Black Swan Affair (28 page)

My head is reeling right now. That explains her sudden behavior change. I wait for the empathy to return. It doesn’t.

“And Kael?”

Killian’s body tenses. He winds his other arm around me and draws me flush to him so I have to crane my neck. “What about him?” He sounds angry, just like Kael does when I mention Killian’s name.

“Did he know you were divorcing Jilly and leaving DSC?”

Please say no.

“He did.”

My heart sinks. It falls to the ground at my feet, bleeding the whole way down. The empty space in my chest hurts so fucking much I can hardly breathe. Kael was trying to get me away from Killian before this whole thing blew up. If he had his way, I’d never have known.

I almost don’t want to ask, almost can’t stomach a truth that could bleed me dry, but I need to know how far down everyone’s deception goes. Including my husband’s. “Did he know about the baby? That it wasn’t yours?”

His lips thin out. His fingers flex against the small of my back and he briefly drags his gaze over my shoulder. With every second that passes the pins and needles I’m balanced on dig further into my skin. It’s excruciating, the wait.

Was everything I thought I knew about my husband a lie? My entire body floods with relief when he answers, “No. No one outside of me, Jillian, and my father knew.”

Killian focuses all his attention on me then. His eyes run over my face, his own softening as he studies me for so long my heart starts beating double time. Tucking an unruly lock of hair behind my ear, he cups my jaw in a tender hold. He thumbs my bottom lip and his breaths quicken, too. Love is absolutely pouring from him. It’s breathtaking, piercing, and warm. Just like it used to be: unreserved and untainted with events that poisoned it.

“I want you, Maverick. I’m in love with you. I always have been and I want us to be together. I want to marry you and move the fuck away from here and forget these insufferable years apart ever happened.”

He lowers his face to mine, giving me the time I need to turn if this isn’t what I want.

God forgive me, I don’t.

I close my eyes, let him slant his mouth over mine and kiss me for the first time in close to four years. When I lean into it instead of pulling away, he groans an unholy groan and takes my other cheek in his hand, too.

Then he’s kissing me with the same passion and fever I remember. He picks me up and carries me back to my car, laying me on the hood. He wedges himself between my legs and attacks my lips, my face, my throat. He laces my collarbone with love bites while he runs his hands up my torso and cups my breasts through my thin tank top, cursing when he finds my nipples pebbled through my unpadded bra. My legs wrap around his waist and he rocks his erection into my center. He mumbles my name so many times I lose count. I’m lost to everything but him and this familiar feeling he’s unearthed in me, never wanting it to end.

But then he stops. He leans his forehead to mine, works to catch his wind, and I’m reminded immediately of Kael. Of how he does this when his emotions overflow. Of how much
he
loves me. Of the fact I’m married and on the cusp of committing the most unforgivable sin possible.

Killian draws back, a pained look in the hard lines of his face. He weaves his fingers through my hair, drops a sweet kiss to my lips. “I know it’s wrong of me to ask you this. I know it will hurt Kael, and I’m truly sorry for that, but not sorry enough, I guess. Stay with me, Maverick. Divorce him and be mine. I don’t want one sordid night. I don’t want to be a dirty secret. I want forever. With you.” When I don’t respond right away he quickly adds with a quirk of his mouth, “I’m not above begging, Small Fry.”

The way he’s adoring me makes me want to bawl. He wants me. He’s never stopped. He wants to marry me and make all my dreams come true.

The conflict inside me is tumultuous and very fucking real. Either way, either decision I make, someone will end up hurt. He starts blurring under the moisture welling up. Everything I thought I wanted is looking me straight in the eye. It’s tangible. I can reach out and grab it.

All I have to do is say yes.

“Please,” he pleads thickly. “Please, Maverick. I don’t want to live without you anymore.”

His mouth finds mine again and I feel that kiss all the way through me. I wind my arms around his neck, canting my head to deepen our connection. One I’ve missed so much.

All I have to do is say yes.

I
ntrospection is hard
. No one wants to acknowledge their failings, their true feelings. Wants versus desires. Right versus wrong. It’s far easier most of the time to keep those thoughts dormant and safe where they lie. Especially when someone you love gets hurt at the end of it.

But
true
introspection—not just skimming the surface—is not only hard, it’s excruciating. Going way under the black and slogging through the muck, through the good, the bad, the unpleasant, takes a lot of fortitude. Turning over those moss-covered rocks, even the ones you don’t want to flip, is exhausting and gritty work.

Because what do we find when we dig that deep?

Answers, of course.

Answers to the questions we were asking all along.

And once we find them, we have to do something with them or what was the point of the entire gut-wrenching exercise to begin with?

I’ve spent the last two weeks digging and sifting through the sludge, remembering every little detail of my life with two incredible men I have always loved, just in very different ways.

Both Kael and Killian made mistakes. They kept secrets from me they shouldn’t have. But I’ve forgiven them because they also both sacrificed so much at the same time. Killian sacrificed me, yes, but Kael sacrificed everything, including his pride, to be with me when he knew I was still in love with his brother. And that sacrifice can’t be overlooked either. Neither can the one he made four nights ago.

I think back to the conversation Kael and I had a few nights ago at two in the morning. It was heavy and heartbreaking and he did something completely unexpected. Totally selfless, as usual. He gave me an out.

“How long did you know?”

“Know what?” he hedges.

I sigh, tired of fucking games. Tired of lies, secrets, of being in the dark. Of beating around bushes with thorns that constantly make me bleed. “That Killian was divorcing Jillian.”

The quiet eats at me. I want him to tell me he didn’t know. That he wouldn’t keep something like that a secret, but then part of me can’t blame him either. He knows how Killian feels and telling me that Killian was going to be free of the drag that is my sister would have been like serving me up on a silver platter himself to his competition. I have to grudgingly admit I would have likely done the same thing if I were in his shoes.

“He told me the day he had the papers drawn up.” So two days before my father died.

“Did you do it?”

He huffs a laugh. “No. He didn’t even ask.”

That makes me feel a tad better. I guess. Maybe not.

“Maverick…” he starts, but then stops. Now the silence pushes us both down. It’s thick and hot and stifling. I feel the same foreboding I did in Saint Paul all those months ago. And now that also makes sense.

“I want you to know I’d do anything for you. I’ll never love another woman but you, Swan, but if…” He curses under his breath and that niggle in my stomach feels like knots twisting me up. When he speaks again, his voice is barely a whisper. “I know you love him. I know you’ve never stopped. And if he’s the one who makes you happy, if he’s the one you want, then I’ll understand.”

My eyes well and burn. My heart just took a thousand-foot nosedive. “You’re…”
Oh my God
. “You’re telling me to be with Killian?” I ask in disbelief.

His groan is filled with so much pain I feel it, even across the hundreds of miles that separate us. “Fuck no. I’m not
telling
you to be with him because it shreds me to fucking pieces to think of it. What I’m telling you is if that’s what
you
want, Maverick, then I will accept it. It’ll burn like a motherfucker, but…”

“You just want me to be happy,” I finish for him when he trails off.

“Yes,” he chokes.

“No matter what?”

“No matter what, Swan.” I’m silently sobbing as he continues, “Follow your heart, and if that leads you back to me, know that I will spend every one of my days smothering you with love, but if it leads to Killian…” He pauses to take a deep breath. “If it leads to him, then I know he will do the same.”

F
ollow my heart
.

My fingers drift over the ratty box in my hands. The one I’ve kept hidden with memories of old and a pulse I swear has never stopped beating. I trace the heart I drew on the top. I outline the
M loves K
in the center of it. I draw a nail along the arrow I drove straight through. I set it back down on the rock next to me.

Tipping my head back, I close my eyes, letting the heat of the sun drive into me. It feels good. Strengthening me for what needs to be done. I draw in a long breath and blow it out just as slow, delaying the inevitable.

My soul has been searched until it’s raw.

I have my answers.

Now I have to do something with them.

Today is going to be both the hardest day of my life and the happiest one. I have to tell one man good-bye, crushing him, while I make the other the happiest man on earth when he finds out he’s my forever.

It’s true with every breath I’ve taken over the past twenty-six years I’ve tasted Killian Shepard. But with every heartbeat of mine, I’ve felt Kael’s drumming in synch.

Opening my eyes, it’s so bright I’m forced to squint as I let my gaze drift over water that sparkles with the sun’s rays. I haven’t been back here for a few years now, but it feels like coming home, even if it is different.

My swans are long gone and other than a few frogs croaking on the lily pads across the lake, the pond seems lifeless. But I know it’s not. I know underneath the surface, it swarms with vitality. Life goes on, even if it changes. And while I know I’m about to change a man’s life, a man I will always love, I truly believe his life will move on and he’ll allow himself to change with it. He has the strength and resilience to do it.

Killian has given me time, just as Kael has. With this being the biggest decision of my life, it’s time I’ve needed. Choosing between two incredible men who have both made me happy is not a decision to be made on the hood of a car in the dead of night.

But as I stare off into the distance, my heart’s racing faster. She’s known the answer all along. His presence has always surrounded me, even when I didn’t think it did.

I stand, wipe the dirt sticking to my shorts, and leisurely make my way back through the woods. I walk straight to my car and get in, bypassing a trip inside to make pleasantries with either my mother or Jillian.

Once I really thought about it, it was easy to forgive Kael and Killian. They were protecting family. Mine should have done the same, especially Jillian. I’ll forgive them both in time. But that clock’s still ticking fast and loud and I need to wait for it slow and quiet before I’m ready. Through it all, they’re family. The only one I have. At some point we’ll talk and hash things out, but that day isn’t today.

With singular focus, I drive through town, stopping restlessly at all the red lights. Finally I pull into Killian’s driveway. Killing the engine, I sit there for a few moments, gathering my thoughts. As if in synch, the second I open my car door, his front door opens, too, and there Killian stands in all his manly glory.

He’s so beautiful it hurts to look at him. Plaid board shorts hug his trim hips and thighs. A baby blue tee stretches across his broad shoulders. It drapes down his cut torso perfectly. He’s all man, of that there is no dispute.

“You’re here.” The smile on his face ignites him brighter than the Northern Lights.

“I’m here.”

Heart throbbing against my ribs, I make my way slowly up the sidewalk, up the stairs and slide easily into his arms the way I’ve done so many times before.