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Since I had no doubt Xander had secured the line and we were the only ones on com-link, I said, “She’s not ours anymore. How am I supposed to get over that?”
She slept in another man’s bed. He touched her, took pleasure in her. A fucking bastard thirty years older than her, who’d thought he’d gained a prize to use. He possessed not a single fiber of understanding of how to cherish the incredible woman he’d married.
One day, I’d make him pay for all he’d done.
“She’ll always be ours.” Xander’s words snapped me back to the present.
“Fuck that shit. Until Nerine is aware of this, none of it counts. Or do I need to remind you of when you said without her, there is no us?”
Xander muttered something.
“What was that? I couldn’t hear you with all the teeth grinding.”
“I fucked up. I said it. Losing her broke something in me, and I took it out on all of us.”
I understood regret. I felt it every damn day. But what Xander had done had made an already bleeding wound start to hemorrhage.
“It’s too late to change the past. We have to accept this is the road we are on.”
“What happened to you spouting that she loved us?” Xander asked.
Resignation filled me. “Maybe you were right.”
“I thought I was the glass-is-half-empty guy?”
“Not when it came to her,” I said. “You were the fucking sunshine and roses singing at the top of his lungs.”
“I truly want to kick you in the teeth right now.”
Even with all of the unaddressed issues between us, Xander was my best friend. I wouldn’t think twice about taking a bullet for him, and I had no questions that he’d do the same for me. There was nothing he couldn’t ask me to do for him.
I focused on Nerine as she sat next to Nyx, still lost in whatever conversation they were having.
However, the moment Andraius interrupted her, she shot him a cold glare, clearly stating she wanted him to be anywhere but next to her.
The feeling is mutual, love.
“I need to ask you something serious.”
“I had a feeling you were going to get all philosophical.” Xander’s bland, know-it-all tone made me want to punch him. “This is your usual MO when doing surveillance, so I made sure to secure and encrypt the line from our crew in case they got nosy.”
“You’re such an asshole.”
“What do you need to get off your chest?”
“Sooner or later, Andraius is going to find out about our relationship with Nerine.”
“If he hasn’t found out by now, how the fuck is he going to learn about it? We’ve talked about it enough times over the years to know our people are loyal. They’d rather die than betray her. Hell, Pops still hasn’t figured it out. As far as everyone knows, the reasons we and the originals stayed on are for Nerine, her sisters, and her mother. When did you become so fucking paranoid?”
“It’s not paranoia when I’m questioning what will happen when we’re around her twenty-four-seven.”
Or what it was going to be like when Xander and I were around each other nonstop. Nothing could go back to the way it was, and hoping for it was a pipedream.
Xander made it clear that without Nerine there was no future for us. I accepted his decision, and now he regrets it.
Too fucking bad.
“It’s not going to be all day and night,” he said. “We have a team with us that will take shifts.”
