Chapter ThirtySeven
No matter how much I tried to drown out thoughts of Evelyn with cheap bourbon, she was all I could think about. When I closed my eyes, she was all I saw. When I tried to refocus my thoughts on anything else, and I mean fucking anything else, she would come crashing to the forefront.
The time we spent together.
The moments we shared.
I missed her more than I thought humanly possible.
Bourbon scorched the back of my throat, temporarily filling the aching emptiness consuming me.
She told me to leave her alone, and against every single natural instinct, I tried. I really tried. But as the minutes ticked tirelessly by without her, I couldn’t stand it any longer.
I had to see her.
I told myself if I saw her again, if I got my chance to explain everything to her, I’d take it with both hands and run.
Ambushing her was a cheap shot, but I was desperate.
Seeing her again was like catching a glimpse of heaven from the deepest pits of hell.
When the tears stained her cheeks and the aching ripples of heartache pierced her eyes, I knew I’d do anything never to witness her like that again.
It was all my fault.
At the start of our marriage, I tricked myself into believing that she was a mere casualty, a bystander unable to dodge the blast radius, but as time went on and I fell hopelessly in love with her, I didn’t do enough to shield her from the impending danger.
I’d sell my soul to the devil twofold to erase the pain I caused her.
But I was a complete fool for ever allowing myself to love you, and I will never forgive myself for that.
I realized at that moment that letting her go, though I hated it, was the right thing to do. She deserved someone who wouldn’t hurt her. Someone who made her cry with laughter not pain. Someone who didn’t realize they loved her too late.
Alcohol-tinged bile coated my tongue, thinking about her with another man.
“Another.” I raised the empty glass at the bartender. “Double.”
I knocked back the bourbon, the burning long gone, and motioned for another.
Perhaps with enough alcohol, Evelyn’s tears would no longer haunt me.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
Of-fucking-course—because my day couldn’t have gotten even the tiniest bit better.
There was a reason I chose to drink in one of the dingiest dive bars in the city. No music. No talking. No one to annoy me.
Silence and loneliness.
The two things that used to bring me comfort.
Olivier perched himself on the barstool beside me. “That’s your tenth bourbon. Maybe you should slow down? Or I can call you a cab if you want?”
“Thanks maman. I think you’ll find I am perfectly capable of deciding when I’m ready to stop.”
“Is this the plan?” He grabbed my glass before me. “To drink your problems away?”
“It’s cheaper than therapy. Plus, drinking alone usually involves a whole lot less talking.”
Olivier scoffed. “God forbid you talked about what’s wrong with you. I thought you were flying back to Ontario?”
That was the original plan. Get on the next flight out of New York and back to my old life waiting for me.
Stick to the plan we laid out from the beginning.
As Benny drove toward the airport, white-hot pokers lodged themselves in my diaphragm. My skin crawled underneath my clothes, my blood hummed loudly throughout my body with each mile we got closer until even my vision failed me.
Though my mind told me to just get on the plane, my body violently rejected the idea.
Benny quickly turned the car around and took me to a hotel when my panic attack took full flight.
“What are you doing here?” I swerved from his question. “Spying on me?”
“I’m here with a friend.” He motioned to the corner of the bar where a woman sat with a baseball cap hiding her face. “You were too busy throwing your pity party. You didn’t see me when you came in.”
Was it wrong to punch him in public? The bar definitely didn’t strike me as a place that would have cared. The floor was disgusting enough that a mouthful of blood wasn’t going to make a difference.
“Go back to your friend, Olivier.”
“Whatever is going on between you and Evelyn, I am sure you can make it right.”
“It’s none of your concern,” I said firmly. “And even if it was your concern, I tried talking to her and she doesn’t want to hear it. We’re done. It’s over.”
Fuck.
It was over. The words tasted bitter. The bar swirled around me, the ten bourbons suddenly unleashing their fury like a woman scorned.
Olivier frowned. “Was it worth it?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The reason you married her,” he said calmly. “Whatever plan you and Frederic cooked up, was it worth losing her for it? Did you get what you truly wanted in the end?”
My body tensed.
A year ago, I would have paid any price to bring Lexington down because that’s what the young rage-fueled and revenge-driven me believed.
Lexington may have pushed our father toward the path he stumbled down, but it was no one else’s fault that our father blindly followed the road to alcoholism.
He chose to neglect his wife.
He chose to bask in pity and accept defeat.
I guess all it took was falling in love with the daughter of the man I once called my enemy for me to realize that Lexington was as much to blame as my own father was.
“That’s what I thought,” Olivier filled the silence. “I saw how you were with her at Christmas. The way you looked at her, Jax. I mean, you can’t fake that.”
I tried to reach for my drink, grinding my teeth together when he moved it further away. “It doesn’t matter anymore. She’s gone.”
“You love her.” He pinned me with a hard stare. “And for whatever stupid reason, you blew it all away because, let me guess, Frederic?”
Annoying shit. Why was he my favorite brother again?
“It wasn’t just Frederic,” I said tightly. “It may have started out as his idea, but I played my part in it too and didn’t stop until it was too late.”
He sighed heavily. “It’s never too late, not if she is truly what you want.”
“I—” A lump wedged itself painfully in my throat. She was all I wanted, and it scared the living shit out of me. Wanting her, loving her, when she couldn’t even stand to look at me, it was like drinking battery acid. “I hurt her. There’s no coming back from that.”
“You start with apologizing then.”
I scoffed with bitter laughter. “You don’t understand, an apology is pointless. I lied to her for nearly a year. She thought our marriage was for mutually beneficial business reasons when the reality was that I was ripping her father’s business apart from the inside. I was the one who was leaking files.” I slipped my hands through my hair, tugging at the roots to center myself. “I was going to strike the final blow at the right time and leave her father’s business in ashes at her feet. The Reynolds name would be blacklisted, her family’s reputation in tatters. And I’d simply walk away and leave her in the depths of my destruction.”
If anything I said horrified my brother, he didn’t let it show.
“I made her think we were friends,” my voice croaked. “I told her whatever it took at the start to get what I wanted. Hell, I wanted her to love me. I wanted her to make it easier for me. If she loved me, she’d never suspect my true intentions. My own twisted ugliness inside thrived off it.”
I know soon this will be nothing more than a bad dream for you, but I will always be your friend Jaxon.
“And why do all this?” I snapped. “Because of an outdated grudge. Now you look me in the eye and tell me that a ‘I’m sorry’ is really going to cut it.”
Olivier said nothing as he slid the bourbon back to me.
I left it untouched.
I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I spent most of my life protecting Olivier from the darkest sides of me. Frederic relished bringing that side out, but my youngest brother had the natural ability to soften my sharp edges.
“You fucked up,” he finally spoke. “Big time. Like explosively big.”
I rolled my eyes.
“That doesn’t mean you give up,” Olivier stated. “I’ve spent my whole life looking up to you, Jax. You stepped into the dad-role for me when you were still a kid yourself. You made sure I never wanted for anything. You looked after me and I will always be grateful for that. But I’ve watched you glide through your life, not unhappy but not happy either.”
“Your point?”
“Evelyn woke you up. She brought color, life, and happiness into your world, and because of that, I am not going to let you sit here and drink your liver into oblivion.” He knocked the bourbon back and winced. “That’s nasty. How do you drink that?”
I rubbed my hands over my face—fuck, I needed a shave.
“Anyway,” he pushed on. “If you truly love her, which I know you do, and you really want to be with her? Then you fight for it.”
“You say it like it’s easy.”
Olivier grinned. “Never said it was going to be easy, mon frère. It’s going to be one hell of a fight, but she’s worth it. Fight for her. Fight for yourself. Fight until you win or go down swinging.”