Kai holds up his hands. “Steady as a rock,” he says, giving me a cocky grin. “As expected.”
I’m so relieved for him. “Oh, of course. You weren’t at all nervous.”
He laughs. “I was terrified,” he admits. “My heart was hammering in my chest as I scrubbed up. I walked into the OR not knowing if I’d be able to do it. Then the nurse gave me a scalpel, and it all faded away. All the nerves, all the anxiety.” His gaze rests on me, affection and love in his eyes. “Thank you, Avery.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You were here.” He puts his arm around me and turns to Maddox. “Your turn.”
“As expected, it was a shitshow,” Maddox says wryly. He fills us in on the events of the party. “So she ran out of the room in tears, and Gage ran after her, trying to convince her that he wasn’t with her for her money. What can I say? Karma’s a bitch.” He rests his head on my shoulder. “How was your evening?”
This is it. Now’s the time for the whole truth, not just carefully selected bits and pieces of it. “I need to tell you something.”
My tone must tell them that something’s up. Maddox straightens, his eyes concerned. “Before you do,” he says, resting his hand on mine. “We have a gift for you.” He rubs his hand over his face. “Two gifts, really.”
“What is it?”
He hands me a thick envelope. I open it, my fingers shaking. “For ten years,” he says quietly, “I couldn’t bear to think of what I lost. I did my best to forget.”
I reach inside and pull out a stack of photos. Photos of the three of us in Dublin. At Trinity College. Laughing at the Cliffs of Moher. There’s a picture of me looking at the display case that holds the Book of Kells. Kai and I laughing about something at the Guinness Storehouse.
Pictures of me lying in bed, my hair spread out on the pillow, my expression sleepy and content.
“I thought those two weeks were the happiest two weeks of my life,” Maddox says. “Until now.” He exchanges a glance with Kai, who reaches behind the cushions—when did he do that?—and pulls a flat rectangular box out.
“Avery,” Kai says quietly. “We’ve only been seeing each other for three weeks, but I’m surer of this than I am about anything else in my life. I want a future with you.” He opens the box and pulls out a collar. My heart pounds in my chest. This is a symbol of possession, of permanence, of belonging. “Neither Maddox nor I expect you to wear it all the time,” he adds. “I find the idea of twenty-four-seven exhausting, as you’ve probably realized. But I want to make it explicit and clear, Avery. Will you be ours?”
I swallow the lump in my throat. I want the collar. More than anything in the world, I want to kneel and have them fasten it around my neck. I want to be theirs. “I need to tell you something first,” I say again, my voice shaking with nerves. “I’ve been hiding something from you.”
I take a deep, shuddering breath as Kai’s eyes narrow. “What is it, Avery?”
“You never asked me why I needed five hundred thousand dollars,” I whisper. “Not once.”
Maddox gives me an unreadable look. “If you wanted to tell us, you would have.”
“I didn’t need it for me. My mother’s sick. She has Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. It’s a kind of blood cancer.”
Maddox interrupts. “Trust me, I know all about cancer.”
Oh right. His father.
“According to her doctors, her five-year survival rate is only fifty percent. My father found an experimental clinic in Germany, but of course, the NHS wouldn’t pay for it. So he called me in a bind.”
Maddox and Kai have both tensed up. They exchange a long glance, and then Maddox clears his throat. “Avery,” he says gently. “Your mother’s not sick.”
“What?” I stare at him. “How the hell do you know anything about my mother? Of course she’s sick.”
“No, she isn’t.” Kai’s looking at me as if I were a wounded puppy. “When you told us the reason you married Victor, Maddox and I believed you, of course.”
“But something about the story didn’t ring true.” Maddox runs his hand through his hair. “I asked a friend to look into it for me.” He can’t meet my eyes. “We should have told you as soon as we found out,” he says quietly, “But I’ve been hurt by family, and if I could, I wanted to spare you that pain. Ten years ago, your parents lied to you to get you to marry Victor. They weren’t broke. Your father didn’t borrow money from the Irish mob.”
“No.” I give them a blank look, my mind shying away from what they’re telling me. It’s not possible. “My father’s company was going through tough times. The house was mortgaged to the hilt. He was already in debt to the mob. The only person who would help him out was Victor.”
“The mortgage was paid in full twenty years ago,” Maddox says. “I have your parents’ bank records, Avery. They wanted you to marry Victor, so they made up a whole charade to get you to do their bidding.”
My blood runs cold. “No,” I whisper again. “I don’t believe you.” I pull free of Maddox’s grasp. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Avery, we’re telling you the truth.” Kai’s voice sounds broken. “Brody had one of his men tail your mother for a week. She went to lunches with her friends. She went to a charity ball and a museum gala. She didn’t go to the doctor once.” He exhales. “I’m not an oncologist, but I know the symptoms. Unexplained weight loss. Coughing. Trouble breathing. Fatigue that won’t go away. Loss of appetite. She isn’t ill, sweetheart.”
Maggie had been skeptical too. She’d mentioned that it was one hell of a coincidence that Victor happened to be in DC the same day I’d tried to sell my engagement ring.
A ring that I only sold because my father had called, telling me that my mother needed money to save her life.
“You think my parents hatched this new plan with Victor?” It hurts to speak, to voice that dreadful thought out loud. My chest is tight, and I can’t breathe. “So I’d be forced to marry him again? Is that why he was outside the police station that night?”
“What police station?” Maddox asks tightly.
My world is falling apart, and I don’t hear the dangerous edge in his voice. I don’t see the way Kai’s hands have clenched into fists.
“I tried to sell my engagement ring so I could pay for my mother’s treatment.” Bile rises in my throat as I realize how much my parents have played me. God, I’ve been such a naive, stupid, fool. Of course my mother didn’t want me to fly to Dusseldorf to take care of her. Of course my father kept fobbing off my attempts to return to London. It would have been hard to maintain the charade in person. “The diamond was registered, and Victor had reported it stolen. I had to go down to the police station. Victor was there. He told me over dinner that he’d pay for my mother’s treatment if I went back to England with him.”
“When did this happen?”
I don’t have to search my memory; the events of that day are seared into my brain. “Monday, two weeks ago. It was the same night that Maddox gave me the money.”
“You had dinner with your ex-husband the same night you slept with us?”
Oh fuck. It sounds pretty bad if you put it that way.
“I was never going to go back to him,” I say hastily, trying to make them understand. “I made that abundantly clear at dinner with him tonight. Nadya is expensive, and I’m not sure how I’m going to afford her, but I’m ready to stand up to Victor.”
“You had dinner with Victor Lowell tonight.” This time, I hear the edge in Maddox’s tone, loud and clear. “Tonight. Were you planning on telling us any of this? Or were Kai and I going to carry on with our lives, like blissful fools, only to find out one morning that you were gone? Again?”
I swallow hard. “It’s not like that.”
“Isn’t it?” Kai’s eyes are cold. He’s looking at me the way he did that first night at Club M. As if he wished I’d never walked into his life. “Because it looks exactly the same to me.”
“Wh
y didn’t you tell us, Avery?” Maddox asks quietly.
“I was going to,” I whisper, creasing and uncreasing the fabric of my skirt. “Both of you had stressful weeks. Kai with the surgery. You with Gage’s engagement party. I thought I’d tell you after that was over.” I close my eyes. That’s not the whole truth. Now, more than ever, I owe them that. “I was afraid,” I confess. “After all this time, things were finally going well between us. I didn’t want to destroy the trust that was building between us.”
Kai gets to his feet, his expression as hard as stone. “You just did, Avery.”
And then they leave.
38
Maddox
We drive aimlessly for a while, neither of us saying anything. Then the fog in my head clears, leaving one burning thought in its wake.
“I want to talk to Lowell.”
Kai nods. I’m already dialing Brody’s number. “Victor Lowell is in DC. I need his address.”
“Hello to you too, Maddox,” Brody says dryly. “Gimme a sec. I have it here.”
“You knew he was in DC?” I ask, stung. “And you didn’t tell me?”
His voice is calm. “Yes, I knew. No, I didn’t tell you. Fiona thinks very highly of Avery. Whatever’s going with the three of you, I thought you could figure out on your own, the old-fashioned way. With communication and trust and honesty. And without the help of a private detective.”
If only that were true. “It’s too late for that,” I snap. “Where can I find Lowell?”
He sighs. “He’s staying at the Four Seasons. Room 544. Try not to do something too stupid, will you?”
Victor Lowell raises an eyebrow at us, his expression one of distaste. “Gentlemen. I can’t say I was expecting you.”
“Let us in, Lowell,” I growl. “Unless you want me to punch you in the hallway.”
He steps aside, and we enter the suite. The damn room probably costs more than a thousand dollars a night, and he’s been staying here for at least three weeks. Then again, Victor Lowell’s the kind of guy who places great stock on appearances.
“It’s Baron Lowell to you,” he says. “But I’ll let it pass. You look upset. I take it Avery broke things off with you.”
“You smug bastard. We know all about the plot you hatched along with Avery’s parents.”
He tilts his head to one side. “I can trace back my lineage to the Magna Carta. Given the nature of your own birth, Mr. Wake, that’s hardly an insult I’d expect to hear from you.” He sits down in a spindly armchair and leans back, considering us between steepled fingers. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Is that how we’re going to play it? Let’s see if I can make it explicitly clear. I know Jeremy and Maisie Welch were never broke. I know that the three of you conspired to pretend otherwise. You told Avery that the Irish mob was going to hurt her father, and she was forced to marry you to save him. I know,” I add, my voice harsh, “That three weeks ago, you decided to have another go at Avery. Once again, Avery’s parents needed money, this time, because her mother was pretending to be gravely ill. Once again, there you were.”
He gives me a look of indescribable pity. “I’m really sorry to have to be the person to tell you this, Mr. Wake,” he says. “But nothing you’re telling me makes any sense.”
“What are you talking about, Lowell?” Kai demands.
He waves us to a seat. “Avery’s always been a pathological liar,” he says with a heavy sigh. “She told you this story, didn’t she? Let me guess how it went. She told you she was forced to marry me. As if, in the twenty-first century, that would even be possible.”
A giant fist seems to be squeezing my heart.
He smiles wryly. “Avery wanted to sow her wild oats before she got married,” he says. “I’m not blind, gentlemen. Avery was more attracted to the idea of being a baroness than she was to me. After all, I’m quite a bit older than her. But I’ve always been a besotted fool where she’s concerned. If she wanted two weeks in Dublin with the two of you before her wedding, I couldn’t say no. No matter how much pain it caused me. I was afraid of losing her.”
“I don’t believe you.” Kai’s voice is flat, lifeless. His hand is trembling, and his eyes are empty. He’s living his worst nightmare. Losing Avery, seeing her ripped from him again.
So am I.
“You’d rather believe a fantastical tale of Irish mobs and sick mothers? Come on, Dr. Bowen. You’re not a stupid man. Ask yourself who you trust. A woman who lied to you, who slept with you the day before her wedding? Or me, a man who only wants his wife back?”
My head is pounding. My hands are cold and clammy. Is Lowell right, has Avery been lying to us from the start?
Ask yourself who you trust.
Ten years ago, Avery had walked out on me, ripping a hole in my life, leaving behind a void that I’ve been unable to fill. Ever since then, I’ve been walking around wounded, allowing that one event to corrode everything.
She should have told us about Victor. She made a mistake. But she’d been trying to protect us. And the moment I was done with Gage’s engagement party, the moment Kai was done with his surgery, she’d told us everything.
She’s not the only one to make mistakes. I tried to buy her, for fuck’s sake. I was a total, utter dick that night when I gave her the money, but she’s never held that against me. She saw through the hurt, and she trusted me.
Even tonight, she hadn’t said one word of reproach about the fact that Kai and I had known the truth about her parents and had hidden it from her.
She’s always given us the benefit of the doubt.
Not me. The first moment we hit a speed bump, I’d walked out on her.
Stuart Wake could have let my mother’s mistake corrode his life, but he hadn’t. My parents had found a way to move forward, to allow the wounds of the past to heal.
I’m not half the man my father was. He’s always set a shining example for me to live by.
“Kai,” I say quietly. “I know who I trust. It’s Avery.”
The tension drains from his shoulders, and he loses the blank look in his eyes. I watch him come back to life. “Me too,” he says. He turns to Lowell. “For a second,” he says, cold and harsh, “you almost had me. You ganged up with Avery’s parents to manipulate her, and you’re trying to gaslight us. And it almost worked.”
Lowell gets to his feet. “I’m trying to gaslight you?” He laughs. “Dr. Bowen, I’m the victim here.”
“No,” Kai replies. “No, you aren’t.” He clenches his right hand into a fist and swings at Lowell’s jaw. His fist makes contact with a sickening crunch, and Lowell staggers backward, his eyes clouded with pain, trips over the armchair, and falls to the floor.
As satisfying as it would be to beat the crap out of him, I don’t want to waste any more time. I just want to find Avery.
I loom over Lowell, and he cringes, instead of getting up to fight back. Pathetic. “I’m warning you,” I say softly. “If you ever come near Avery again, I will make sure I destroy you. Stay away from her, Lowell, if you know what’s good for you.”
In the lobby, I shake my head at Kai, who’s flexing his right hand and examining his bloodied knuckles with a grimace. “You couldn’t have left the punching to me?” I grumble. “You’re a surgeon. Should you have been more concerned about your hands?”
“It never struck me,” Kai replies. “Let’s stop at my place and put some ice on it before we head to Avery’s. I have two OR days next week. Joanna will tear me a new asshole if I can’t operate.”
39
Avery
For a long time, I’m numb.
Then I cry, bitter tears of grief for the ten years I lost because of what my parents did.
And then I get angry. Furious. Raging.
My parents have been lying to me my entire life. They’ve been using me, counting on my love for them and my sense of duty.
It’s a quarter past four in th
e morning in London. I don’t give a damn. I dial their number, letting the phone ring over and over again. Finally, after the fourth attempt, my mother answers, her voice sleepy. “Avery, do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Tell me, mother. At what point were you planning on telling me you weren’t ill?”
She inhales sharply, but before she can start denying it, I cut her off. “Don’t,” I say. “I know everything. The Irish mob was a figment of your imagination. Father was never in any danger. You concocted an elaborate story to get me to marry Victor. What I want to know is, why?”
“Fine. I’ll tell you,” she spits out, her voice vibrates with anger. “We sent you to the best schools. We did everything to get you to hang out with the right crowd, and instead, who did you pick as your friends? Those common girls, Tillie and Hannah. Then, when you turned eighteen, you insisted on getting a job. In a pub, of all the bloody places. You were making us a laughing stock. Jeremy and Maisie Welch’s daughter, working as a bartender.”
“I was just trying to live my life.”
She ignores that. “Then you started talking about moving out, and we knew we had to act. You were ruining your life, and we needed to take steps to prevent that.”
“You never did give a shit about me, did you, mother?” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. “You paid for my schooling, and you thought that made me your property. I was nothing but a tool for you. A way to buy yourself access to high society. You didn’t care that I was miserable with Victor.”
I still believe in the social contract between generations. My parents have never held up to their end of the bargain, however. I owe them nothing.
After all these years, I finally realize that it’s okay to acknowledge that. It’s okay that I never want to talk to them again. “I didn’t realize that the most peaceful period of my life was the seven years you refused to talk to me,” I say quietly. “Lesson learned, mother.” Though my heart is breaking, my voice is as hard as steel. “I want my five hundred thousand dollars returned. And I never, ever want to talk to either of you again.”
Taming Avery_A MFM Menage Romance Page 18
