***Adriane***
After breakfast, I walked Alec out to the garage, so I could say goodbye in private.
Standing in front of the driver’s door of the big, black SUV he was taking today, I blocked his path.
“Be safe,” I ordered.
“Please don’t worry.”
“That’s likely.”
His expression serious with a raised eyebrow, he challenged me, “I’ll bet I can distract you.”
“I don’t know...”
He stepped closer, forcing my back against the door, and rested his hands on the car. He leaned in, almost touching. Head tilted and lips parted ever so slightly, he paused.
All I could do was stand there and try to breathe.
Then his lips brushed against mine, and everything disappeared. No garage, no house, no car against which I was pressed. Nothing.
“Distracted?” he asked against my mouth.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Good.” He held my face in both hands and continued passionately.
The whole concept of time was fuzzy. I couldn’t comprehend how long we were there, only the taste of his lips, the gentleness of his hands, how he didn’t seem to want to let go.
Then he stopped and rested his cheek on mine. He groaned. “I never thought it would be this difficult.” He titled to smell my hair. “Maybe I should retract my offer to abstain.”
“You can have anything you want.”
Another groan. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
I ran my hand across his chest, then up and around his neck, and laced my fingers into his hair. I kissed under his jaw.
“Then you tempt me like this,” he murmured.
I whispered against his skin. “I love you, Alec.”
His breath shook.
My arms wouldn’t move, wouldn’t let go of the sound of his voice, the defenselessness. I knew I could take him—right here. I could pull him into the back seat, behind the darkly tinted windows, and take him. His guard was down. He wouldn’t stop me.
But he would feel guilty, and I couldn’t allow that. No matter how I looked at it, we were stuck.
“You have to go,” I murmured.
His lips pressed to my neck. “Yes.”
I let my hands slide down his arms and pulled his hands into mine. He paused to take a breath, to swallow once, hard. I stepped out of his way, and he opened the car door.
He turned to kiss me one more time. “I’ll miss you.” Then he got into the car and drove away quickly. Did he always drive that fast? I stood under the open garage door and watched the car disappear down the drive.
I turned toward the house.
Then I stopped. Vincent was there.
He was standing just outside the garage, close enough to have heard everything, to have possibly seen.
I glared past him and started toward the house. I wanted to scream, to hit him, to curse at him. I only walked. My self-control was for Alec, because Vincent was his friend.
“Adriane, may I talk with you?”
I stopped walking, and my gaze snapped to him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He paused, as if taken aback by my tone. “I’m sorry.”
I hadn’t expected that, not from him. “Just back off already.”
He opened his mouth, and then closed it.
I continued walking.
He followed. “I owe you an apology.”
I kept walking.
“Just give me a few minutes.” Then he added, “You gave Alec the courtesy of letting him explain.”
I stopped. Vincent had given me a few minutes the other day in the kitchen. I owed him those few minutes back.
Then I thought of something. I turned to face him. “What were you about to tell me? In the kitchen the other day.”
He hesitated, eyebrows drawn in worry. He glanced away and shifted uncomfortably.
I took a breath, and my angry posture slackened. “If Alec doesn’t want you to tell me, then I won’t ask you to.”
He tilted his head and drew back. “If you know he’s keeping things from you—”
“I trust him. And I want him to trust me—I won’t earn that by going behind his back.”
His mouth hung open for a few seconds.
“Is that it?” I finally asked. “Are we done?”
“No. I, uh, need to apologize.”
“For what?” I was pretty sure he didn’t mean for spying on Alec and me.
“When he first brought you here, I wasn’t sure what to think. Honestly, I was scared to death of you.”
“What?”
“I—” He took a deep breath as if about to plunge into the ocean. “I knew he was in love with you.”
“What’re you talking about? He didn’t even know me.”
“He’s been in love with you for a long time. Since…he first saw you.”
I crossed my arms and considered walking away. Was he purposefully not making sense?
He continued. “He lost all focus and motivation for a while. I was scared that might happen again. With you this close and all the shit going on, I thought even he might start missing things, get distracted and end up getting screwed around.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Your effect on him is so strong. It threw me off; I’m used to him being in perfect control of everything around him. He makes the final plans, the decisions, and I’ve always trusted his abilities. I thought your effect was too strong, dangerous. But then, the other day in the kitchen—I’ve never seen him recover so quickly. I’ve never even seen him allow someone to touch him like that. He has so much anger, and rightfully so, and sometimes he just loses it. I know he hates himself for it. I was the only one there to stop him, and I knew damn well I wouldn’t be able to. I thought he might… I thought you might get hurt, and I knew he’d never recover from that. But then…you just touched him, and he started coming back.”
I hesitated, not sure how to react. “Why is he so angry? Is it to do with his father?”
“It’s not my place to talk about that.”
I threw my hands up. “Why can’t you give a straight answer?”
“It’s not my place.”
“Then why are you talking to me at all?”
“I think you deserve to know some things.”
I huffed a sigh. I started to turn to walk away, and then I turned back. “Can I ask you one thing?”
He nodded.
“Is Alec being reckless?”
“What do you mean?”
“I know he went to see Joe Bishop.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think he’d tell you.”
“I, um, made him let me take care of him, and I got him to tell me.”
“Wait, he was hurt?”
“His shoulder was bruised black, but he said it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
He smirked. “Of course.” Then he went on. “I did think it was a bad idea; I thought even Alec had a chance of getting fucked up.”
“So, you think it was reckless.”
“No.”
“You can tell me the truth.”
“I am. I underestimated him.” He laughed under his breath. “I didn’t think that was possible.”
I wasn’t sure what to think, whether to believe him. I had the feeling he would back Alec’s decisions no matter what, but was that blind trust well-earned?
A beeping sound.
Vincent took his phone from the pocket of his black slacks. I caught a glimpse of his screen—a text message from Alec.
Vincent looked back to me. “I appreciate you giving me a few minutes.” Then he added, “And thank you.” He turned and walked away, toward the garage.
I wasn’t sure why he was thanking me.
An engine purred, and then the little black Mercedes pulled down the drive.
I didn’t make it back to the house. I ambled around blindly, lost in thought. My thoughts bumped into each other in my head. I tried to push the conversation to the side, like Alec did with his secrets, but Vincent made it impossible. My head was pounding from my mind trying to find the truth. It was elusive—like games at a carnival, like there was a trick to it, and if you don’t know it, you don’t have a chance of winning.
I didn’t know the trick, that one tidbit of information that made it all fit together.
“May I help you with anything, Miss Graham?”
I didn’t realize I’d walked so far until one of the men at the gate stepped out to greet me.
“Oh, uh, no thank you.” I noticed Zoe watching through the window in the guard station. I turned to walk back up the drive.
All my questions and arguments with myself ran around in my head all day, chasing each other back and forth, each one insisting they were the most important. The facts I knew and the things Vincent had said were like pieces of two different puzzles. You almost think you can put it together, make it work in some garbled way, but you just can’t.
***Alec***
Vincent was leaning against the Porsche when Alec pulled to a stop in the dark garage. Alec focused on keeping calm as he stood from the car and faced Vincent.
“I talked to Adriane,” Vincent said.
Alec’s expression level, he waited.
“She needs to know how you feel. It’s not fair to her—”
“She knows how I feel,” Alec growled. What in the fuck was Vincent talking about and when did he decide to step over the line and address this subject directly? Adriane already knew too much, enough that she might feel guilt and pity when she eventually left, when she learned how Alec had failed her. He’d screwed up and let her know he loved her. That was already too much. He was determined to let her walk away when the time came, to make it as easy for her as possible.
Vincent’s tone was stronger. “You have this one wrong. You don’t always have the right answers.”
“The fuck I don’t.”
A long, tense pause. Alec just barely kept himself from hitting Vincent. That was the reason for his allowing the pause; he didn’t want to hurt his friend, no matter how pissed off he was at him.
Alec spoke calmly through a tense jaw. “What did you tell her?”
“That you’ve cared about her for a long time. No details.”
“Did she seem upset?”
“Only confused. I don’t think she really got what I was saying.”
“Of course she didn’t.” Alec walked away. Vincent didn’t know her like he did. She would never guess at the truth. She didn’t see herself clearly; she had no idea.
He walked up the front path and through the dark house. He contemplated not going to her, avoiding the questions in her eyes. But he couldn’t. He would just have to deal with this as best he could, keep from upsetting her, while hiding as much of the truth as possible.