He sniffed, his hand flexing against the steering wheel. The familiar tick of his jaw made her clench her eyes shut. She didn’t have time for this argument.
“You know for someone who doesn’t want to talk about it—you bring it up quite a lot.”
“Must be the crippling guilt,” she responded dryly.
“Willow, and I weren’t together then. We had broken up. We didn’t do anything wrong that night.”
“I slept with my best friend’s boyfriend—I think that’s about as low as you can go on the asshole meter.”
“We were broken up,” Augustus retorted.
“And then you got back together with her weeks later. So obviously it meant nothing to you, anyway,” Lilia shot back, her eyes trained outside her window.
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to,” she muttered.
“I had no choice. You know that; her dad had started his reelection campaign. If he hadn’t, we would have never gotten back together. But then he announced that he was running again—I didn’t have a choice.”
“We all have choices, Gus. You made yours, and it wasn’t me. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter, anyway. You’ll always be hers—that’s just how it’s always going to be.”
“I would’ve chosen you if I could. You know that. Willow knew that. But I didn’t have a choice. Our entire lives have been planned out for us since birth. The colleges we’d go to, the jobs we would work. I’ve had a plan crafted since before I was born. It was going to be Willow whether I liked it or not.”
Lilia swallowed thickly. She knew he was right.
This was their life; picked and thumbed through like magazines until they were customized to perfection.
The Montgomerys and Clarks were close-knit families, empires, dynasties. Their ties went back decades.
Willow and Augustus were always going to be together. That wasn’t a choice, it was a fact.
“But that doesn’t change how I feel about you; how I’ve always felt about you.”
“Stop, please. It’s been a long night.” Lilia brushed her bangs out of her face, sighing. “I just need to sleep.”
His brownstone came into view.
A silence settled between them. So many things they had wanted to say, but couldn’t—it wouldn’t matter.
“There are sheets on the guest bed,” he said, putting the car into park. “There should be some of your old clothes still in the dresser.”
Lilia nodded, unbuckling. “Thanks.”
The walk up was dreadful, tension was palpable and there was a lingering scent of despair following them.
Augustus dropped his keys on the counter, his hand dragging down his face as a deepened sigh escaped his lips. He shook his head like it would free him from the fatigue. He snagged a wine glass from the sink, and looked over at her. “Would you like a glass?”
“I think I’ll just head to bed.”
His shoulders deflated. “Right.”
“Goodnight, Gus.”
But she didn’t move.
They just stared at each other.
“Goodnight,” he replied.
