7. Lucas
— ? —
Lucas
I get her out before the situation explodes.
She’s shaking against me as I guide her through the service corridor, my arm around her waist, her body trembling with fury and shock. The red dress that made her look like a warrior queen now makes her look like a wound.
We don’t go back to her apartment or mine - too predictable, too easy for Edward or Victoria to track. Instead, I drive us to a hotel on the outskirts of the city, the kind of anonymous business traveler place where no one asks questions and the staff are paid to forget faces.
The suite is bland. Beige walls, industrial carpet, the kind of art that exists only to fill space. But it’s safe, and right now, that’s all that matters.
Lily stands at the window, arms wrapped around herself, staring out at the city lights like they hold answers.
“It’s not true.” Her voice is barely a whisper, ragged at the edges. “What Victoria said. It can’t be true.”
“We’ll find out.” I keep my distance, though everything in me wants to cross the room and pull her close. “Mrs. Reid will know-”
“I can’t wait until morning.” She spins to face me, and I see the panic beneath her composure, the cracks in the armor she’s built over the past week. “If there’s something about my family that could be used against me-”
“Lily.” I catch her arm without thinking, my fingers wrapping around her wrist. Her pulse jumps against my palm, fast and frantic.
She freezes.
“Whatever Victoria’s hiding, it doesn’t change who you are.” I keep my voice steady, willing her to believe me. “It doesn’t change what Edward did. It doesn’t change any of it.”
“Doesn’t it?” Her laugh is hollow, scraped raw. “If my family are monsters, then maybe I deserve-”
“No.” The word comes out sharper than I intended. “Weapons aren’t good or evil. It’s how you use them. Whatever your grandfather did or didn’t do, it doesn’t define you. Your choices define you. And you chose to fight.”
She stares at me. In the low light, her eyes are dark pools I could drown in.
My hand is still on her arm. I should let go. Should step back. Should remember that she’s my brother’s wife - no, not his wife. She was never his wife.
That thought lands differently than it should.
I release her arm. Step back.
“I’ll call Mrs. Reid.”
***
Mrs. Reid calls back at midnight.
“The fire was real,” she says, her voice tinny through the speakerphone. “Thirty years ago, several members of a rival shipping family died in suspicious circumstances. The Maxwell family was accused.”
Lily’s face goes pale under the lamplight.
We’re on opposite ends of the hotel couch, careful not to touch, and the carefulness is its own kind of confession. An hour ago I caught her wrist and neither of us breathed. Now there’s a foot of beige cushion between us that might as well be a live wire.
Mrs. Reid goes on about rival families and old grudges, and this is Lily’s history, the thing that could be used to bury her, and I should be tracking every word. Then I shift to set my phone down and my knee drops into the space between us, an inch from hers, and even that inch carries heat.
Lily’s eyes drop to it. Just for a second. Then snap back up.
“Lily?” Mrs. Reid’s voice sharpens. “Are you still with me?”
“The fire was a setup,” Lily says, dragging her attention back. “The Maxwells were framed.”
I keep my face still, but something in my chest leans toward her anyway. She caught me looking. I caught her looking back. And Mrs. Reid keeps talking like the temperature in this room hasn’t shifted entirely.
“But it was a lie,” Mrs. Reid continues.
“A setup. Their rivals set the fire themselves and spread the story that the Maxwells did it for the money. It worked for a while. Then one of the people they’d paid to lie couldn’t live with it, and the whole thing came apart.
The men who actually lit the match were ruined for it.
But by then the damage to your family’s name was done. ”
“So Victoria’s using a lie,” Lily says slowly. “A rumor that was debunked before I was even born.”
“She’s counting on people not digging deep enough,” I say. “Scandals spread faster than corrections. By the time the truth comes out, the damage is done.”
“Then we need to get ahead of it,” Lily says, her voice hardening into something like steel. “Tell my own story before Victoria tells hers.”
After Mrs. Reid hangs up, we sit in silence. Lily processing. Me trying not to think about how close that bed is.
“How do we do it?” I ask finally. “Get ahead of it?”
“I don’t know yet.” She looks up at me, and something in her expression makes my chest tighten. “But I’m not letting them make me a villain when I was the victim.”
It’s past 1 a.m. Neither of us can sleep.
She’s standing at the window again, staring out at the city lights like they hold answers. I bring her tea - the hotel’s terrible complimentary kind, but it’s hot and it’s something to do with my hands.
Our fingers brush when she takes the cup.
The touch is electric. Brief. Devastating.
“You should rest,” I say.
“So should you.” She doesn’t move from the window. “Why aren’t you?”
I should lie. Should make some excuse about keeping watch or checking emails. Instead, the truth slips out like a confession.
“Because I keep thinking about what would have happened if I’d said something sooner. If I’d told you about Elena before-”
“Lucas.” She sets the tea down. “You’re the only person who’s been honest with me. The only one without an angle.”
“That’s not-”
“Why?” She cuts me off. “Why do you care what happens to me? I’m nobody special. I was just your brother’s convenient prop.”
“You were never nobody.”
The words hang between us, heavy with everything I’m not saying.
She’s standing in the lamplight, her ruined gala dress traded for hotel sweats that somehow make her look more beautiful than any designer gown.
The fabric clings to her hips in a way that shouldn’t be legal.
The neck is too wide, slipping off one shoulder, revealing the curve of collarbone I want to put my mouth on.
Three years. Three years of noticing things like this and forcing myself to look away.
I don’t look away now.
Her throat moves when she swallows. I track the motion like a predator, like I’ve been starving for exactly this, the simple intimacy of watching her exist in a space that isn’t Edward’s.
“You’re staring,” she says.
“I know.” My voice comes out rough. “I can’t stop.”
Her face is scrubbed clean, her hair damp from the shower, and I can see the exhaustion in the shadows under her eyes.
I want to smooth those shadows away with my thumbs. I want to kiss her until she forgets my brother ever existed.
I want-
Stop.
“The first time I saw you smile,” I hear myself say, and I know I should stop, know this will only make things more complicated. “At that engagement party, before everything went wrong - I knew Edward didn’t deserve you. I knew it, and I said nothing, and I’ve hated myself for it every day since.”
She stares at me, her lips parted, her breathing shallow.
“Lucas-”
“I’m not saying this to make you feel obligated. I’m not expecting anything. I just-” I run a hand through my hair, frustrated with my own inability to articulate what’s clawing at my chest. “I need you to know that you mattered. You always mattered. Even when no one was treating you like you did.”
She crosses the room.
I hold my breath as she stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell the hotel shampoo in her hair. Close enough that I can see the way her pulse jumps at the base of her throat.
Her hand rises slowly, trembling slightly, and presses against my chest. Over my heart.
I know she can feel it hammering.
“Tell me to stop,” she whispers. “Tell me this is a bad idea, and I’ll stop.”
I should tell her. I should be the responsible one, the sensible one, the one who protects her from making a choice she’ll regret when the adrenaline fades.
“I can’t.” The words scrape out of my throat. “God help me, I can’t.”
Her fingers curl into my shirt.
The kiss doesn’t start soft.
It starts desperate, three years of want crashing together like waves against rocks. Her mouth opens under mine, and I’m lost, drowning, my hands finding her waist and pulling her closer until there’s no space between us at all.
She makes a sound - half gasp, half whimper - and the noise goes straight to my spine.
“We shouldn’t,” she breathes against my lips. “This is insane.”
“I know.”
“Your brother-”
“Isn’t your husband. Was never your husband.” I tip her chin up, making her look at me. Her eyes are dark, wild, wanting. “You don’t owe him anything. You never did.”
“I know that.” Her hands slide up my chest, over my shoulders, into my hair. “I know that, but-”
I kiss her again, swallowing whatever objection she was going to make. Her back hits the wall, and she gasps, her legs parting to let me closer, and God, the heat of her even through layers of clothing is enough to drive me out of my mind.
She pulls back first, breathing hard, her forehead dropping to mine. We stay like that a moment, both of us shaking with how close we came to not stopping.
“Not like this,” she whispers, though her hands are still fisted in my shirt. “Not tonight. Not with everything still on fire.”
“I know.” I press one last kiss to her hairline and make myself step back, because she’s right, because she’s raw and grieving and I refuse to be one more man who took something from her on a bad night. “When you’re sure. When there’s nothing hanging over us.”
She nods, but her eyes keep drifting to my mouth.
I just hope we both survive long enough to get there.