I follow her into the dining room, not letting this conversation end until I’ve come all the way clean.
“No. You’re not property. It doesn’t change the fact you were meant to be mine from the moment you walked into that bar. I sure as hell have been yours from that very moment.”
She spins on her heel, jabbing her finger into my chest. “Then you should’ve done something about it.”
I grab her wrist. “I did.”
She shakes her head. “No, you lied. You schemed. I still don’t even know what to believe. Carter says you hated him for dating me. That you told me your board was on your back because you wanted to rope me into your elaborate plan to get back at him.”
I laugh, my fingers letting go of her arm. “And you’re going to believe him?”
“So, you’re telling me he was wrong about you giving that reporter the green light on running that article?”
“He wasn’t wrong about that. But he’s wrong about everything else.”
“I should’ve never trusted you,” she snaps, climbing the stairs to her old room. I’m her shadow up the stairs, not letting her out of my sight.
“You’ve got everything wrong. If you’d just fucking let me explain, I can tell you how wrong you are.”
“I don’t care anymore, Beck.” She stomps into her room, half attempting to shut the door in my face. It doesn’t work. I push it right open, ambling after her into her room.
She goes straight for her closet, pulling her suitcase from a dark corner.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
She gives me a dirty look. “I’m packing. I’m leaving. And you’re going to let me. I can’t stay here knowing I was some sick sort of revenge on your brother.”
My hands grab angrily at my hair. “It was never about Carter!” I roar. I’m completely deranged at this point, but I can’t handle the thought of her leaving. I only just got her. There’s no way I can let her go now. I wouldn’t be able to survive it. Not after knowing what it was like to have her.
“Too bad I can’t believe you because everything about us was a lie. God, I fell in love with you, and you were lying the entire time.”
My throat clogs with emotion. “You love me?” I ask hoarsely.
“I thought I did,” she answers quietly, walking past me and throwing the suitcase on her bed. “I thought I loved you more than I’ve ever loved someone else. Now I don’t know what I feel. It’s hard to love something when everything’s a lie.”
I desperately reach for her, needing to cling to her to know that we can salvage this. “It wasn’t all a lie,” I plead. “All the best parts of us were the truth. Everything between us was the truth, Margo.” I press my palm to her racing heart. “In your heart, you know everything was real. The way we feel about each other could never be fake. Could never be a lie.” I grab her wrist, holding her palm against my erratic heartbeat to try and prove my point.
She looks up at me sadly. I’ll never forgive myself for hurting her. I won’t get over it. I just need to know that we can come back from this. That she’ll listen to my explanation and understand why I did what I did.
I take a deep breath, my fingers pushing her into her chest even harder as I cling to her for dear life. “I’ll tell you everything,” I promise. “I just need you to let me.”
Her only answer is a nod. I don’t care that she’s silent. It’s enough for me.
Pulling in a shaky breath, I try to gather my thoughts, trying to think of the best way to explain the real reason how Margo and I came to be.
“Carter was right about one thing. Like I just told you, I noticed you before he ever did. No person had ever captured my attention like you had that night.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“You looked so young. So carefree. Like someone who was just starting college and having fun. I didn’t have the nerve to speak to you while knowing our lives were vastly different.”
“So then you just got angry because Carter got to me?”
“I was fucking furious when I learned of the two of you. I don’t think I’ve ever been as upset as when he’d called me to let me know you’d slept together. That you were his girlfriend.”
"Well congratulations, you got your revenge. You put a ring on my finger.” She looks down at the ring sadly. She obliterates my aching heart when she slips the ring off her finger. Her eyes are filled with tears as she inspects the ring her grasp. “You beat him. You won.”
I shake my head at her, closing her fingers around the ring before she even gets the idea to try and give it back to me. Our grasped hands shake. I don’t know if it’s hers or mine that tremble. Maybe it’s both of ours. “I don’t give a damn about winning. It wasn’t about that. It was never about that. When he brought you home to The Hamptons, when we finally spoke for the first time, I knew I’d do anything to have you. I’d never once cared what my brother had, yet in that moment I wanted everything he had. I wanted you. When I found you drawing me, when you almost kissed me on that beach, I realized I’d spent my whole life saying I’d never fall in love, only to fall in love in an instant with a woman who wasn’t mine.”
“You didn’t,” she breathes, her breath hitching.
“I did. I’ve been in love with you ever since. Fuck, Margo, I might’ve fallen in love with you from the moment you walked into that bar. I just didn’t know what it was.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I knew Carter was cheating on you that weekend. I wanted to tell you so bad, but I didn’t want to hurt you. So I kept my mouth shut.”
“Beck…”
“But I knew that weekend that eventually, you’d be mine. That you were never supposed to be his, and if I waited long enough, we’d happen.”
“So, you realized you were my new boss and thought hey what the hell, I should tell her I need a fake fiancée?”
“No. I told you I bought the company to have an excuse to talk to you. I didn’t lie about that.”
Her mouth pops open. She watches me carefully, trying to fit the puzzle pieces together in her mind.
“I tried getting you the old fashioned way. I contacted you for months and you never answered, so I came up with another way to get your attention. That started with Ruby. I knew if something ran on me being some kind of womanizer instead of attention being me and how I run my company, that it’d sound logical that my board threatened me.”
“So even that was a lie?”
I nod. “The board saw it. They told me to be careful, but they never threatened me with investors or anything like that. They just told me to be careful of too much negative attention. I spun it to my advantage, which I know was wrong, but I was forced to do something dramatic to get you to even speak with me. If I came to you asking for help, I put my money on that I thought you wouldn’t say no.”
“So you manipulated me?”
“Yes,” I answer sadly. “I guess you could say I did. At the time, I hadn’t thought of it that way. I was so hellbent on getting you in my life that I didn’t think of it as manipulation. Every feeling, every moment between us was real. It was for me and I’m pretty fucking convinced it was all real for you too. I didn’t see the harm in the way we came together being a lie if it meant everything else was real.”