna didn’t bother to make a face at Irinka. “Are you guys hungry? I could whip us up some breakfast.”
It wasn’t likely there was much in their kitchenette, but she’d find a way, she decided. She strode into the room, all of her friends trailing after her even though there wasn’t really the space in the kitchenette for the four of them.
“What’s going on, Lynna?”
“In what regard?”
“In the regard that you married Athan Akakios. There were pregnancy rumors about you in the press . We barely heard from you for weeks. And now, with very little warning, you’re back, sans your husband.”
“It’s very simple. The arrangement no longer suited, so I came home.” She opened the little pantry. There was some pancake mix, but unless someone had stocked the fridge in her absence, no milk or eggs to go with it. Could she manage from scratch?
“It doesn’t seem all that simple.”
She moved to the refrigerator. “Why not? I’m back at work.” No milk. What were her other options?
“Well, you have a tendency to panic cook for a crowd when something is wrong,” Auggie said.
“In other words, you like shoving food in people’s faces so they can’t talk to you,” Irinka added.
Lynna looked at none of them. “I’ll run to the store. Pick up some things.” But when she turned to the exit, all three of her friends were standing next to each other, blocking the doorway. She managed to keep her expression bland. “What are you wanting from me, ladies?”
“The truth,” Auggie said earnestly.
“The truth is as I said. Athan could not uphold the terms of our deal. He wanted…” Lynna hated that she faltered. “It was too complicated. He was…confusing things.”
“What things?”
“All the things!” Lynna almost shouted, but she held herself back at the last minute. She straightened, focused. “It was ridiculous. I don’t know what game he was playing. I don’t know what I was thinking letting him touch me, but it’s over now.”
“So you did sleep with him,” Maude said, as if that had been a very involved discussion somewhere along the line.
She wasn’t going to think about it. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I mean, historically picky Lynna takes a lover kind of does matter,” Irinka pointed out.
“I assure you, it does not,” she said, adopting her haughtiest and most don’t touch this subject with a ten-foot pole tone. “He was complicating things. I did not want to. So I left.”
There was a beat of silence, but still her friends did not move.
“Did you fall in love with him, Lynna?” Auggie asked gently.
Love? Why was everyone so suddenly concerned with love ? She scoffed. “How could I love him? He betrayed my family. He all but killed my father. Purposefully destroyed his legacy. How can you even ask me that?”
“That didn’t answer my question. Do you love him?”
Lynna shook her head. Her throat was almost too tight to speak, but she had to. “I don’t want to.”
“Still not an actual answer,” Maude said, but not without a gentleness to her tone.
A gentleness Lynna wanted nothing to do with. “What the hell do you want me to say?”
“The truth,” the three of them said in unison.
“He ruined my father’s life. On purpose.” She remembered him as he was. So cocky and arrogant. So like his father. But there had always been a warmth in Athan. A kindness Constantine did not have. Even her father had seen that, though he’d never counted it as a mark against Constantine. Only a positive for Athan.
Because he’d seen them both as two separate people, instead of one Akakios conglomeration. Before.
Before.
“Lynna. Buck up, now,” Maude said brusquely. “It isn’t like you to ignore the truth of a matter.”
But emotions weren’t truths. They were weapons. They upended everything. She couldn’t stand the thought of being upended again.
But aren’t you anyway?
No. Because she had her work and her family. And maybe everything about Athan made her feel turned inside out, but she wasn’t upended . She was a little frazzled, but not…
The doorbell to the office rang out loud in the silence.
“I’ll get it.” Irinka disappeared and Lynna tried to get her wits about her. She wasn’t going to think about love. She wasn’t going to be interrogated by her friends.
She knew what she’d promised herself, what needed to be done, and none of it could be derailed by something as stupid and pointless and painful as love.
Particularly loving an imperfect man.
When Irinka returned, she was not alone. But Lynna could only stare at the man next to her. How much older he somehow looked than the last time she’d seen him—only a few months ago. These teenage years seemed to go by in blinks while her brother turned into a man with every one.
There was always a pang of pain and pride at that, how quick the time stamped itself across her little brother. Who was no longer little and far too close to adulthood for her liking.
But not yet.
“Rhys. What are you doing here?” A horrible thought gripped her. “Is everything all right? Mother—”
“Mother is fine. Athan brought me.”
“Athan…” And then there he was. Standing behind Rhys. This man who’d upended her life. Upended her soul . With her brother. But… “What’s happened to you?” she demanded of Athan, noting the faint smudge of a bruise on his jaw.
“A gift from your brother,” he offered.
Too many things jangled inside of her. She wanted to scold Rhys. Touch Athan’s bruise. Run far, far away. Again.
“Don’t worry,” Rhys said. “We made amends on the flight over.”
Amends. Amends. What the hell was Rhys thinking? What did Athan think he was doing? “You shouldn’t be here,” she said firmly to Athan. “I told you—”
“And I told you I love you. Which I have come to determine trumps everything you told me, since none of it was true.”
“Maybe we should go,” Auggie whispered, but Athan must have heard because his gaze flicked to her for only a second.
“No need. I do not mind an audience,” Athan said, all arrogance and certainty that had Lynna…off-kilter. Panicked.
When she never panicked. She was in charge. She decided.
But Athan kept talking. “In fact, I think with someone as stubborn as Lynna, I should need it. So when she inevitably changes her mind—”
“I am not stubborn . No more so than—”
“—she will have people to remind her what happened here.”
“Nothing is happening here,” she snapped, panic and something she didn’t want to analyze having a battle in her chest. “My brother has taken a leave of his senses, and we shall put them to rights. Athan, you may go. Rhys—”
“May I?” he returned silkily.
She ignored him and focused on Rhys. Who should be at school in Greece . “I don’t know what you’re thinking making some kind of pact with the devil—”
“ You married him, Lynna,” Rhys said with a shrug that was too much like Athan. “What does that say about your decision-making?”
She whirled on Athan, feeling more and more like she was losing a grip on something. Something she needed. “You have gone and turned my brother against me as if that will somehow get you whatever it is you want? It won’t.”
“Actually, I came to him.”
She looked from Athan to Rhys, tried to find some solid ground. “What?”
“Granted, I came to him to find you , and tell you what a mistake you were making dealing with an Akakios, and how I don’t need you sacrificing yourself for me. But since he was there, I told him the same.”
“We came up with an alternate plan,” Athan offered. “One that serves all of us. Or could, if you weren’t so stubborn.”
She was both incandescent with rage, and something else. Something far more terrifying. A twisting, growing thing deep inside of her that she could not get a handle on. Could not set aside.
She wanted to throw her arms around him and hold on for dear life. She wanted alternative plans and going back to Greece and all the things it was not smart to have.
She had to be smart. Everything was up to her. She gathered herself as best she could and looked at her friends. “I want you all to leave.” She looked at Rhys too. “I need to speak with Athan alone.”
There was a lot of silent exchanging of glances, but in the end Auggie managed to corral everyone out of the kitchenette so it was only Lynna and Athan.
Lynna made sure there was as much space between them in the small space as possible. “What is this?”
“It is me fighting for you, Lynna. I know that’s hard for you, but I think it might be necessary.”
“No one needs to fight for me.”
“Not your friends? Not your brother?”
She was silent. She knew they would , but that didn’t mean she wanted it.
“We all love you.”
“Stop saying that!” she shouted. And it was a shout, and the tears were threatening. It had been so long since she’d cried before last night, and ever since making her deal with Athan everything had been so tenuous. Too tenuous.
She turned away from him. She’d rather die than have him see her cry.
“Why should I stop saying it?” Athan asked gently. And she felt him come up behind her. She could have moved. She could have stopped him.
But she let him put his arm around her, pull her against him. If she leaned… Wouldn’t everything fall apart? And still, she couldn’t seem to stop herself. He rested his chin on her head and she felt like she could breathe for the first time in too long.
“I have made mistakes,” Athan said quietly. “I will always regret them, but I have also learned from them. I have changed who I am. If I could go back and change what I’ve done, I would. But since I cannot, I must make the best of what’s left.”
“There’s nothing left,” she whispered.
“You. You are the best of everything. And you are here, as am I.”
A tear slipped over, and she held herself very still. Maybe he wouldn’t see. Maybe he wouldn’t notice.
“Perhaps I have nothing to offer you—”
She whirled to face him then. How could this arrogant man so consistently undermine himself? “You are clever and funny and kind, in spite of yourself. And—”
His grin spread. “And you are too quick to defend me in spite of yourself, latria mu . I do not know that I deserve it, but I want it.”
“Athan.”
He reached out, brushed the tear off her cheek. “And I think, once you get passed your fear, you will find you want it to.”
“I am not afraid. I am exhausted . I am tired of fighting so hard.”
“Then stop. You do not need to fight. I will fight for you. Alongside you.”
She wanted to believe him. The yearning for that release was so sharp in her chest, she could scarcely breathe around it. But… But… How did she believe in this? How did she let these feelings win when she knew how dangerous they could be?
“My father loved you, you and your father.”
Athan nodded, and she could see the hurt in his gaze, hated that she put it there.
“And we betrayed him. I cannot argue with you. Perhaps you can never forgive me for my role in that. I would hate this, but I could understand, I could accept. If you told me you do not, could not love me, I will accept it. This has always been your choice.”
She wanted to. Wanted to find the words. She didn’t want to determine if they were true. She didn’t want to understand her feelings.
But he said one last thing, one last thing that upended everything that she’d so desperately been holding on to.
“Choose me, Lynna. I cannot change what I have done, I cannot fix the past, but I can build us a future. All of us. You and me, your family. I promise, I would do everything in my power to make it right.”
Six years ago, she had stood in front of her father and begged him to stop. Begged him to choose his family instead of his revenge. The people who loved him, instead of the people who didn’t.
Choose us.
He had refused.
He had died.
If she lied, if she turned away from Athan, would it eat her whole? Would she be making her father’s mistakes? Would she become him? Would she be ruining a future all because of their past?
The answer was simple. She could keep running from it, but that wouldn’t take it away. As Athan had once told her, no matter how she boxed it up, it was still there.
So maybe the lesson was to deal with it. To take it out and feel it. Choose the people who loved her—perfectly or not.
“I will still work,” she rasped out.
He was so still. So careful, and he studied her with that gaze that reminded her too much of yesterday, when it had seemed as if his mother’s betrayal had made him fragile.
He wasn’t. He was here. But still, she couldn’t stand to be the thing that made him careful. Not anymore. “And I think we should live in Athens,” she continued. “If I am to choose you, if we are to stay married, that is the house to do it in.”
“Are we to stay married, omorfiá mou ?”
“Naturally,” she returned, meeting his gaze and studying his beautiful face. It seemed surreal to end up here, but here she was, and wasn’t she an expert at making the best of her situation?
Maybe she was afraid, but she had been afraid for so many years now. She had survived. Helped build a business. Kept her family afloat. And now here was someone who wanted to add to that, support that, be her partner in that.
It would be stupid to ignore that because she was afraid of everything she felt, everything she’d been through.
“I love you, Athan.”
He enveloped her in a hug, hard and with a relief she felt wash over her too. All that tension, all that fight , for what? When this was what was waiting for her?
It wouldn’t be easy or simple, but it would be right. It would be…a partnership. Where they each carried some of the weight, instead of her insisting it only be on her shoulders.
“Come home with me, Lynna,” he murmured into her ear. “We’ll stop fighting the past. We will build a future. Forget AC International. Forget Constantine. It will be us.”
Lynna let out a long, steadying breath. Us. Future. Yes, that was exactly what she wanted. It was exactly what they’d have.