It’s been brewing for a while. Their snipes at the team, digging just a little harder at us with each passing season. Whoever it is has crossed a line with this. And they’ll pay.
My phone explodes with texts, calls from my father, but Apollo refuses to hang up until he comes into my apartment from across the hall and is standing in front of me. He stares at me, his worried gaze scanning my face. “What can I do? What do you need?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I don’t even know what the right answer is anymore. Those grains of sand are pouring through my fingers faster than ever.
No amount of blinking clears the fog or slows my racing heart. Apollo takes me into the living room, he makes me tea—apparently his better half says it’s good for calming frayed nerves, but there isn’t a quantity of tea on the face of this planet that will calm any piece of me right now.
Alonso is demanding a face to face, his texts are escalating from ‘I can’t believe it’s you,’ to ‘I’m going to fucking destroy you.’
The walls I’ve so carefully crafted around me are crumbling. Everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve flashes before my eyes, right there with a spark of anger that maybe if I hadn’t been so fucking distracted by the sleeping beauty in my bed it might not have come to this.
I push that thought down, it’s not Xavier’s fault. I can’t blame him, even if I want to. This is on me. All I can do is sit, staring. I can’t find words when a sleepy-looking Xavier stumbles out from my bedroom to join us. I have nothing to say when Scott and Hen arrive at the door with Ares either.
I can’t eat. I can’t think. I can’t breathe.
How the fuck do I come back from this? And worse—how do I keep Xavier from getting crushed by the falling pieces of debris?
CHAPTER 46
Artemis
Sleep didn’t touch me, not even with Xavier wrapped around my ribs like a human weighted blanket. I saw every hour on the clock. Everything’s on fire.
It’s a metaphorical fire, though part of me wonders if setting something on real fire, might be better than…this. It’s a doozy. If there was such a thing as a ten-alarm fire, this… my life, my legacy, everything I’ve been working toward for years… this would be that.
Upon hearing of my identity, Alonso dialed up his obstruction of the takeover. In fact, he’s actively scorching the earth. It turns out, my father would rather destroy his company than let his son take it over.
In the last twenty-four hours he’s attempted to liquidate assets, cancel contracts, convert existing board members to his side, and he’s managed to stall out the re-certification of aircraft designs that need approval before we can complete.
We’ve gone from trudging through molasses to an all-out standstill, a stand-off. And I still can’t act, think, or fucking breathe right. Every thought, every decision feels like it’s dripping gasoline over the pile of shit already burning.
My brothers have rallied. They haven’t left the apartment, neither has Xavier, but if nothing else has dawned on me in the last day, sinceTabitha fucking Tuckerpulled the pin on a grenade and launched it into my private life, I’ve never been surer that I need to step back from Xavier.
Not because I don’t want him. That’s the worst part—I do want him. But wanting him makes him a target. The PR meltdown has already started.
There was a picture of Valentina on her porch with a shotgun threatening the horde of reporters that went every bit as viral as you’d expect. I think they’ve made a gif out of her clicking the shotgun while reporters flee from the front of their property.
To say it’s a shit show is a fucking understatement. I’m standing in the doorway to my bedroom, watching a napping Xavier. He looks so peaceful, a smile flickering on his perfectly kissable lips.
No. I can’t get sucked in.
Despite my thirst for vengeance, my father’s voice echoes in my head over the years, the lectures, the caution, not letting anyone in, protecting the family, toeing the family line. It’s hard to break a cycle of a lifetime. And I bet even long in the future, after years of therapy, his toxic tones will still slip into my inner monologue.
But hopefully enough time will eventually pass that I’ll drown out his list of my failures with a list of wins of my own.
Xavi sighs in his sleep. I can’t think about his kissable lips when I’m about to break him into pieces and send him away. A jolt of panic holds my body hostage. I’m about to lose the one stable thing I have. The earth threatens to go from under my feet in the worst way, throwing me off balance, and I brace against the wall, so my legs don’t give out from under me.
I’m so fucking tired. My worn-out soul is weary, stress fractures have formed in every area of my life, and my shouldersjust can’t take any more weight. I’m clearly not as strong as I thought I was.
“I can hear your brain churning from here. Could you keep the noise down? I have a headache.” His mumbling is fucking adorable. His voice is coated with sleep, and the gravelly Southern drawl is even sexier and stronger when he’s just awake.
No. This Texan Tease won’t win. I need to be stronger, for his sake. I need to find my resolve, the same resolve that’s worked for me for years. I need to rebuild those walls he slipped behind without me noticing.
There’s a flicker of doubt, a flash of his skin pressed against mine in my memory, and a pang of deep-seeded pain in my chest, but it’s for the best, for him, for Xavier. It’s how it has to be. Papá will destroy him, just because he can.
Xavier dramatically flings the quilt back and swings his legs out of bed. The bruising on his shoulder is worse, it’s darker, and fills me with an uncontainable rage every time I look at it.
His pj pants are low around his hips. The sight of his Adonis belt with every step he takes toward me dries my mouth out and makes my pulse skip under my skin. How the hell am I supposed to crush him when he looks at me like I hung the damn moon?
