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“It will be handled.”
“I have no idea what that must be like. To just trust that all the details will come together the way that you wish them to. I’ve never been able to bank on that. And I hope... I hope that you can understand that. I hope that you can understand that in my world things don’t just work out. And when I found out that I was pregnant...”
“You think that things in my world simply work out? No. What I have is money and a staff that know exactly how I want things. And if I am taking myself to the boat, that I will obviously need something to be done with my car. It will be handled, because I hire people who think in that fashion. But that does not mean the broader world bends itself to my will. My brother is dead.” He could feel himself beginning to break apart. This reality was so bleak, and he would have never said he was a man who clung to fairy tales, but he could see now...he did have them. He did cling to things. “And how do you think that affects me?” he asked, his voice sounding as broken as his soul.
“I...”
“I was a twin,” he said. “I am no longer.” It was only him now. Him, his parents. These children. The children she carried. “So you tell me, how is it that you think the world bends to my will? How is it that you think everything works out for me? Whenever I can wield my power and money, I do. But I do not control the whims of fate. I cannot stay the hand of bloodthirsty men, and I cannot stop... I cannot stop my idiot younger brother from taking a turn too fast. There are great many things I cannot control. With you, agape. You are mine. And this boat, is private. Both of those things, are certainties.”
He was in desperate need of certainty. Something to hold on to.
The back of the vessel was wide and flat, with a large lounge—big enough for at least ten people—and pillows on a raised platform. Morgan went and took a seat in the center of it, pale in her wedding gown, the silken fabric spread out around her. Like a selkie who had escaped the water and found a soft respite.
He turned away from her.
He unmoored the boat, and then took his position at the wheel, maneuvering them out of the harbor. Once they were in open water, he charted the course for the island, and turned on the autopilot.
He walked to the back of the yacht and stood, looking down at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I spoke out of turn. Shouldn’t have said that about your brother. About you.”
“It is no matter. I’m not sensitive. I have dealt with real struggle, and money makes a great deal of things easier. Both of those things are true.”
“I have mostly thought about myself,” she said. “Through all of this. I’m sorry. I didn’t give enough weight to your loss, and I’m sorry.”
A bleakness washed itself over him. His children.
The fierce possessiveness that had risen up when he’d made that realization had quieted some now.
But this was not a chance of atonement. It was simply evidence of another sin.
And he would’ve married her regardless. He would be here, regardless. Because he would not compound one sin with another. He would not leave his own children without a father simply because...
Simply because he had vowed not to have them.
It was too late for that. He had taken his brother’s woman in a moment of weakness, and now he had even stripped Alex of his legacy.
No. It wasn’t that you took anything from him. She was never with him.
She was his.
“Why were you a virgin?”
She laughed. “What a question. You said we would talk tomorrow.”
“I did. But I have things we must discuss before.”
Heat streaked through him like a lightning bolt. And she understood. He could see when she did.
She looked away, her cheeks turning red.
“Why were you a virgin?”
“I was afraid of this,” she said, putting her hand on her stomach. “Desperately. All of my life. My mother was young, barely out of high school, and my father got her pregnant. He wanted nothing to do with me. He left, and she could never even find him. She never got a cent of child support, she spent my entire childhood talking about how much easier her life would have been if not for me. About how she regretted ever meeting my father. She was bitter. She said raising me ruined her dreams.”
“No,” he said, anger welling in his chest. “She ruined her own dreams. People are in charge of their own actions, and perhaps they have unforeseen effects. It does not matter, though. What your father did, that was his fault. His sin. But she could have given you up for adoption, perhaps that wouldn’t have been easy either, but it would have solved the issue of her resenting you. She didn’t make that decision. She chose to keep you with her, and she chose to live in that resentment. That was her own decision.”
“What would you know about that, considering you’re a man who didn’t even want children. How can you say what my mother should’ve done?”
