Page 34 of Twins to Tame Him

“Trust that feeling, Alexandros. When your daughter is here, that feeling will guide you, too.”

His brother gave another nod and then a bark of a laugh. “You have always been a better man than I am.”

“I fought Konstantin so hard to be myself,” Sebastian said, betraying his turmoil.

“And you have succeeded. You’re a world-renowned artist. Your earliest paintings are coveted even now, go for millions in auctions. You spat in our father’s face for how he mocked your art, you showed him false by becoming a man in your own right without the aid of the Skalas name, without touching your legacy. And I... I’ve never asked why you don’t tell the world who you truly are. I’ve never asked you to share your art with me. But Sebastian...” Alexandros turned toward him, and until this moment, Sebastian hadn’t realized how perceptive his twin could be when it came to him.

After all, they’d been each other’s mirror in so many ways and witness to each other’s best and worst.

“What?” he demanded, sick of the dread in his stomach.

“You have been a good man, Sebastian. Until now, at least.”

“And what does that mean?” he said belligerently, hating that Alexandros was speaking the same doubts he already had himself.

“Being in love with a woman like Ani... It has changed what I can see, Sebastian.” His twin gave a nod toward Laila, who was squealing and laughing and running up the meadow with their sons chasing her. “Does she know that you’re stalking her like a predator does its prey? That you’re not interested in—?”

“She came to me. She told me what her needs are,” Sebastian said, cutting off what his twin would recklessly give voice to. “I’m simply showing her what the future could be between us.”

“You’re just playing along, to seduce her to your way. Making a show of giving her everything.”

“I am giving her everything she asks for and it so happens that we agree on most important things. Why is taking advantage of that wrong?”

“It’s...duplicitous, because you’re doing it with a goal in sight.”

“And here I thought you would champion me for making this right.”

“Right for whom, though?” Alexandros said, sounding more frustrated on his behalf than Sebastian had ever heard him. “Maybe, finally, I see that some risks or gambles are not just worth it, that some things are sacred. I thought you knew that, Sebastian. I thought you understood better than me that the cost is too high.”

“What aren’t you saying, Alexandros?”

“Either you’re lying to her or to yourself. And all these lies...will crash down on you when it’s too late.”

Sebastian stood there, long after Alexandros deserted him to join the noisy melee. He laughed when Nikos aimed at his uncle and then took off on his chubby legs and Alexandros made a show of not being able to catch him. He smiled when Zayn followed his twin and his uncle and auntie at an appropriate distance.

He felt his heart thud when Laila slipped and fell, and Alexandros gave her his hand and pulled her up, dusted her shoulder off and kissed her cheek and he could see the twinkle of joy in her eyes from all the way over here.

He froze when Laila’s amber gaze sought him across the meadow and she gave him a small nod, and mouthed thank you, for fixing his problem with his brother and sister-in-law.

He fought the instinct to chase her across the meadow and demand that she give him surrender. He fought the pull she had on him but refused to give up his goal.

His twin’s warning resonated like a painful gong, especially since it was exactly what he’d been dwelling on. He had never meant to hurt Laila and yet, suddenly it felt like all he was doing was pulling the worst kind of deception over her. But neither could he explore the other option. He could not let himself...feel. Not when, to this day, he hadn’t recovered from his mother’s leaving, when it felt like a necessary part of him was missing.

Not when he couldn’t risk putting himself out there again. Which left him with only one choice.

He would bury this doubt, this new...weakness and continue with his plan to persuade Laila to marry him. Maybe then, all this vague dread would disappear. Maybe when he had her legally bound to him, when he knew that she was his, it would all fall into place.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LAILA HAD ENJOYED a couple of more weeks of what she considered a happy, relatively functioning, well-adjusted time with her sons’ new family when it all came to an end. Not to mention that her academic paper had been accepted and she had a chance to present it a conference in a few weeks. Everything was going right or everything was going wrong and she didn’t know what was what.

She and Sebastian hadn’t kissed or touched or...exchanged anything more than a look since her realization. They seemed to have settled into some kind of holding pattern, bracing against the next upcoming turn in their nonrelationship relationship. She knew why she’d pulled back.

While the realization that she loved him only grew stronger, as if planting roots deep within her very soul, it also spurred hope and fear equally. She was afraid she would blurt it all out to him if he so much as he looked at her for too long and she didn’t how to build defenses against his reaction.

If he laughed at her, or mocked her...she would fall apart. And she was cowardly enough to know she didn’t want to lose his respect, or be seen as pathetic, cowardly enough to continue in this holding pattern, to lie to herself that he was preoccupied with his art.

He’d even fixed his fight with Ani and Alexandros. He’d been communicating more with her about his moods and work habits, though it felt more like ticking off a checklist.

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