Through the shimmer of tears I see Mrs. Rosemont’s face pinched as she looks at Christopher and Sutton. I know what she sees. Two men who are out of control.
And the woman who made them this way.
Our eyes meet, and she lifts her chin. The deal is off, those shrewd eyes tell me from across the room. No amount of book restorations or carving installations will save us now. No amount of money will repair the trust we’ve broken.
I should have let her go, but I imprinted early on humiliation.
“Wait,” I tell her, wiping my cheeks, useless because they must be streaked with black. “I’m sorry. Don’t judge them by this, please. It was a bad night. A strange night.”
“I’m not judging them,” she says, her voice as stiff as starch. “I’m judging you.”
“Yes,” I say, pleading now. “It’s my fault, not theirs.”
I don’t actually know whose fault it is or if blame is a thing we can own. It doesn’t matter, because my heart is with Christopher and his ambition. My heart is with Sutton and the wild horse he tamed. My heart is in that library, but even that I was willing to give up for these two men. Of course it’s love. Only love could hurt this much.
“I was young once,” she says. “So I’ll tell you this. Sometimes you need to walk away. Maybe you don’t see it right now, but those boys are dangerous. They will tear apart anything in their path to get what they want. Even you.”
Blue offers to take me back to the hotel, but there’s a pretty young woman with tired eyes and a large, pregnant belly who waits to the side, so I tell him no. Penny also offers to escort me back, but Damon Scott kind of terrifies me, which is saying something considering the two men who fought each other in front of me.
Sutton’s lip has been split, but when I reach up to hover over it, he doesn’t flinch. Still in shock, maybe, like he’s fallen into the bay and been dragged out. Or maybe he’s fought too many times in his life to be shocked anymore. “I’ll take you home,” he says.
I swallow hard. “I’m not… I’m not the kind of girl that men fight over.”
He shakes his head, a quick dismissal. “That says more about us than it does about you. And nothing good, that’s for damn sure.”
“Does that mean you’re going to apologize to him?” Christopher stands only six feet away from us, leaning against the curved stone edge of the fountain, staring out at the city’s skyline. It shouldn’t be possible to see his expression in this darkness, but I can tell from the set of his shoulders that he’s melancholy. It makes me long for the hard-edged, cold Christopher.
The one who breaks my heart but doesn’t look melancholy.
“No,” Sutton says. “But I’m not going to punch him again. Not tonight.”
“I suppose that’s the best I can do, but I can’t leave him like this. I’m pretty sure he drove here.”
Hard blue eyes study the solitary figure. “We can call him a cab.”
When did it become Christopher against me and Sutton? Maybe from before I even met Sutton. I would have aligned myself with anyone against Christopher. Does that mean what I have with Sutton, this connection, the invisible string that draws me toward him, isn’t real?
“I can’t leave him here,” I say finally, resigned that I won’t figure out the secrets of the heart tonight. “The way he is now. There’s too much history.”
A sleek black limo glides into the courtyard. Sutton’s limo.
I put my hand on his arm, feeling the restraint in his muscles, the heat of his body. “It’s okay. I’ll take an Uber with him. You don’t have to do anything.”
He looks increasingly remote, the more I try to reassure him. “Bring him.”
Into the limo? Sutton may have promised not to punch Christopher again, but I’m not sure putting them in a closed metal box going eighty miles per hour is the answer. “We couldn’t.”
An impatient wave of his hand. “It’s the fastest way. The safest, too.”
I can’t argue with those points, and I don’t really relish waiting for an Uber in the dark, making small talk with a random stranger—or Christopher, who seems like a stranger.
He looks up at the stars as I approach him, unmoving even though he must hear my heels on the cobblestone, the red carpet rolled up and put away until there’s another show.
“Come on,” I say softly. “Let’s get you home.”
“I’m not drunk,” he says, gesturing to the sky as if that proves a point.
“Well, you’re not sober.”