Page 52 of Worth Every Moment (Hawkston Billionaires #4)

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I slept on the sofa. There was a strange, crackling energy in the room, and although we’d talked on the beach, it still felt too tense between us to jump into bed together. Maybe it was me. It was probably me.

But it didn’t feel right to come back and sleep next to one another because…

fuck , I don’t even know. The weight of expectation was so huge, I didn’t know what to do.

Which is totally unlike me. Sex is… easy, normally.

As long as I don’t actually think about it too hard.

I’ve probably been dissociating every time I’ve done it.

Is that even possible? The thought fills me with horror, but I couldn’t process it last night, and I can’t now, not with my father’s cruel words constantly booming in my mind.

Letting Erica have the bed to herself was less about being a gentleman and more about being fucking confused and weighed down by a blanket of shame I hadn’t even realised was there. But now that I’ve acknowledged it, it’s so fucking heavy I can hardly move beneath its weight.

I crept out of the cabin just after dawn without saying goodbye. Erica was asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her, but I had to leave early for Nico’s stag do.

He didn’t want a traditional stag. Nothing overly fancy.

No crazy Vegas nights. No strippers, drugs, or excessive amounts of alcohol.

Just a morning’s fishing, an elaborate lunch on a beach on a neighbouring island owned by one of our family friends, and a night at an exclusive restaurant in town.

Then back to our island the following day.

The heat of the sun is glaring down on me as I lie out on the deck, lathered in suncream. Matt, sunglasses perched in his dark hair, sits on a chair to my left; Nico lounges to my right. So much for fishing.

“You didn’t invite Dad on the stag?” Matt asks Nico.

“Fuck, no,” he mutters, taking a swig from his beer. “He’s been calling me to go over the prenup to make sure that Kate can’t take a penny from us if we get divorced. He thinks everyone’s out to fuck us over.”

“You had a prenup?” I ask.

“Yeah. Dad had the lawyers draft up a watertight one.” Nico kicks the heel of his shoe against the deck. “I burnt it. What’s mine is Kate’s. If one day she decides she doesn’t want me, she can have the whole fucking lot. I wouldn’t give a shit. She’s the only thing worth anything to me anyway.”

I half expect Matt to try to catch my eye and mock Nico for what might be the soppiest thing he’s ever said, but Matt only nods.

“If I hadn’t felt duty-bound to invite Dad to the wedding, I wouldn’t have,” Nico continues. “But… it’s his island, and it’s bloody nice, so…” He raises his beer bottle, leaving the comment open.

We’re all quiet for a moment, breathing in the hot, salty sea air and listening to the splash of the water against the hull.

“Aries doesn’t like him,” Matt mutters. “Says when we get married, she won’t have him at the ceremony.”

“Why doesn’t she like him?” I ask.

Matt tips his head back, pulling his sunglasses over his eyes. “I don’t know. Bad vibes or some shit. She gets a horrid feeling from him.”

Nico snorts.

“She’s not wrong,” I say. “He’s not exactly a bundle of joy.”

“Who is?” Nico replies.

“Aries,” Matt says, a tiny smile curving his lips, his head gently nodding. “Aries is a bundle of joy.”

Nico leans over and pokes him in the ribs. “You’re adorable now that you’re all loved up.”

Matt swats him off and we all laugh, and when we settle, Matt says, “We’re trying for a baby. We want to have kids together. And it would be nice to give Lucie and Charlie another sibling.”

“I thought Aries was pregnant already,” Nico says. “She wasn’t drinking last time I saw her.”

Matt shakes his head. “Nope. She wants to detox her body and energy system before she gets pregnant.”

Nico smirks. “What does that involve? Celibacy?”

Matt side eyes him. “No. She’s detoxing her womb space. Does it every night before bed.”

“What the fuck?” I splutter, unable to help myself.

Matt doesn’t laugh, but makes a small circle in the air with his beer bottle. “She imagines clearing out all the gunk from other guys she’s had sex with. At least that’s what she told me.”

Nico lets out a laugh, leaning forward in his chair.

“Seriously,” Matt says. “She’s big into that energy healing stuff.

She claims when we have sex with people, their energetic crap gets into our systems. We’re sharing more than bodily fluids, and it’s all happening on a vibrational level.

” He gestures at me. “You’re probably carrying shit loads of it around. ”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I grunt, and the sound is half dismissive, half amused. Maybe I need to ask Aries to detox my dick. I laugh aloud at the thought, and Matt and Nico glance at me like I might be mad.

Maybe it’s not funny at all.

Matt presses his lips together. “How is it going with Erica?”

“Why are you asking? You gonna tell me that she’s using me again?”

He takes a swing from his bottle of beer. “Is she?”

“No.”

“Okay. So… it’s serious, then? It’s been…” He looks at his watch as if my relationship with Erica is measured in minutes and hours. “A few months.”

My stomach tightens. The deadline for ending our fake relationship is coming up, and we haven’t discussed how it ends. I don’t want it to, but I need it to end soon, so Erica doesn’t get the back-splash from this engagement announcement next month. I want her to be free and clear.

Fuck it, I’d rather not end it at all. Especially not after everything that has happened over the past few days. It feels like this relationship is just beginning, not coming to an end.

“It’s serious,” I say, loathing the idea that Matt still doesn’t think it is, even after several months, which, for me, might as well be a thousand years. What would it take for him to take a relationship of mine seriously? What would it take for him to stop seeing me as a joke?

“I think it’s great,” Nico says, resting one hand behind his head. “You and Erica. Finally.”

“It is great,” I confirm, but my clipped tone is a wall I’ve just thrown up, which Matt leans back from, a puzzled expression settling over his face.

Nico glances out to sea, where Jack Lansen is roving about the waves on a jet ski like the speed demon he is, three of Nico’s friends trailing in his wake.

“Do you love her?” Matt asks me.

“Of course he does,” Nico replies for me. “It’s Seb. He’s like a fucking puppy around that woman.”

Matt frowns. “Does she love you?”

Nico looks between us, but, to my disappointment, he says nothing this time.

“You’d have to ask her. I have no idea,” I admit.

Matt clears a strangled laugh from his throat. “I’m not gonna do that, am I?”

When I don’t laugh in response, he sits forward and clasps my knee with one hand, squeezing it lightly. “I’m sure she does. It’s great. I’m happy for you.”

Why does it feel so shit to hear him finally say that?

Because it’s all bollocks. It’s fake, and it has to end.

Doomed. And even though it’s terrible, I want to hear Erica say those three tiny words before this whole thing implodes.

I love you . I’ve never heard them from anyone other than my mother, and she was either doped up on tranquilizers or soaked in vodka.

When she was sober, she never said it. Loving us was a dirty sin she could only allow when she wasn’t entirely in control of her senses.

It cheapened the whole thing, and even as a child, I knew her professions of love were hollow and shameful, as if she didn’t want to love us at all.

To hear those words from someone who meant them, someone who wasn’t drunk or drugged… I can’t even imagine it. The thought of it makes me ache with a longing I daren’t touch. I want this to be as real for Erica as it is for me, even if it destroys us both.

I know I’ll break Erica’s heart. It’s an inevitability. So to wish that upon her… it’s cruel, and I am a fucking arsehole for even wanting to hear it. I should step away now. End the whole thing.

But I’m not that good a man.