Chapter 30
ALEX
It was Wednesday and I hadn’t seen Jane since Sunday. We’d barely even talked, just clipped texts about schedules and muted good nights that felt more like punctuation than sincerity.
It weighed on me more than I wanted to admit. I’d replayed her face over and over in my mind, the way she’d looked sitting on my couch, torn clean down the middle by responsibility, guilt, and her own desires.
She was so upset about Wyatt, and in the meantime, I kept circling the same question like a dog with a bone. Why won’t she just lay down the law with her family? Bunch of ungrateful pricks.
But I’d never been in her situation. I’d never had to raise siblings or protect a parent who couldn’t protect herself. I’d never been forced into becoming the adult before I was done being a kid.
What I had done, and this was an inescapable fact, was to make her home life worse. When I pulled up outside their house that night to pick her up for the library gala, I already felt keyed too tight, the guilt over having aggravated an already bad situation clawing at my insides.
Nora opened the door when I knocked, a slight but polite smile on her lips. She stepped aside to let me in. “Alex, it’s good to see you again.”
“You too,” I replied, though it wasn’t entirely true right now.
As I stepped inside, however, I immediately spotted Wyatt lingering halfway up the staircase, his arms crossed and his posture tense with that familiar teenage defiance. He thought he was so clever, all grown up, and that he knew everything, looking at me down his nose like I was an intruder.
My chest tightened, my chin lifting as I held his gaze, resisting the very real urge to grab him by the back of his collar and shake some sense into him. Instead, I decided to end this once and for all, stopping at the foot of the stairs and waiting.
Once his mother had disappeared into the kitchen with a murmured, “She’ll be ready soon,” Wyatt arched a brow at me. “Does your wife know you’re here?”
The kid had balls. Too bad he was working on faulty information. I smiled but it wasn’t friendly. “My wife does know I’m here, actually, but that was a good question,” I said calmly. “You’re a clever young man, Wyatt.”
That threw him but only by a fraction. He recovered quickly. “Look, man, I don’t know what you think you’re doing—”
“What I think is that you’ll make a very good executive one day.”
The corners of his mouth tightened. “Excuse me?”
I tilted my head, studying him and seeing something different tonight than a tired kid after a wrestling meet. Although I’d never met their father, when you knew what you were looking for, it wasn’t difficult to see that the boy in front of me had been born into an empire with a last name to match.
“Confidence,” I said like it was a complete explanation all of its own. “Aggression. A sense of moral superiority that hasn’t been tempered by consequences yet. It’s practically in the job description.”
He scoffed. “That’s not funny.”
“Good, I wasn’t joking,” I said. “If you play your cards right while you’re at Yale, which I’ll be paying for in full, maybe my wife will ensure that you’ve got a seat on her board with a bonus to match.”
He stared at me, genuinely confused now. “Are you trying to bribe me? What are you talking about?”
“I don’t punish children for mistakes they haven’t learned not to make yet, Wyatt. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“I’m not a child.”
“No, but you’re acting like one.”
He bristled, scoffing down a dry laugh as disdain glinted in his eyes. “You don’t get to talk to me like that.”
“Perhaps not, but someone clearly has to and it looks like I’m the only one around who’ll do it.” I shrugged. “It’s an ‘if the shoe fits’ situation.”
He rolled his eyes at me so hard, I was sure it had to have hurt, but he didn’t flinch. “That’s real rich coming from you.”
I smiled again. “And yet, here we are.”
His gaze flicked toward the hallway, then back to me, but before he could say anything, footsteps sounded behind me.
“Alex?” Jane asked, sounding a little hesitant. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were already here.”
I turned to see her standing at the entrance to the hallway, an emerald gown hugging her curves like it had been designed with reverence specifically for her, her hair swept back as she struggled with an earring clasp.
She was distracted, luminous, and unaware. It took me all of two seconds to put it together that she hadn’t noticed Wyatt yet. “Who let you in?” she asked.
“Hey, Killer.” I reached out and took her hand. “Don’t forget your ring, dear.”
She frowned. “I already have it on.”
My gaze dropped to our joined hands and I noticed it then, the gold band catching the light as she withdrew her fingers from mine and reached up to smooth her hair. Relief smacked into me when I saw it there, where it belonged and not hidden on a chain, tucked away for someone else’s comfort.
When I glanced back at her little brother, I realized he’d noticed it too.
He’d gone as pale as if the blood had drained straight out of him.
His mouth opened, then shut again, his eyes darting from her hand to my face and back like he was trying to reconcile two versions of the same story and failing.
“Jane,” he said hoarsely. “You’re—”
She looked up at him, confused, then followed his stare down to her hand.
“Oh,” she said softly. “Right.”
Something in her shifted and she took a step toward him instinctively, like this was just what her body had been trained to do. Using the grip I still had on one of her hands, I tugged her gently but firmly toward the door.
“Explain it to him later,” I said under my breath. “Let him chew on this a bit.”
Slowly, she looked up at me, then past me, back at him. “I thought you were out, Wyatt.”
He swallowed hard. “Yeah. I was just…”
Jane’s fingers tightened around mine as she put the pieces together. Her gaze flicked between us. “What’s going on?”
I didn’t let go of her hand, sliding my fingers between hers in a firmer grip. “Nothing that can’t be finished later. We’re going to be late.”
She searched my face, then Wyatt’s, then sighed. “We’ll talk.”
Wyatt nodded, subdued now. “Yeah, we better.”
Jane turned back to me, forcing a breath as she slid the earring into place. “Okay. Library gala. Charity. Let’s go.”
I leaned in, lowering my voice as we walked toward the door. “You’re exquisite.”
“You’re biased.”
“Wildly.”
She squared her shoulders, her eyes finally coming up to meet mine. “Did you two…?”
“We just had a conversation,” I said. “His heart is in the right place. He just doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.”
Jane shot me a look, her eyes narrowing as I pulled the door open, but she didn’t make a move to walk through it. “Alex.”
“What? I didn’t tell him anything he didn’t need to know either.” I shrugged. “I know you want to handle that.”
She hesitated, very obviously torn in half, but a moment later, she let me pull her with me. I didn’t look back. I didn’t need to. I could feel Wyatt’s confusion radiating down the hallway like heat.
The cold slapped us both in the face as we left their house.
Jane didn’t speak as I opened the car door for her.
She slid into the seat, smoothing her dress, her jaw tight enough to crack her teeth.
I closed the door and rounded the car, already bracing myself for the consequences of that little chat I’d had with her brother.
He might not know what that word really meant yet, but I sure did. I’d simply accepted said consequences before I’d even talked to him, knowing she wouldn’t be happy with me for stepping in.
As I turned over the engine, silence stretched between us until she finally broke it when I pulled out into the street. “You shouldn’t have gotten involved.”
She was staring straight ahead when I glanced at her in the rearview. “You were going to let him trample all over you.”
“That’s my brother.”
“And you’re my wife.”
She scoffed quietly. “You don’t get to bulldoze my family just because—”
“Just because you came to me for help on Sunday?” I cut in. “Because you were crying on my couch and telling me you didn’t know what to do? Or because you avoided me the rest of the week like I was radioactive?”
Her head snapped toward me. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” I asked. “You came to me, Jane. You couldn’t have expected that I’d just watch you cry and then not do anything about it.”
She folded her arms, retreating inward, the ice queen mask sliding back into place like armor she’d been wearing for so long, she’d forgotten it weighed anything. “I handle things with my family, Alex. I always have.”
“And how’s that working out for you?” I shot back. “Because from where I’m sitting, you’re exhausted, miserable, and letting a seventeen-year-old dictate the terms of your life.”
Her lips pressed into a thin, hard line. “You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t,” I said evenly. “I do understand this, though. He basically called you a homewrecker and walked out without even letting you speak, but you’re still trying to protect him and that’s what I don’t understand. He’s not a kid, Jane.”
She shot me a look cutting enough to slice through the delicate tendrils of the bond we’d been forming if I kept this up. “He’s young. You should’ve let me talk to him.”
“I didn’t even tell him anything,” I said.
She scoffed but then shook her head and turned to face the window, and the rest of the drive passed in brittle silence. The warmth from the weekend, the softness and the laughter were suddenly gone as if it’d never existed.
I let out a harsh sigh but left her to stew while I did the same thing. We pulled up to the library with its lights blazing against the dark sky and expensive cars lining the drive. Valets in crisp coats moved like clockwork, the gala clearly already in full swing.
Jane inhaled slowly, visibly resetting herself before she finally turned to glance at me again. “Please don’t make tonight harder than it needs to be.”
I met her gaze. “I won’t, but I’m not invisible, Jane. And neither is this.”
Reaching out, I smoothed my thumb over the ring on her finger, and for a beat, she just watched me do it. Then she sighed and nodded. “Fine.”
When we reached the front of the line, we climbed out and I handed the car over to a valet before offering Jane my arm. Making our way inside together, we greeted familiar faces with polite smiles, both of us slipping seamlessly into our respective roles.
We hadn’t even found our table yet when I felt her body go very, very still. I glanced at her, following her line of sight when she completely stopped walking. A woman I didn’t recognize stood a few feet away, laughing with a group of donors.
She didn’t seem much older than Jane, possibly around the same age as my thirty-four. Dark hair cascaded over her shoulders. An elegant, shimmering navy dress wrapped around her narrow frame. She was pretty but nothing special. Not to me anyway.
Jane’s grip tightened on my arm as I dismissed the other woman from my gaze and glanced down at my wife instead. Now she’s something special.
“Who is that?” I asked quietly.
She didn’t answer right away, her jaw working as the ice spread back across her features. “Someone I didn’t expect to see. Not here and frankly not ever.”
Jane didn’t look away from her as she answered me, and I knew then that whatever this was, it wasn’t simple social discomfort. It was history—and it wasn’t good.
“Are you okay, Killer?”
“I will be.” She straightened and lifted her chin, snapping out of her shock at seeing whoever this woman was. Jane started forward again, her heels clicking with purpose. I stuck to her like glue, already pushing our disagreement about her brother aside.
Whatever storm she was bracing for here, I was in it with her. Everything else could wait until we’d won this battle, and then I would return my focus to the war I felt like I was fighting for my wife. My marriage. And her very right to actually be happy for once in her fucking life.