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Now…
“Are you going to open it?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
“Hale—”
“Chloe, leave it.”
At her fiancé Judge’s murmured demand, Chloe shut her mouth.
And Hale, not for the first time, wondered why he hadn’t chucked the box his father left him after he’d committed suicide right in the trash.
Especially since every time Chloe set eyes on it, some version of this conversation would happen. And since Genny and Duncan had a place in LA, and Judge worked with Hale on the not-for-profit arm of Hale’s business, his de facto sister and her fiancé were in LA a lot.
So they had this conversation often.
And still, he hadn’t thrown that fucking box away.
“Do you want me to open it for you?” Chloe asked gently.
“Babe,leave it,” Judge whispered, a thread of harshness in his words.
Chloe shut up again, not because she was a woman who let a man tell her what to do.
No, it was because she loved two men who both lost parents in ugly ways.
Judge and Hale shared something hideous. Chloe had no idea. She had two loving parents who thought the world of her, were always there for her, and who she knew to her bones she could count on.
Hale avoided her eyes.
Chloe was worried and she wasn’t the kind of woman to hide her feelings, especially when she was feeling something for someone she loved.
And Chloe and her family were the only real family Hale had ever had, he loved her too, all of them, and he didn’t want her to worry at all, but especially not for him.
He should just let her open the box.
But he couldn’t.
He couldn’t open it. He couldn’t throw it away.
It was just there, in the living room of the house his father left to him, along with his company, his many other properties, and his billions. That box was now like a small art installation, it’d been sitting on that shelf for so long.
As far as he was concerned, it could stay there until Chloe’s children inherited it, because Hale didn’t intend on having any kids, nor did he intend to get married. He wasn’t about to repeat the sins of his father. And he was going to leave Chloe the house when—sometime he hoped was a long time from now—he died, not only because Hale knew she loved that house, but because he knew his father would want her to have it.
She’d been Corey Szabo’s favorite.
It wasn’t obvious.
But to his son, it still totally was.
