Silence descended between us as we stared at each other. Emry cleared his throat and brushed the pistachio crumbs from his hands. “It sounds as if you two have never really had the opportunity to deal with the issues that kept you apart in the first place.”
“I always thought that I needed to forgive you,” Lucian said suddenly. He took a breath and stared down at me, his gray eyes stormy. “You broke my trust. You deliberately disobeyed me, and because of you, I went to jail. Because of you, my mother was left completely vulnerable to him. I missed my eighteenth birthday, my high school graduation. Because of you, my past cemented my future.”
I winced as the truth he’d kept bottled up for all these years hit its target. It was a wound that had never fully healed in either of us.
“But…” Emry prompted, reaching for another handful of pistachios.
“But you put yourself between my mother and father to protect her, to protect me. You did it again this week. Trying to stand between me and a madman threatening us both and then once more with my own mother,” he rasped.
“If you’re pissed off about that, you’re wasting your time, because I’m not apologizing. Anthony Hugo is a dickless slug, and your mother doesn’t get to raise a hand to you ever,” I told him, my voice shaking with emotion.
He reached out and took my wrists, his thumb sliding over the old scar. “I don’t want an apology. I don’t need one. I never did. You are the only person in the world to ever stand up for me like that.”
I opened my mouth, but he shook his head.
“Yes, Knox and Nash would if given the chance. But I’ve never asked. I never had to ask you either. You simply did it. Because that’s the kind of person you are. Stupidly brave. Dangerously headstrong.”
“Your proposals and your compliments really suck,” I said.
But he didn’t smile. Instead he squeezed my wrists again. “Broken men break women, Sloane.”
I went still. “Lucian,” I whispered.
“My father broke my mother to the point that even years later, she’s still a victim,” he continued. “She might never be whole or healthy because of him. I didn’t want to chance that with you. I didn’t want you anywhere near me where men like my father or Anthony Hugo could hurt you to hurt me.”
I gripped his forearms, unsure of what to say. I felt dizzy and off-kilter, as if his words were enough to shake the very foundations I’d built my life on.
“I can still hear the snap of your bones in my head,” he confessed. “I wasn’t even there, but it still echoes. It’s the first thing I hear when I wake up in the morning. It’s what I hear every time you walk out of a room and I want to go after you. It’s been my reminder to leave you alone. He could have killed you, and I couldn’t protect you because I was behind bars. I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t protect you.”
My eyes welled with tears. I reached up and cupped his face in my hands. His beard was rough against my palms. “Lucian, honey. It was never your job to protect your mom. It was never your job to keep the world safe from your dad.”
“For the record, that’s what I’ve been saying for years,” Emry cut in.
“Go burn a casserole,” Lucian said without any heat to his words.
Emry chuckled.
“I broke your trust. I’ll admit that,” I said. “I was young and impulsive, and I couldn’t stand the thought of him hurting you. You hear my wrist breaking in your head? I hear him screaming and hitting you that night. It still haunts me.”
Lucian closed his eyes. “Sloane—”
“No. Now it’s my turn. I was scared. Too scared to go outside and stop him. And too afraid he’d hurt my dad if I told him. Maybe if I had, things would have been different. But we’ll never know because I called 911 just like you asked me not to. And I watched Wylie Ogden march you out in handcuffs just like you knew he would. And I will never, ever get over that. If I had made a different decision that day, you wouldn’t know what the inside of a cell looks like.”
“I would have. Eventually. Because there was only one way he was going to stop.”
“That’s why I called. Because you wouldn’t have recovered from that. You would have spent your life thinking you were just like him. Which, by the way, means you’re nothing like him.”
He drew in a shaky breath, his eyes burning into mine.
“But thinking about all the what-ifs is a waste of what we both know is precious time,” I continued. “I’m so sorry you’ve spent your life believing that you’re tainted. That you don’t deserve happiness. That breaks my heart, Lucian, because you’re the most stupidly generous person I’ve ever met. You see a need to be filled, and you quietly go about filling it. You don’t require an audience or accolades. You’ve spent your life righting wrongs at the highest level. And that’s heroic. You’re heroic.”