One Night to Risk It All

She deserved better. Rachel deserved everything.

Hot, wet tears were on his cheeks. He didn’t care. He had caused Rachel’s first tears in years, and now she had caused his.

A fitting end.

Theos, but he hated that it was the end.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“MORE CANDY, RACH?”

“Yes,” Rachel moaned, holding her hand out to her sister and letting her fill it with little chocolate shoes.

She was lying on the couch in Leah and Ajax’s penthouse in New York, where she’d been staying for almost two weeks trying to heal from a completely shattered heart.

She’d had a rage high for the first week. A total, deep and loathing hatred for Alex that made it impossible to cry over losing him. Made it impossible to think about their last conversation in any detail that went beyond the horrible, awful things he’d said.

She’d let it fuel her, carry her, keep her from collapsing.

In front of the wedding guests, she’d done nothing to take the high road. She’d done nothing to keep them from finding out what a hideous worm he was. She had been angry.

A mother bear, feeling rage for her cub. He’d said he didn’t want to see their baby. His rejection of her was bad enough, but that rejection had opened up a well of maternal emotion she’d never felt before. It had given her a momentary, honest-to-God, deep desire to hurt him. Physically. To hit him with something hard. Repeatedly.

But now the rage had subsided. And parts of their final conversation were replaying, sections she’d tried to forget. His revelations about himself. How he felt about himself. That his mother had killed herself rather than be with him. That the underlying tone of it all was that he was a man who felt unworthy. Of everything. He had hated Ajax, because Ajax had the one thing Alex didn’t think he would ever truly be able to have.

Love.

And for some reason, her love hadn’t been enough. Or, maybe, he was just afraid that her loving him would hurt her somehow.

And that made it harder to rage at him.

Something had happened at the wedding. She was getting surer and surer about it. But until she figured out what to do, until she had the energy to tell Ajax that Alex was his half brother, she was going to lie around and eat more of her sister’s candy.

“You okay?” Leah asked.

“No. I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay. I think I love him still.”

“Yeah, I know how that goes. It’s the worst.”

Ajax walked into the room then, looking handsome, as he always did, in dark slacks and a white shirt. She could see it now that she looked at him—his vague resemblance to Alex. But he didn’t have those eyes. Or that wicked sparkle.

Well, he did a little bit when he looked at Leah. And that made her happy. Because this was, by far, the happiest and most carefree she’d ever seen Ajax.

“What’s the worst?”

“You were,” Leah said. “You know, when we almost got divorced.”