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“Yeah. I chose to forget. It’s easier to bury things than to carry them around all the time. Sue me.”
“No,tigrionok,” he murmurs as he saunters closer. “I have other ways of making you pay.”
My nostrils pick up his scent. That smell is a short-circuit to exactly the kinds of memories I’ve fought to abandon. It drags me kicking and screaming into a past I can’t run from, no matter how hard I try.
His taunting, salacious smirk is the final hook in me. Suddenly, I’m not here in this park in this dusty, forgotten little town; I’m back in the mountains. I’m back in the cabin. I’m back amongst lazy, hazy pillow talk conversations and stolen kisses in the rain.
“It’s surprisingly cruel of you to lead that poor sap along, you know.”
My spine goes rigid. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
“No?” Ilarion asks. “He’s not your boyfriend? You said it, but, oh, I don’t know… It just didn’t have the ring of truth, if you ask me.”
I roll my eyes at him. “That’s because your ego talks so loud that you can’t hear anything else.”
He chuckles and smooths his knuckles over my cheek. I don’t know whether to flinch away or nuzzle into him like a needy cat, so in the end, I do neither. I just stay there and suffer under the sensation of a touch I’ve spent five years dreaming about.
“I see everything, Taylor. And you see it, too. I’d bet my life that you knew from the moment he first opened his mouth that he wouldn’t be it for you. No matter how hard you tried to convince yourself otherwise.”
I close my eyes so Ilarion doesn’t see the tears welling up in them. “He’s a good man.”
“He was a good distraction, maybe. He was never going to be anything but that.”
I squint out at him. “Are youjealous, Ilarion?”
“Are youdeflecting,Taylor?”
“Maybe, but the question still stands. No—you know what? I don’t need to ask the question. I can see it in your eyes. Youarejealous.” He wants to pick me apart and expose me? Then turnabout is fair play. I know him as well as he thinks he knows me. “And you have no right to be. I’m not the one whomarried someone else.”
I didn’t actually mean to say that last bit; it just slipped out in the heat of the moment. Which is why being around Ilarion is never a good thing. I’m always in the heat of the moment when he’s near.
“You make a lot of assumptions.”
“Pot, kettle.” Way back when, I would have caved to his little mind games. Not now. Not today. And hopefully, not ever again. Still, I notice the way his eyes dim and it tugs at something gentler inside me. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not…I’m not mad about it.”
The light in his gaze flickers back on. He smirks coldly. “You need to work on that line. It’s not nearly as convincing as it needs to be.”
“Did you just reappear in my life to torment me?”
“Partly, yes,” he concedes shamelessly. “But this is about so much more than that.”
“I know you want me to take the bait, and I know you know that I’m going to.” I take a deep breath and look him in the eye. “But before we get into anything else, I need your word on something.”
He knows exactly what I’m about to say, but he’s going to make me say it anyway. “Depends on what that ‘something’ is.”
“My father.”
“Ah.”
Ilarion turns to face the river. It’s still cold right now, but in the height of summer, it gets warm enough that the kids can swim in it. I can picture Adam giggling during his first swim, his chubby little fists hitting the water like he was trying to coax it into a fight. I can feel that warm sun on my face. I can remember how it felt to take that first breath and let myself believe we’d be safe here.
I should’ve known how wrong I was.
“He’s my dad, Ilarion. He’s all I have left. I know what he did, and I’m not asking you to forgive him. I just need you to promise me that you won’t hurt him.”
He pivots slowly in place until his eyes find mine again. “No traitor has ever received a pardon in my Bratva.”
“If that were true, you would have killed Dad a long time ago.”
