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“But you did.”
“Because I gave up on my own sister, which is a betrayal in itself. For you as well, but especially for me. As long as she was breathing, I should have kept my distance from you. Fuck, I should have kept my distance from you regardless.”
“That’s your guilt talking.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I should have listened to it.”
He curses furiously under his breath, and I can practically feel the waves of anger rolling off him. “I thought you were going to listen to yourself for once in your life?”
I shake my head. “It’s not worth it.”
“Excuse me?”
I whip my glare to his. “You heard me—it’s not fucking worth it. I can’t and won’t hurt my sister! My father’s back, and Cee’s awake. Neither one of them knows about Mom. Which means I have to tell them, and they have to grieve. And afterwards, well…we’re all we’ve got left, and we need to be there for one another. Of course, you won’t understand anything about that.”
“About what?” he snaps back. “Family loyalty?”
He slams on the brakes so hard that I almost go through the windshield. I put my hands out and grab the console, but luckily, my seatbelt holds me in place as we come to a dead stop in the middle of the highway. “What the hell?”
“You don’t think I know about family loyalty?” he continues. “Why? Because I’m a selfish asshole who only cares about power and victory and money?”
“Ilarion—”
“I’ll admit, I’ve been guilty of a whole hell of a lot of sins in the past. Ignorance chief among them. But when I finally decided to be honest with myself, I knew what I had to do.” He’s glaring at me, but there’s something softer flickering in his eyes. “For my family,andfor us.”
I frown. I want to ask him if he’s talking about Mila. I want to ask him if he means what he said back in the cabin: how he was planning on leaving Celine for me.
But I don’t ask—because I’m a coward afraid of the answers.
His jaw sets and the vein near his neck pulses as he grinds his teeth. “You sit there and assume that you have the moral high ground because you’re willing to sacrifice your happiness for your family? Fuck that. I had to sacrifice my ownfatherfor my family. And you know what? As difficult as it was…it was fucking worth it.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, and I’m even more scared to ask. “What do you mean?”
His glare hardens. “You don’t deserve to know.”
I flinch back as though he hit me. Deep down inside, he has.
And he knows it, too.
My eyes turn slowly towards the road stretched out ahead of us. We have so much more distance to cover.
“We should keep going. Celine will be waiting.”
“She can wait a little longer,” he growls. “You can backtrack all you want,tigrionok.You can take back everything you said this weekend; you can pretend none of it happened. But I won’t.”
“You have to!” I yell, suddenly panicked. “Cee can’t find out about any of it!”
“So your plan is to lie to her.”
“Yes, if that’s what it takes!” I nod desperately. “How do you think she’ll take it if we go back and tell her we were away at a cabin together, fucking each other’s brains out?”
“It’s the truth.”
“It’s a betrayal!”
“It’s not if you fucking love me!”
He may as well have shouted, because those words scythe right into my soul and tear me open from the inside out.
