“They’d have to catch me first.”
Anger bubbled up in her chest. She needed to move. Needed to burn off this frantic, anxious electricity crackling in her muscles. “In case you’ve forgotten, they already caught you! That’s the reason that we’re in this mess! How did you even...”
Her eyes lit on her laptop, and all the color drained from her face. Her blood turned to liquid nitrogen in her veins, so cold it burned. “Where did you get that?”
But she knew. Knew it had been stashed in her closet, behind vintage Chanel, right next to a shoebox full of secrets that Wes didn’t know.
That she didn’t want him to know.
“You went snooping in my bedroom?” When she turned on him, there was still white-hot anger, yes, but it was the kind that was laced with terror. Had he seen the shoebox? Poked inside it? “You had no right!”
Emotions whirled inside her, banging up against each other, with nowhere to go. She made a move to shove him, but the second her hands met his skin, he caught her wrists, and his fury rose up to meet hers.
“Then why the hell did you get me out of jail?”
The question hung between them, both of them breathing hard, her palms pressed against his chest, her wrists manacled by his hands.
When Wes spoke again, he was dangerously close, and his voice was dangerously soft. “You knew I would do this. Tell me you knew I would do this.”
Vivienne was helpless to do anything but nod. Because she had. Her attempts to find her blackmailer and deal with the mess she’d made herself had gotten her nowhere. And the idea of him rotting in prison for a second longer than he already had broke her heart.
Her throat burned, and to her mortification, she could feel her eyes welling with tears that she was desperate not to let him see. But it was too late. She couldn’t hide them. Not anymore.
CHAPTER NINE
“DON’T CRY, VIV.”
Wes had meant it to sound soothing, but it came out hostile.
Angry.
Because he was.
He was fucking furious, but he shouldn’t be taking it out on her. The only person who’d offered him any sort of help when he needed it the most. The last person he wanted to see him like this...at his lowest.
And now he’d dragged her down with him.
Like he always did.
You can’t make things better, so stop trying!
His mother’s words echoed through his brain. She’d said it to him every time he’d found her crying her eyes out at the news that his father had pulled some new, boneheaded stunt that had landed him back behind bars. Every time he’d discovered her passed out in a pool of vomit after another failed attempt to erase the pain with booze. Every time he’d come upon her rocking in the corner, strung out on whatever cut-rate product one of the many men who wasn’t his dad was willing to part with in exchange for whatever she had to do to get it.
He’d promised himself that one day he’d have enough money, enough power, to prove his mother wrong. To make things better for his little sister so that she didn’t have to grow up like he had. To make himself worthy of the smart, beautiful, challenging woman he’d fallen half in love with the night he’d met her.
And for a little while, he thought he’d managed to fool Vivienne into loving him back.
But the truth was that she’d seen him for what he really was early. She’d bailed before he’d even gotten Soteria Security up and running.
To punish her for not believing in him, for not giving him a chance, he’d spent the last six years working himself—and Jesse—into the ground, taking the company from nothing to market dominance in record time.
And as the money rolled in, he thought he’d broken the curse. Proved his mother wrong.
But the truth was, Lorraine Brennan had been right all along.
Because despite his best efforts, he’d ended up in jail. Lost his company and his reputation. He was broke. And ostracized. And he’d just managed to alienate his only ally.
But then Vivienne lifted her chin, eyes still glittering with tears that she wouldn’t let fall, and all the vulnerability of the moment before had morphed into sheer force of will. A broken angel. She was absolutely magnificent.
“Why didn’t you come to see me?”
“What?”
Vivienne met his eyes without flinching. “At Yale. Why didn’t you come after me?”
The question collapsed his lungs, like she’d landed a good hard punch to his solar plexus.
“I thought about it.” A million times. Maybe more. But there’d always been one more milestone to reach that he’d thought would make him ready to go after her. Make him worthy of her. “God, Viv. I thought about it, about you. All the time. But I couldn’t... I needed to make Soteria a success before I saw you again.”
Her brows dipped in an offended frown. “You thought I’d care about that?”
“Of course, I thought you’d care about that! Every moment of being with you felt like a test. From that first night of verbal foreplay to the last night, when you shoved that goddamn plane ticket in my face and forced me to choose.”
“And you did.” She dropped her gaze.
To his surprise, when she lifted her head again, the anger looked a lot more like pain.
“I guess I just hoped, after Jesse showed up that—”
Everything in him went still and sharp. “Jesse visited you? When?”
“Right after—” Viv cut herself off. Shook her head. “It’s not important.”
“Then why’d you bring it up?”
“Because it should have been you!”
It hurt to fucking breathe. “You’re the one who left.”
“And you’re the one who let me go.”
Wes shook his head, weary. “Don’t say it like I had a choice. I thought you were going
