“Do not let her hurt you,” she demanded. “She doesn’t know you anymore, and I’m not sure she ever knew how to put you first. I know she has the ability to say things that cut to the quick, but remember, I know the shape of your heart, and I know it’s worth it. She doesn’t get to touch that, even to hurt you. Not anymore.”
“My fierce protector,” I praised her, warmed through to my cold heart by her loyalty. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back in a moment.”
She nodded tightly, kissing the hinge of my jaw before releasing me, but I could feel her gaze even through the car windows as I crossed to the front door.
It opened before I could knock, and Savannah appeared in a silk negligee and matching robe undone over top. I blinked at thefamiliar sight because I was fairly sure I’d bought her that set for an anniversary years ago.
Her hair was worn loose, the big curls unraveled slightly from a long day, and her makeup was slightly smudged beneath her eyes.
“Come in,” she said in an unreadable tone, closing the door the moment I crossed the threshold.
“Good evening, Savvy,” I said, leaning forward to brush a kiss against her cool cheek.
She still smelled of Chanel and the powder she dusted across her face.
For a moment, I was thrown back to those years when she was the center spoke of my life.
“What are you doing here? I imagine you’d be celebrating your upcoming nuptials with Linnea Kai.”
Ah, there it was, that razor’s edge of bitterness and envy.
“Do you have a problem with Linnea I don’t know about?” I asked calmly. “Because if not, I urge you to watch your tone when you’re speaking about my future wife.”
Her grin was twisted like hot metal, and she hugged her arms around her chest. “She’s the daughter of a slut, a woman who got pregnant too young and gave her baby away to be raised by uncouth idiots in Hawaii. She’s déclassé, entirely too young for you, even given your current midlife crisis, and it is only a matter of time before she’ll ruin your life. Trust me, Kais are life that.”
“Trust you?” This time, it was my voice poisoned with bitterness. “The woman who vowed to love me for the rest of our lives who left me after Sebastian was gone and married another man six months later? You know a mutual friend of ours sent me photos of you and Tate while we were still married. How does infidelity feed in to your definition of class, Savvy?”
“Don’t speak to me like that in my own house,” she snapped.
“Then don’t speak to me about ruining a life,” I returned coldly. “For years, you left me ruined. I couldn’t even trust myself. You made me feel fundamentally unlovable, did you know that?” Old wounds broke open in my chest and oozed pus. “Did you ever even love me?”
Her mouth thinned. “Don’t be ridiculous. You were always so dramatic.”
“It’s called passion,” I told her. “And I lost it for years, but I found my way back to it thanks to Linnea Kai, who has more class and grace in her little finger than you do.”
She sniffed, her equivalent of a scoff.
“And thanks to Sebastian,” I continued cruelly, because Linnea had been right, Savannah still had the ability to cut me through to the bone, and I wanted to hurt her, too.
She had always loved Seb more than me, I’d thought, and the flash of almost animal pain and fear in her eyes spoke to that truth.
“You’ve taken up with him again,” she said, the words almost wooden, falling between us to the marble floor with a hollow clang.
“I never stopped loving him,” I admitted, and fuck, it felt good like an exorcism. “It was you I should have told to leave, never him.”
“You know he came here a few weeks ago,” she said, a little sneer in her mouth. “To beg me to be with him again. He never stopped loving me. He didn’t speak to you for a decade, but he couldn’t bear to have me out of his life for more than a few years. If he had to choose, we both know who he’d pick.”
“Do we?” I asked softly, putting my hands in my pockets and rocking back on my heels, suddenly wary of her and this game, yearning for the freshness of Linnea’s vibrancy to erode the old cold sweeping through my chest. “Obviously, you turned him away. Seb might be loyal, but even he has his limits, Savannah.”
“Not for me,” she said, tipping her chin at the haughty angle so she could look down her nose at me from her inferior height. “I’m hisduchessa.”
And I’m his impossible universe, I thought, but didn’t say because I didn’t want her to have any further part of us.
She was in the past where she belonged, and I wouldn’t think of her again as soon as she gave me what was owed to us.
“It’s no matter, now,” I said. “You’re married to Tate.”
“And you’re engaged to Linnea Kai. How is that any different?” she seethed.
