Chapter 36
James
Making love to Marc was more than I ever could have imagined.
And that’s exactly what we’d done—made love.
Not fuck, not get off, not even just two consenting adults having sex.
We’d made love, and we’d done so more than once.
I’d known since the beginning that Marc would inevitably break my heart, but as I lay there watching his sweet face, I dared to believe he wouldn’t.
He was kind and sweet and funny. Ridiculous in all the best ways.
I loved how passionate he was about flowers and the shop.
Loved how he did all these small things that to anyone else would probably seem trivial, but they meant the world to me.
I felt seen and appreciated as a person, not as a pawn to be moved across a board.
Then there was the way he looked at me. Like he was seeing through to the heart of what made who I was, and he actually liked what he saw.
Sometimes there was even the sparkle of curiosity in his beautiful hazel eyes with their green ring around the pupil.
Kind of like how he was looking at me now.
“Tell me about your sister,” he said as he repositioned the pillow beneath his head, sheets draped over his waist. “Savannah, right?”
I pulled in a big breath. “Yeah. Sav is… intense.”
He snorted and gave me a look. “Like you and your brother aren’t. Come on, tell me who she is. I’m curious. You have to listen to me go on and on about Alex. Tell me about your sister.”
“I suppose that’s fair.” I trailed my fingers over his ribs, letting his warmth ground me. “The thing is, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“Start by telling me what she does for a living. I know Andy works for a newspaper and is building a career as a murder mystery author. You obviously joined the Army and became a badass, sexy sergeant,” he added with a cheeky grin that made my chest fill with warmth. “What path did she take?”
“I told you before that she took after our dad. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a carbon copy of our mom, but then, so are Andy and I.”
The smile in his eyes as he slid his fingers through my hair then along my cheek made my heart flip. “Your mom must be where you get the freckles and red hair.”
“That she is. My dad… I wouldn’t say he’s a hard man so much as a man who knows what he wants and isn’t afraid to get it.” I could tell what Marc was going to say before he even opened his mouth, so I responded to it first. “Often at the expense of everything and everyone else.”
“Oh,” Marc replied, as understanding shone in his eyes. “I get that.”
“We were never all that close when I was younger, and as I got older, we only grew further apart. When I was fifteen, he tried to get me to take more of an interest in the family business, but I never wanted to be part of the financial world.”
He made a face, scrunching his nose. “I can’t even imagine you in such a stuffy environment every day. Though I bet you clean up real nice in a suit.”
I chuckled and leaned closer to taste his lips. “Damn right I do.”
“I take it Savannah had more of a knack and the disposition for it?” he asked once I settled back.
A laugh burst out of me. “God yes, but in her own words, ‘it wasn’t cutthroat enough and too damn boring.’ She still stays up to date on everything with the firm, and I’m positive she’ll have a role when my father eventually is ready to step down. Until then, she’s off forging her own path.”
Marc’s eyebrows shot up. “Damn, she does sound intense. What’s she doing now?”
“She runs a mergers and acquisitions business. She literally buys up struggling companies and sells them off piece by piece. Occasionally she helps resuscitate a flailing business, but she lives to take down corporations.”
“Hold up, when you say she runs the company…”
“I mean, she got herself hired at one of the most prestigious investment firms, and when she decided they weren’t aggressive enough—I believe the word she used was ‘cowards’—she started her own.
Since then, she’s bought and dismantled that original firm.
” I shook my head at how incredibly fierce she’d become.
He let out a low whistle. “So your family isn’t just fancy, y’all are like…” He made an expression that I assumed translated to ridiculously wealthy, and I barked out a laugh.
“You could say that. The problem is all of that wealth, the connections, the prestige—it comes with a lot of expectations and more baggage than you might think. She fought hard to get where she is, to earn the respect of people twice her age, and I’m unbelievably proud of her.
I just hope that someday she realizes there’s more to life than getting ahead. ”
“Have you told her that?”
I frowned. “Told her what?”
He scooted close enough to lay his hand on my chest. “That you’re proud of her. Andy too, for that matter. I imagine it would mean a lot to both of them.”
I scoffed. “They don’t need or want my approval. Though I did tell Andy I was proud of the role he played in holding the bastards at Ulwich accountable.”
“Permission to say something potentially upsetting?”
Curious, I said, “Granted.”
“From what you’ve said about your dad and since you haven’t really mentioned your mom, I’m assuming that like mine she was equally busy and not around much—”
I grimaced. “Not quite. Our mom—wow, this feels really shitty to say—she’s basically a trophy wife.
Technically, she was around a lot, though she’s involved in so many charities, being around didn’t mean she was available.
For as much as she seems to care about everyone else, I’m not sure she knows how to express affection. ”
He nodded in understanding. “Okay, what I was going to say still stands. Your siblings may not need your approval, but I can almost guarantee they want it anyway.”
“Why would you say that?”
He looked at me without saying anything long enough that I started to get nervous. “Have either of your parents ever expressed pride in anything you or your siblings have done? When you won a lacrosse match? Got a good grade? Anything?”
I thought hard about his question and didn’t like how difficult it was proving, or that nothing really came to mind. I was still struggling to think of a time my parents had expressed pride or even mild approval beyond doing what was expected of us when Marc took my hand and kissed my palm.
“Hey, I didn’t ask to upset you. I was just trying to say that it sounds like you were really the only emotionally available person in your siblings’ lives. It would probably mean a lot to them to know what you think of their accomplishments.”
I let that sink in. While I couldn’t think of a time when our parents had even expressed a vague interest in our pursuits, I could recall dozens of times when Andy or Sav would talk my ear off about whatever they were doing.
That had stopped once they’d been enrolled at their respective schools—Andy to the cesspool of bigotry that was Ulwich Preparatory Academy and Savannah to Chatham Hall.
Part of that undoubtedly fell to not spending nearly as much time together, but the oppressive nature of the schools had also played a major role.
Though I was fairly sure, Sav hadn’t had to endure as much blatant bigotry and bullying that Ulwich Prep had.
Oh, God, and then I’d left the first chance I had.
Abandoned them to fend for themselves with parents who couldn’t be bothered to take a deeper interest in their children’s lives.
To find their own way with no genuine support.
“Hey, hey, hey, what’s going on in your head right now? You look like your thinky thoughts have gotten dark.”
I tugged him close enough for him to rest his head on my chest and wrapped my arms around him.
It wasn’t so much that I was upset—though I was—as I simply needed to hold him.
I’d always known things in my family weren’t great, that we weren’t like other families—normal families.
But I’d never realized how much I’d contributed to that.
For literally the first time, I felt truly awful for the way I’d enlisted and ghosted my entire family.
Now I recognized Andy’s efforts to re-establish a relationship with each other as the herculean task it was.
“Talk to me, James.”
“I left them.”
He lifted his head enough to look at me. “That’s a little extreme.”
“But no less true. I was one of the last people they could turn to for support, and I just… left. Without a word. Without so much as a backward glance.” My chest tightened and my eyes stung as guilt settled into my bones along with a healthy dose of shame.
He rested his head back down, and I held him tighter. “You can’t beat yourself up about the past. All you can do is make sure the future is better. You’re still a good brother.” His whispered words against my chest filled something in me I hadn’t realized was empty.
We lay like that for a few minutes, existing in the quiet between breaths. I eventually loosened my stranglehold on him to rub my hand along his back, which soothed me as much as it seemed to soothe him. When he suddenly spoke, I was surprised to find he hadn’t fallen asleep.
“My father never understood me. Not that he ever tried. He has this image of what it means to be a man, and he’s been pushing it on me my whole life.
” He let out an ironic huff of laughter.
“The funny part is he doesn’t even measure up to those standards himself.
He’s a pudgy accountant with no social life and a receding hairline. ”
“Okay, that is a little funny.”
He leaned up, crossing his arms over my chest and resting his head on them to look me in the eye. “I wish he could’ve seen it that way instead of harping constantly on how ‘real men don’t play with flowers.’”
I sucked my teeth in pained commiseration. “But why the Army?” He didn’t need me to tell him there were literally hundreds of other “masculine” careers that didn’t put his life in jeopardy.