Chapter 33
A sliver of sunshine broke through the draperies, warming my shoulder, and Will kissed me on the same spot, waking me. He turned to the nightstand to check the time.
John let out a hangover groan.
“Goddamn it,” Will snapped.
I traced Will’s jawline with my fingertips and urged him to go easy on John.
“He doesn’t know what to do with himself, Will. Show him.”
“He’s softer than we were at that age.”
“Does it really matter?” I asked.
“Yes, it matters. He’s a Hastings.”
“But do you plan to give him the same kind of life you were given?”
The moment Ethan had died, Will became the family patriarch by default, and the Hastings family remained constant in many aristocratic traditions. Not only would Will be the estate’s primary source of support, but also, his decisions would determine how they all would move on.
He hesitated for a minute.
“I want John to have more choices than the rest of us had.”
Some hair fell onto my cheek, and he pushed it away, his tone softening as he went on.
“You see, Elle? I can’t do this without you. Everything about you is lovely, and that makes me want to find something better in myself.”
“That’s a beautiful thing to say, Will.”
“That’s you, baby.”
Losing him still weighed on my mind. I didn’t want to go on without him. I tapped on his chest.
“Do you believe there’s an afterlife, that our souls are eternal, and they go on, still knowing, still feeling? Do you think Ethan will find Isabel?”
“Elle,” he warned.
“Will, but he loved her.”
We would never know their story, only that he loved her.
“Seems he did. He never made a commitment to another woman.”
“When we’re gone, are we going to find each other? I mean, will there be more time for us to be together?”
“Listen, baby. I don’t want to disappoint you, because I don’t quite know what I believe, but you should understand that I don’t subscribe to the idea of heaven and hell. Christ, if there were such places, we certainly wouldn’t be together.”
He lifted my chin with his finger.
“Neither of us is going anywhere. No one can take you from me, and I’ll always come back to you. Rather than wading into philosophical reflection, I need you to trust that…need you to trust me.”
And I had from the minute he pulled me out of that bloodstained foyer in Stonington.
“I do trust you, Will.”
But it was hard to not worry. He was forced to fight assassins, to kill or be killed. And that wasn’t your run-of-the-mill relationship hurdle. It would never be as easy as that for us.
His warm fingers brushed my lips.
“Relationships scare you…I can see it in your eyes. In time, you’ll trust what we have and feel safe with it.”
Then he crushed his mouth against mine, putting a brutal kiss on my lips before he got out of bed and headed for the bathroom. He called out his brother before shutting the door.
“John, you fucked up, little brother. Get your arse up, hydrate, and get to the gym.”
Will’s mood shifted right then as his grief evolved.
John and I immediately understood he would be punished for the whisky binge. I slipped my robe on over my pajamas and got him some water, and he pulled himself upright, grumbling about his heavy head.
Thomas called out from the other side of the bedroom door.
“Will, I’m coming in.”
“He’s in the bathroom, but come in, Thomas,” I said.
He opened the door and Lissie slid down from his back and raced inside.
“She’s been roaming the house, looking for you.”
I caught her, and she hugged my waist.
Thomas looked at his younger brother and shook his head.
“Jesus, John. Don’t do that shit again. He told you to get on to the gym?”
John bobbed his head and gulped down more water.
“How is Mary this morning?” I asked.
Steam and the woody scent of Will’s soap rushed out from the bathroom with him. He wore only a towel wrapped around his hips.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he snapped.
I covered Lissie’s ears in case he cursed more about the growing number of people in his room.
He didn’t. He went into his closet and got dressed, and then when he came back out, he stood there for a minute, staring at the four of us.
I glanced between him and Lissie and his brothers.
No one said anything.
Will sat on the sofa, pulled me down with him, making John move, and then tucked me under his arm. Our eyes met, and I touched his cheek.
We had just shared a glance at our future.
His shoulders relaxed as he exhaled.
“We need to tell her, Elle.”
I had hoped Lissie’s next serious talk would be when we told her Ethan was her father, but instead, she would learn Uncle Ethan was gone.
“Lissie,” I started…
As she often did when her little heart ached, she hid her face, and that was okay. She was only seven, and already she’d lost far more than most people.
She hadn’t spent any time with Ethan, but he’d planned to make that happen after our trip to London. She still felt his loss all the same because it impacted her new family.
I held her and stroked her messy brown hair, waiting for her to come back to us.
Will’s eyes filled with pain again.
He kissed the side of my face and rubbed Lissie’s back. When she reached out for him, surprising us both, he pulled her onto his lap and kissed the top of her head.
“Mum,” Thomas said.
And there, in the open doorway, stood Mary with both hands over her heart as she admired the gentle strength of her three remaining sons.
She met my gaze, and I marveled at the strength in her own eyes. She smiled briefly, but then grief struck her again and washed away her joy.
“Come down, Ellie, and have breakfast today with Mrs. Bates and me.”
Then, as if she’d been an illusion, Mary turned and floated away, the train of her long black robe following behind her.
The men were still in the gym three hours later.
Will trained with both of his brothers at the same time, taking them on and beating them in hand-to-hand combat fighting. His strength was insane.
I’d never seen such power flow from one man.
Ben came up beside me.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“He’s teaching his brothers to respect his authority. Establishing boundaries.”
Will landed a punishing blow to Thomas’s stomach, and I flinched.
As big and strong as Thomas was, he couldn’t yet beat Will.
The fighting itself didn’t shake me, but they went after each other with the same determination as if going after an enemy and that did.
Ben noticed my reaction.
“Ellie, you must learn to accept how things are done here. I don’t mean here, as in England, I mean here, with Will. We were raised to…well, you know what we are.”
I released a heavy breath and nodded.
“I know. I’ll get there. So how has he been this morning?”
“Well, his entire life changed the minute Ethan died, and now he has quite a lot to come to terms with. He’ll be the best leader this family has had. But I warn you, Ellie. I know him, and he’ll be unpredictable until things settle down. So when you take him on, make sure it’s from a position of strength.”
Ben and Will had been trained in the same way by their fathers, both intelligence agents but from different government branches. Both gone.
Will hit John, drawing my attention back to them, and John’s body flew several feet before he landed flat on his back.
“When you’re man enough to handle my whisky, you’ll drink with me, not behind my fucking back,” Will said.
I ran to John and kneeled on the mat beside him. He’d lost the color in his face. The combination of Will’s blow and his back slamming against the mat had knocked the breath out of him.
John dug in his heels and launched himself backward away from me, shaking his head. His refusing my help confused me, but then I got it. Dumbass me. I was only making it worse for him, because Will wouldn’t tolerate one of his brothers accepting help like that…being “soft.”
As painful as it was to leave John alone as he regained his breath, I moved away.
“You will not coddle him,” Will shouted at me.
God, he was magnificent. And different. His sorrow had transformed to anger.
I hooked my hands on my hips and narrowed my eyes as he advanced on me, leaving no space between us, though he didn’t touch me.
“The only thing you’ll find meddling here, woman, is a smacked arse.”
I rose onto my tiptoes, still not even at his eye-level.
“Shall we step out and see?”
I looked at the doors, back to his eyes.
His gaze followed mine, and he grew hard, his erection pushing against my stomach.
“Get out of my gym, witch.”
Will’s words could sound insensitive to people who didn’t know him, but witch wasn’t the same as bitch when he said it to me. In our case, we both knew it meant you own me…everything I have, everything I am, it’s all yours.
I offered him a compassionate smile instead of firing back at him. He didn’t need another sparring partner. He needed me to understand his pain and time to work through losing Ethan.
Regret and sadness filled his eyes. He bent his neck to kiss me. And before moving his mouth away from mine, he told me that he loved me.
I whispered back to him against his lips.
“I know. Me too.”
“Do you need me, baby?”
I kissed him.
“I’m just checking in.”
Not saying a word, he gripped my waist and kissed me again.
“Will, you don’t have to explain to me. Take time to work through this. Feel your anger. Be furious. But please come back to me at the end of each day.”
He nodded. As he turned to go, the softness in his eyes receded, and the same anger I’d seen when I walked in consumed him again.
Crossing the length of the gym floor, I licked my lips, tasting the salt he’d left behind.
A grunt and a thud shot through the rafters. Another thump, a little softer.
I counted to three before looking over my shoulder to find Thomas and John both getting up. Will toweled sweat from his neck, and his gaze followed the movement of my hips as he watched me leave.
I swore his eyes were glowing.
From that moment on, Will distanced himself from me, from everyone, spending his time in the gym or on the phone with his lawyers.
We didn’t make love when he came to my bed that night.
It didn’t matter how hard I pushed him—he didn’t give in. In fact, he threatened to leave the room and sleep on his own.
When I stopped pushing, he locked me in his arms and kissed my temple just as he’d done the night I was attacked, and I understood his rejection had nothing to do with us as a couple.
Will literally fought against the intense anger surging through him by exhausting himself in the gym and by denying sexual intimacy between us—to protect me.
I saw in his eyes how he searched his soul for a way to purge the anger burning him from the inside out.
But it was more than anger. It was rage.