Page 242 of Handsome Devil
I realized I no longer wanted the next few months to hurry by so I could be done with this marriage.
I hadn’t wanted that for a while now.
I wanted to know what it would be like to have a relationship with Dane. A real relationship. And hopefully one that wasn’t filled with drama.
When the dust settled, how would we really feel about each other? Who would he be to me, and who would I be to him?
Would I be the woman who helped dispel the lies, and helped him find the truth?
Or would I be a reminder of all this struggle he’d been through, part of the worst time of his life, when he found out that everything he’d ever been told about himself was a lie? That the people who were supposed to love him most had lied to him, betrayed him, and even tried to destroy him?
Would he be tired of relationships built on lies?
Would he even be able to look at me again?
I didn’t know the answer to that. All I knew was that somehow, somewhere along the way, I’d fallen in love with my husband.
I definitely did not hate the man I’d married.
Maybe I loved the man he’d always been, and only now, when he was threatened, when our relationship was threatened… I’d finally found the courage to admit it to myself.
Chapter Forty-One
Dane
After I got off the phone with Devi, I made a quick call to my family’s head of security, to make sure Devi’s security detail was impeccable, and doubled up.
Then I had a pretty rough night. Alone.
I couldn’t sleep. How could I sleep with all this shit in my head?
I didn’t call anyone else to talk things through, though.
Even though I’d always considered Shane my best friend, I didn’t really trust him with things like this. It wasn’t that he couldn’t be trusted to protect my privacy, or to protect me; I knew he loved me under all the bullshit rivalry and bravado. I just couldn’t trust him to go there with emotional stuff. Relationships. Intimacy. Or this kind of layers-deep betrayal.
The only way Shane Madrigal knew how to deal with conflict was to beat the shit out of it.
And Johnny and I weren’t close enough that way. It wouldn’t feel right burdening him with this.
Lex was the one I could talk to about this kind of thing. He was the one who I knew would be there for me, like a brother, if I needed that. And now, I knew he actually was my brother.
He called me, just as the sun was starting to come up, which was still way before dawn where he was. Maybe he’d been up most of the night, too. He told me he was getting on a plane and flying out to see me. So, by the time afternoon rolled around, I’d be sitting somewhere with my brother, in person, having a very long talk. Privately.
At least I had a few hours to prepare for that conversation. For now, I had no words.
The fact was, no matter what had been done to me, I felt sorry for him.
And I felt sorry for Laurinda, like I always had.
How different would my life have been, wouldIhave been, if my own family had rejected me? Pretended I didn’t exist?
After I got off that call with Lex, I went for a run. Then I came home and stood in the shower for a while, just trying to picture what my life would be like if I didn’t get my inheritance. If at thirty years old, I didn’t become the Dane Davenport that I was always meant to be.
And if not, then who the fuck was I?
It was Monday morning. And despite getting only about an hour of sleep before Devi’s text had woken me up, and then being up the rest of the night, my mind felt sharp and clear.
I did my usual morning routine. I read the paper, looked over the business news. I ate breakfast, had a matcha latte. At eight-thirty, I called my grandmother’s office. She wouldn’t be in yet, but her assistant was. Then I called my mother.
