Page 183 of Theirs to Possess: The Marriage Claim

“Fuck. Vale…”

Tell me you can find a way to forgive my stupidity?

“I saw her.” His words stop my heart.

Of course he had.

Why wouldn’t he?

It’s another stark reminder that Isla escaped from me, more than us.

“Yesterday. At her apartment.” He rubs a hand over his face, like he’s trying to hold himself together.

“How is she?” I’m like a man dying of thirst. I need to know she’s okay. Something more than the constant updates about her movements. She’s run a few errands, gone back to the college. But those reports don’t tell me anything I need to know. And it doesn’t escape me that team failed to mention that Brennan had been there.

“Holding it together.”

I try to read the meaning in his words. Is she thriving? Proving to herself that she’s better off without us? But I know nothing about our relationship was pretense.

I remember the sound of her soft sighs against my neck, the ways we moved together in the dark, her fingers tracing the scars on my chest like they were a map to my soul. The way she laughed, unguarded, when Brennan teased her about her terrible coffee-making skills, the three of us tangled on the couch during a rare Sunday morning, sunlight streamingthrough the penthouse windows, her book forgotten on the table as we shared quiet, unguarded moments. Calypso snuggling up contentedly with us all.

Soft, wonderful memories that now tear at my soul. “Does that mean she’s well?”

He seems to choose his words. “It means she’s doing her best.”

Selfish bastard that I am, this is what I want to hear.

If she’s not enthusiastic about going back to her old life, then maybe I—we—have a chance. “I don’t know how to fix this.”

“You’re going to have to figure it out.”

“She doesn’t hate you, if that’s what you want to know. She doesn’t hate that you kept secrets. She knew who you were before she walked down the aisle.”

Lost, I scowl.

“Think about it for a minute, you fucking idiot. When did she run?”

The evening replays, in vivid, horrific detail.

“Think. You’re blind if you don’t see it.”

Then I do. Slowly, painfully, the realization sinks in.Lena.

Brennan’s right that Isla knew who I was. And in the time we were together, she witnessed the reprehensible things I did. Saw the flawed, possessive man that I am. She overlooked all that, forgave even more.

And yet… Damn.Fuck.“My love for Lena.”

“When I said you were punishing yourself and everyone around you… Yeah. Closing yourself off to what you could have because of what you lost. What a selfish prick.”

His words land like a gut punch.

“Imagine how she felt. She was ripped away from her life, shoved into a marriage she didn’t want, with men she didn’t know. Remember how she defended you to Everett, how she was your greatest advocate at the fundraiser, how she wasstrategic with your desire to rule the world from the White House?” Brennan’s gaze is lethal. “You know her. Money means nothing. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have walked away from her family and turned her back on her inheritance. A woman who doesn’t care doesn’t do something like that.”

I inhale a shaky, hopeful breath. “She…”

“Yeah.” His hand forms a fist. “For better, for worse, she loves you. Loves us both. That’s why she ran, because she can deal with anything except the ghost you keep resurrecting.”

He takes a step closer, and this time, I’m bracing myself for the blow he’s about to land. And I’d take it. He deserves the opportunity to lay me out for being a dozen kinds of fool.