It didn’t feel good or right, crushing her like that, but I had no choice. “Darling,” I gathered her arms in mine, my voice dropping to a whisper. “I’m never going to marry you. Not in this lifetime and not the next. With or without Emmabelle in the picture, I’m an all or nothing kind of bloke. With her, I want it all. With you …” I let her complete the sentence in her head, before adding, “If you try to tamper with my relationship with my girlfriend—and she is still my girlfriend, make no mistake about it, even if she doesn’t know it yet—I will ensure your family and legacy are both destroyed. I will ensure everyone knows Byron has demolished a historical church so he can place his side piece within a stone’s throw of his countryside estate. The money he paid Parliament Member Don Dainty under the table to promote favorable tax laws would be revealed, and let us not forget your dear brother Benedict has a particular taste for underage girls. Your family is corrupted through the nose, and I am willing to unveil every piece of wrongdoing it has done over the years if you don’t give me your word here and now that you are going to stop this.”
All this dirt, courtesy of Sam Brennan and his detective work. Maybe he was worth some of his fee after all.
I could tell it sank in this time around.
That it hit her real and hard. In the same place it hit me, the day I knew my father didn’t love me. Although now, it seemed like my entire family didn’t love me.
Mum had betrayed me too.
Outwardly, nothing changed. Louisa was still the same Louisa. Willowy and delicate, a perfect, stainless feather in the wind. But her eyes turned from glossy to dull. Her mouth became rigid. The twinkle behind her irises was gone.
“Answer me with words,” I said softly, using my hand to gently pry her jaw open. The words fell from between her lips like they were on the tip of them, just waiting to be said.
“I understand you never want to see me again, Devon.”
And to my surprise, behind those words, there were cinders, still hot from where the flame had once been.
She was angry. Defiant.
She would rise from the ashes, I hoped, and find someone else.
I turned around and made my way to the airport.
I had a plane to catch.
On the way, I called Emmabelle a few more times, dropping more messages that would make any serial killer proud.
“You’re bloody crazy if you think I’m giving you up. You were mine from the moment I set my eyes on you. When you weren’t even aware of my existence. When I came to serve your sister with a draconic agreement she shouldn’t have signed.”
And then:
“The night we got in bed together for the first time, at Cillian’s cabin, was the night I first contemplated breaking my pact with myself to never marry a woman. I refuse to lose the only woman who is worth breaking my word over.”
As well as:
“Goddammit, I love you.”
As I zipped through neighborhoods, and skyscrapers, and lives that weren’t mine, I pondered something Louisa had told me before I left her.
It was true that Belle didn’t love me.
After all—she took the check.
But I loved her, and maybe that was enough.
Fifteen Years Old.
I’m kissing sixteen.
And that’s the only thing I’m kissing.
My life is blissfully, disgustingly boring.
I don’t date. I don’t socialize with anyone other than my sister, Sailor, and Ross, but I talk a big talk, and I sure as hell show the world that all is fine with Emmabelle Penrose. That I am an invincible, happy-go-lucky girl.
And sometimes, on good days, I can even believe my own bullshit for a moment or two.
Coach Locken, however, is not doing so hot.
His wife, Brenda, is pregnant again, even though little Stephen is, what, a little over one year old? That, in itself, is hardly bad news to grown-ups.
But the fact that he’s been having an affair with one of the teachers is.
Miss Parnell is my twenty-two-year-old substitute teacher—and his newest girlfriend.
The showdown at the front gate last week was legendary. Even I couldn’t help but get riled up and excited.
Brenda pulled up at the curb, little Stephen still napping in the backseat. She cornered sweet Miss Parnell, bitch-slapping her in front of the entire school. Poor Miss Parnell didn’t stand a chance. She just started crying. Her sobs became more violent, louder when Brenda screamed, “Did you know he got me knocked up again? Did you know? And did he tell you we broke up while I was pregnant with Stevie? Because that piece of shit scumbag sent me to my mom’s saying he needed to get the house exterminated and disinfected before the baby arrived. He drove down to Jersey every goddamn weekend to get some of this ass.”