“You and I both know legitimate doesn’t go down at two o’clock in the morning.”
“How the hell would those two be tied?”
“Not sure, but I will find out. No question in my mind that whatever it is, it will be the key to setting Grace and her kids free from that bastard. Don’t care what it takes to figure it out. I’m going to do it.”
Jace just stared at me. Shock written all over him.
“You love her.”
“No.” It shot from my mouth with the velocity of a bullet.
He laughed out a disbelieving sound. “You think I’m an idiot, Ian? You think I don’t know there’s something more going on between you two? It’s so thick, the rest of us are choking on it.”
I blinked out what I hoped looked like denial.
“You going to sit there and tell me you haven’t slept with her?”
My tongue locked up, so fat and thick it got stuck to the roof of my mouth.
A rough chuckle escaped him. “You’re sleeping with your client . . . that’s the one thing you’d never do . . . put your career on the line for a piece of ass.”
“She’s not a piece of ass.” The rebuttal whipped out harder than I intended, teeth gritting as I leaned his direction.
He nodded. “Exactly my point.”
He huffed out a frustrated sigh, and he lowered his voice. “There’s no shame in loving someone, Ian, and there’s nothing wrong with letting someone love you in return. You deserve it. You are the most loyal man I know. You’ve lived alone for too long. You think I don’t see it? The way you’ve been filling your life with meaningless things? You think I don’t know that you’re covering up for everything that we went through as kids?”
His head shook. “But pretending that it didn’t happen doesn’t take it away. Those scars are always going to be there until you face them. You deserve to live again.”
In another life.
In another life.
Pain lashed through my insides, and my face pinched in disgust.
All of it was aimed directly at myself. “You don’t know me, Jace. You don’t know the things I’ve done. I don’t deserve anything but to rot.”
He scoffed. “I know you better than anyone, and I know you care about that girl upstairs. And I know you care about her kids.”
“I can’t,” I choked, fear constricting. Tightening and suffocating. I wheezed in a breath. “I won’t be the one to ruin them.”
Jace downed the rest of his drink. Setting his empty on the bar, he pointed at me. “Think the only thing you’ve ruined is yourself.”
If he only fucking knew.
He planted his hands back onto the wood, angling his head. “Maybe it’s time you stop and figure out what it is you really want. Because believe me . . . once you love, there’s no going back. And when you realize you let that go because you were too stupid and stubborn to hold on to it? When you missed out on the only thing that really mattered? Believe me, brother, that’s when you’ll discover what it’s like to really hate yourself.”
“I have one goal, and that’s to become partner. To get one step closer to taking over the firm. That’s what it’s always been. I win this case, and I gain everything I’ve ever wanted.” Every word was goddamned sand. Lies I couldn’t tell myself fast enough to make myself believe what I was saying.
“That so?” he challenged.
“That’s so.”
He pushed away from the bar and walked toward the carved archway, pausing to look back at me. “Then I guess you’re a bigger fool than I thought.”
Disappointed, Jace walked out, thinking he knew me. That I deserved more.
Thinking I was being selfish.
What he didn’t get was I could never keep them.
Not when I didn’t deserve anything at all.
Thirty-Two
Ian
I stumbled down the sweeping staircase, roughing a hand through my bedhead and subduing a yawn as I followed the clatter of noise banging around from the bottom floor.
All the bedrooms had been empty.
At six o’clock in the damned morning.
I tried not to shake my head, tried to fight all the anxiety surrounding all of this. Tried to shove it down into that deep pit where I knew it would only fester.
I’d woken up—feeling different. Like maybe I was a heartbeat from changing a philosophy or two. Clinging to that ridiculous notion that everything would turn out the way it was supposed to.
Yeah fucking right.
It was the only thought in my head as I walked into the enormous kitchen and was slammed with the chaos going down inside.
I froze in the middle of it, mouth gaping open and eyes going wide.
Beyoncé was blasting through the room from the overhead speakers, giving all the single ladies instructions on how to wrap their men around their finger. Mallory was dancing around, waving her hand in the air, and Bailey was following her around like she’d found her long lost BFF, trying to keep up with the lyrics that she clearly didn’t know.
Oh, but Mallory did. She was singing them at the top of her lungs.
Sophie Marie was standing in place, bouncing low, her diapered butt nearly hitting the floor every time she dropped it like it was hot.
My eyes just got wider when my attention landed on my badass brother. He held Benton facing out, the baby kicking his arms and legs and letting loose the tiniest sounds of laughter, while my brother danced and bounced his son as he sang along.
Dude was waving his free hand in the air—his very ringed finger, mind you—right in the middle of the little girls.
Wasn’t even sure who was the instigator of this madness.
Thomas stood at the island singing just below his breath while he cracked some eggs into a bowl, listening intently while Faith gave him instructions.
As easy as could be.
Obviously, the entire world had lost its mind overnight.
Oh, wait, no, that was me.
Because my damned breath hitched, and my pulse went haywire when my gaze continued to glide across the country kitchen that was the heart of this historic home, and I found Grace standing at the stove, pouring round dollops of pancake batter onto a griddle.
Her tight ass rocking all over the place.
Rocking me.
Tossing me from solid ground.
I took a step forward into the alternate universe. Not a damned familiar stone beneath my feet.
Mallory was the first to notice that I’d entered.
She danced right over, throwing her hands in the air. “Ian-Zian, I thought you were going to sleep the whole day and you were going to miss our adventure and it’s the best adventure in the whole world. I got a new best friend. Her name is Bailey. She loves adventures, too.”
She waved an exuberant hand at my niece like she was introducing me to a stranger. The second Bailey saw me, she started jumping around, too.
“Uncle Ian, Uncle Ian, you spent the night! I’ve been missin’ you. Did you go huntin’?” She looked around the room, her voice turning serious. “My uncle is a dog. Just ask my dad.”
That was the exact time Faith lowered the volume. You know, just in time for Bailey to emphasize the fact.
All eyes locked on me.
I was pretty sure I needed to find some slippers and tap my heels three times or some shit because I’d been swept into a tornado.
Problem was that those would be the wrong damned kind of shoes. Because my battered Cinderella turned around.
The second those eyes landed on me, they set me on fire. But it was the softness playing around her lush mouth that had the dark spot in my chest doing crazy things.
She looked so damned happy, like she belonged right there in the middle of my family.
Like this was the place where she felt safest.
Like she was getting lost in the warmth. Adding to it. Shining all that light and understanding.
“A dog?” Mallory asked, twisting the word around and drawing it out like she was completely confused.
“Yup. Daddy said his brover is nofin’ but a dog. Isn’t that right, Daddy?”
A smirk climbed to Jace’s smug mouth, and he was looking directly at me when he said, “Yup, nothing but a dog who looks like he could use a good scratch.”