“Don’t put it on yourself,” Felix said. “It wasn’t your job to—”
“It’s everyone’s job,” I interrupted. “It’s everyone’s job to watch out for monsters, Felix. And the more we make excuses for them—the more we think, Oh, he’s not that bad, and if he gets bad, someone else will do something, so I don’t have to—the more chances they have to hurt someone for real. I knew him better than most other people in our circle. I should have made him leave. I should have warned everyone what he was like.”
Felix shifted uncomfortably. “No, Owen, it was my fault—”
“Oh, I am quite aware,” I said coldly. “This is not me unassigning blame. You deserve all the misery you feel right now for leaving Aurora alone with someone you knew couldn’t be trusted.”
“I know,” he whispered. “I know.”
He looked absolutely wretched just then, and while it didn’t soften my heart any, I thought of what Tanith had said, of how he thought I hated him.
I didn’t hate anyone. That would require too much energy.
I closed my own eyes now, the words so difficult to say they felt stuck to my tongue with glue. But I finally forced them out. “I don’t hate you, by the way.” The silence hung between us in this wide expanse. “Tanith told me you thought I did.”
When he did speak, his reply was slow, confused. “But then why did you tell Mum I wouldn’t be any good for her at Preston Media? I’m the oldest, Owen; it should be me answering her emails and giving my opinions on acquisitions and shit. Not you.”
I finally opened my eyes, but I didn’t look at him. I kept them trained on the window instead, watching the frozen city pass slowly by as we weaved through dense, honking traffic. “I mean this in the gentlest possible way, Felix, but I don’t think you’d actually enjoy working at Preston Media as much as you think you would. You’re impulsive, flaky, and selfish.”
When I finally did look over at him, his expression was stricken. “Is that really what you think of me?”
“It’s what everyone thinks of you, knobhead.” I passed my hand over my face and sighed. “But you’re also charming, energetic, and bold. Those are incredible traits to have in business, Felix—just not Mum’s business. She needs someone quiet and reliable; she needs someone who doesn’t care that she will always, always be the center of all the buzz and attention. She needs someone who will check his inbox every day without complaining, who doesn’t mind the drudgery of spreadsheets and server crashes. I’ve never hated you, but I do love you enough to know that you’d die working at Preston Media, and that’s only if Mum didn’t kill you first.”
He was staring at me, gnawing on his lip now. “I s’pose I never thought of it like that.”
Obviously not. “You’re good at so many things. Once you decide to actually do them—and to quit hanging around people like Chad—you’ll be unstoppable.”
“You reckon?”
“Yeah, mate. I do.”
He gave me another weak smile then as we pulled up to the Upper East Side house, and I gave him a small smile back before he got out of the car. It wasn’t exactly an emotional symphony of brotherhood, but it was the closest we’d come in years.
* * *
The Preston Media building hosted the offices of all the group’s many publications: travel magazines, food magazines, literary reviews, pop culture rags, and more home decorating magazines than the world needed. The Gotham and Gotham Girl offices were at the very top, and I was relieved to see they were almost completely abandoned as I stepped out of the elevator. My mother had a meeting on the other side of town, and the other staffers had clearly seen it as a chance to skate out right at 5:00 p.m. since when she was in the office, she disapproved of people leaving before she did.
The offices were empty, that was, except for one gorgeous blonde currently perched in front of a clear acrylic desk, tapping away on a laptop.
She hadn’t seen me yet, and something stopped me before I reached her. Instead, I leaned against the wall separating the reception area from the office space and watched her. Watched her type, then spin to the printer, then jump up and run into another room. She came back with a stack of bound Gotham Girl issues and flipped through one volume, her face lighting in triumph when she found what she was looking for. She hopped up to scan it, her cute little skirt swinging around her thighs, and then plopped back down in her chair, typing again with a small smile on her face. There was a pencil holding her lush waves into a perky bun, and speaking of perky, the tight jumper she was wearing was fucking criminal. Just looking at her had my cock lengthening in my jeans.
But it was my chest that made me the most uncomfortable as I gazed at her, my chest and my throat. Everything was strangled and crushed in a way that felt oddly good.
She was happy here. The kind of happy people on Instagram wrote about, the kind of happy people faked for stock photos. Being here in these offices—typing and scanning and having ideas—meant something to her.
And fuck if it wasn’t sexy as hell to witness.
“How’s my girl?” I asked, my voice low as I strode over to her desk.
She jumped a little and then laughed. “Scared.”
“Of the big, bad wolf coming your way?”
She tucked her tongue in her cheek, smiling. “Does that make me Little Red Riding Hood?”
“It depends,” I said, finally reaching her and spinning her to face me. In a second’s work, I had her out of her chair and sitting on her desk. “Is Little Red Riding Hood brilliant
