One for the Money

“Then give me seven years,” she whispers. “Or even less than that. Give me seven months. Let me earn your trust. I won’t abandon you, Finn. No matter what.”

It’s a gut punch.

I won’t abandon you, Finn.

Of course she won’t. She’s loyal down to her core.

No matter what.

Even if it breaks her.

She won’t leave me…unless I make her.

“I’m sorry if you thought this could be more,” I say, my voice low. “I tried to be clear that it was fake. That it could never be real between us.”

She flinches, and I feel like a bastard.

Because I am a bastard.

I run a hand over my face. “It’s not you. God, Eva. You’re so strong. So beautiful. So generous. If it were anyone, it would be you. But I can’t—”

“You can if you want to.”

Of course Eva Honorata Morelli would call me out on my bullshit.

“You’re a grown man,” she says. “An impossibly competent, strong, powerful man who’s choosing to live alone so you don’t have to be afraid, but it doesn’t work like that. You’ve already put yourself in that room with him. You’ve already isolated yourself.”

“That’s my choice,” I say, my voice hoarse.

It’s a choice I made years ago.

Before her.

And it will remain my choice long after she’s gone.

She hesitates like she wants to argue with me. Eva doesn’t give up easily. She’s not used to failing when she puts her mind to something.

Which will only get worse the longer this goes on.

I have to end it.

“You already fell for me.” My tone is cold. “And that’s the danger. You can’t get back all the love you spend on other people. It’s impossible. You’ve made another mistake, Eva. I’ll forgive you for it. The question is whether you’ll forgive yourself.”

She takes in a little breath. She’s not the one who needs forgiveness. It’s me. I never should have agreed to this. I never should have let things get this far. And they have gone so far. She’s seen my father. She’s seen our house. She’s slept in my bed. I can feel walls going up around my heart in a futile attempt to protect me. It won’t.

This will all come back to haunt me. It’s already haunting me. I am a haunted man while I’m still alive. A cursed man. That’s what it is to live under a curse. You never know when it might strike. So you might as well let it come down on you. Take it before it can take you.

“I don’t want it back,” Eva says, but her voice trembles. She hasn’t moved away. And I wonder if that’s because she can’t or because she’s frozen here with hurt. If she wishes more than anything that she’d never come here, that she’d never come with me after the gala for the Society for the Preservation of Orchids, that she’d never met me at all.

“You think you love me? No. You don’t even like me. You don’t like charming men, remember? And that’s the one thing I am: charming.”

Her eyes are impossibly black. Darker than night. They should be opaque, but somehow I can see the pain inside. I can see the old heartbreak I brought up to hurt her. Lane Constantine was the charming man she learned not to trust. I brought it up to push her away, but I have to make sure she never comes back.

I look Eva Morelli directly in her beautiful, dark, sad eyes, the ones I’ve thought about for months. The ones I want to think about forever. “It’s over, sweetheart. We had a good time, but that’s all this ever was. I wish I could say I’ll miss you, but the truth is that I won’t. In a few short years, I won’t even remember you existed.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Eva

This is the worst I’ve ever felt.

Heartbroken. Worn out. Slightly hungover, even though we didn’t drink last night. Maybe it’s just an emotional hangover, but it feels as real as anything.

Damn it. It was good to be in his bed.

Better to be in his arms.

And the best thing in the world to be there for him when he needed me.

Now all I can hear is his voice. It’s over, sweetheart. We had a good time, but that’s all this ever was. I wish I could say I’ll miss you, but the truth is that I won’t. In a few short years, I won’t even remember you existed.

I feel worse than I did fourteen years ago. In my youth I believed I was in love, but it wasn’t real. It was infatuation and perhaps even a little bit of daddy issues. Now I’m older. I can tell the difference between what’s fake and what’s love.

What I feel for Finn Hughes is love.

That doesn’t go away no matter how badly he hurt me.

The farther my driver gets from the Hughes estate, the worse I feel. I’m not prone to getting carsick. Now every turn makes me queasy. My stomach threatens to revolt, though I didn’t eat breakfast. What the hell?