Chapter 17
JANE
Ididn’t say it out loud, but I knew exactly why I hadn’t protested when Alex had effectively kidnapped me tonight.
I knew why I hadn’t pushed back when he’d walked me into his apartment, pressed a loose, worn-in T-shirt from his college days and a pair of sweatpants into my hands, and left me standing in his bedroom to change out of my gown like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I also knew why my chest had tightened when he’d left to give me privacy, only returning to change once I’d left the room.
Now, I was curled on one side of his impossibly expensive couch in his sunken living room overlooking the lake, my legs tucked beneath me, a heavy glass of wine that was already halfway gone in my hand.
Across from me, Alex mirrored my posture. His long, sweatpants-clad legs stretched out on the coffee table and a tumbler of scotch rested loosely in his fingers. I’d watched him pour it. It was the unaffordable kind, the type people drank to feel, not to forget.
City lights glittered below us and the lake beyond that, dark and endless except for the silvery reflection of the moon on the swells.
Willingly lulled into feeling like this was real, like we had some kind of connection that actually meant something, I looked over at him and came straight out with the question that had been burning right at the front of my brain ever since it’d happened.
“Why did you kiss me?” I asked.
Alex didn’t hesitate. He tilted his glass back, swallowed, and gave me a simple answer. “Because you’re my wife.”
That was it. No qualifiers. No apology. Just a fact. But something about that fact made it feel like the air was suddenly crackling between us.
The tension wasn’t entirely sexual but it was still charged.
Humming. From my side, at least, there was a definite undercurrent of desire to it.
I couldn’t deny that anymore. My husband was objectively gorgeous, but more than that, he was sexy, and the way he’d stepped up for me tonight like no one ever had definitely hadn’t been a turn-off.
But at the same time, Alex wasn’t looking at me right now like he wanted to devour me.
Regrettably, but absolutely for the better, his expression was one of steely understanding.
I saw it plainly in his eyes when he stood, not asking if I wanted more but coming back with the bottle of wine and the scotch, topping both of us off.
Deliberate. Equal.
We were getting drunk. Together. Loosening up as a couple after I’d listened to my family get dragged through polite laughter and clinking glasses.
Usually, I was the one doing the saving, but tonight, he’d swept in like a knight in shining armor and the fact that he had, without asking and without hesitation, had hit me right in the heart.
“Are you doing okay?” he asked as he sat back down. “You’re suddenly really quiet.”
I stared back at him, looking deep into those devastating eyes, and then, I did something I’d never done before. I told him everything.
“I didn’t grow up the way people think,” I said, staring into my glass.
“Not really. I’ve told you this part before, but my parents were…
absent. Physically there sometimes, sure, but emotionally checked out.
What I didn’t tell you was that my father had a long-standing affair.
It lasted for years. Everyone knew. I’m sure even my mother did. ”
Alex didn’t interrupt, just watching me with his jaw set and his attention absolute.
“She didn’t do anything about it,” I said quietly.
“Nothing to protect herself. Or to protect us. When his fraud went public and everything imploded, she just disappeared into herself. She was sheltered her entire life, you know? She had money. Connections. Staff. When that was all gone, she didn’t know how to exist in the real world. ”
I swallowed past the lump of bitter emotion forming in my throat. “So I picked up the pieces. I had to.”
Alex’s fingers tightened slightly around his glass, but he still didn’t interrupt. I let out a long sigh, running my fingers through my hair and inspecting the ends just to have an excuse not to look at him for a moment.
“My brothers don’t see me as a sister,” I explained. “I’m more of a mom to them. Always have been. Colin is the exception. He’s the only one I feel like I’ve had any real sibling relationship with. Someone I could lean on and who could lean on me.”
I laughed then, but the sound was short and humorless. “It turned out even that cost me.”
Alex leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees as his head tilted. “How?”
“I bullied the board into appointing him as CFO,” I said. “I had to. I needed someone I could trust, but they never forgave me for it.”
His expression darkened like he already knew what was coming, but I said it anyway.
“I ignored offers from all over. Google. Microsoft. Apple. They were good offers, too. Executive roles. I didn’t take any of them because I believed the board when they told me I was their next CEO.
I thought if I just worked harder, proved myself, and kept the company alive long enough, they’d do the right thing.
” I looked up at him again then. “Obviously, they didn’t. ”
Alex’s jaw clenched. “Fuckers.”
“Instead, they gave it to my uncle,” I said. “A man I’d met maybe twice and whose only credential is a high school diploma he only earned because my grandfather donated enough money to make his failing grades disappear.”
Silence stretched between us in the aftermath of the confession, but even then, I wasn’t done yet. “I worked so hard. I did everything I could to save my family. Our name. Our reputation. And I kind of did. I managed it. Barely, but I did.”
I gestured vaguely toward the windows and the night outside. “I thought that by now, so many years later, people would’ve moved on, but tonight…”
My voice faltered, but Alex finished for me when I couldn’t. “Tonight hurt.”
I nodded, my voice still catching when I finally managed to force myself to speak again. “And now, you’re part of my mess.”
I took a sip of my wine, and when I looked at him again, he was closer.
His hand rested warm and solid on my thigh, his fingers relaxed like they’d always belonged there.
He was staring into the gas-powered fireplace, the blue-orange flames reflecting faintly in his eyes, listening in that quiet, focused way that made it impossible to pretend he hadn’t heard every word I’d said.
Heard it. Absorbed it. Filed it away. I was still mid-thought about what a good listener he was when he did something unexpected—and a little odd. He stood without explanation or comment, just rising from the couch and disappearing down the hall.
For a brief, ridiculous second, I wondered if I’d crossed some invisible line. Trauma dumped too hard and said too much.
I stared into my wine, bracing myself for the sting of being politely managed, but he came back holding a Scrabble box and my eyebrows shot up. “Oh.”
He set it on the table, sat down directly beside me, so close our thighs touched, and began opening it like this was the most normal next step in the world. “I figured we needed something to do with our hands.”
Laughter slipped out before I could stop it. Again. For a guy who often came across as serious, he really was pretty freaking sharp. “That’s fair, I guess.”
We set the board up on the low coffee table, our knees knocking as we shifted. Now that he was back, his hand was on my thigh again and he didn’t move it away. If anything, his thumb pressed into me a little as if he knew I needed the pressure to feel steady right now.
As he arranged the tiles on his rack, he suddenly started talking, his voice quiet but sure. “My mom’s name was Rochelle.”
I looked at him, shocked that he was talking about her. Although he’d mentioned her briefly in the past, it was an open secret that none of the Westwood boys ever really told her story.
“Charlotte was so young when she died and I just… left,” he said slowly.
“At the time, I thought I was protecting everyone by getting out of the way. One less person for everyone to worry about, you know. I went to Texas first, then to California, and then, eventually, I came back home. By then, it was too late for her. She’d already learned how to be alone. The damage was done.”
I swallowed hard, wanting to say so many things to defend him even from his own thoughts, but then I remembered how he’d shut up and just let me talk, so I swallowed it all down and just listened.
“My brothers were too young to understand what was happening. Douglas was barely functioning. He was drowning but pretending he wasn’t. Charlotte lost the only woman in the family she could lean on.” He exhaled through his nose. “And I was gone.”
The fire crackled softly, both of us staring at the flickering flames for a moment until he glanced at me again. “Unlike you, who stepped in and became everything for everyone, I ran.”
“That doesn’t make you weak,” I said without thinking.
“No, but it does make me responsible for what she went through. Hell, for what they all went through.”
He leaned back slightly, the corner of his mouth tugging into a smile that wasn’t amused so much as self-aware and rueful.
“The social circles we grew up in dubbed me the missing Westwood prince. When I finally surfaced and started making some noise in business, my skill and leadership didn’t matter. Only the gossip did.”
I scoffed softly. “Of course.”
“You know how our world works,” he said, placing a tile on the board. “When you have too much money and no real issues, being in everyone else’s lives becomes a pastime.”
I stared at the board. At his hands and the way his fingers were large but his movements so precise, like he was incapable of doing anything carelessly.
“How’d you manage to become what you are today?” I asked. “The CEO. The big brother they all lean on and respect?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he hesitated, then spelled out a word.
LOVE.
It wasn’t worth many points. Hardly any at all, actually.
“The CEO? Dumb luck made me that,” he said. “It was a fluke.”
I snorted. “You don’t strike me as a fluke.”
“Maybe not, but the fact I was born first was.” He finally looked up, meeting my eyes with a glint of determination in those dark green depths of his.
“Either way, there’s one thing I know for sure and it still stands.
It always will. Nobody messes with the Westwoods and gets away with it, and that includes you now. ”
Although I knew it was only true in technical terms, it still settled something in my chest to know he really did think of me as family now. If nothing else, for as long as we were married, he’d proven that he would protect me.
That mattered, the knowledge coating my insides like a balm. After years of doing the protecting, I wasn’t mad about having someone watch my back for a change.
We kept playing, and at some point, between his careful, thoughtful turns and my increasingly ruthless ones, I found myself smiling without effort. Teasing him when he complained about vowels. Watching the way his eyebrows furrowed like it was a personal betrayal when I dropped a triple-word score.
“You’re enjoying this far too much,” he said.
“What can I say?” I smirked. “I’m competitive.”
That was an understatement, but by the end of the game, I’d absolutely mopped the floor with him. He stared at the board, then at me, then leaned back with a low laugh. “I married a monster.”
“Careful,” I said sweetly. “I might just challenge you to a rematch.”
He laughed again, his hand still warm on my thigh and his presence steady beside me. As we refilled our glasses and settled back in for another game, just talking about nothing serious, I realized that the weight I’d carried for so long suddenly felt shared.
It was quietly terrifying, but despite having had some old wounds sliced open, I hadn’t just survived our night together. I’d actually really enjoyed it, and I honestly wasn’t ready for it to end just yet.