Page 111 of Worth Every Risk

MATT

The minute I step into the kitchen, I know something’s wrong. It’s late, so Lucie must be asleep, but Charlie and Aries are sitting opposite one another at the table in complete silence. Aries’ forearms are on the table, her head hangs low, a curtain of red hair hiding her expression. Charlie is glaring at her.

The sight makes my heart drop. “What’s going on?”

Aries’ hair ripples like she’s shaking her head, and when she looks up what I see in her face makes my heart plummet right through the fucking floor. Her eyes are ringed with red like she’s been crying, or wants to cry and hasn’t let the tears fall. Her normally flawless skin is red and blotchy. She touches her lips with her fingertips.

“Is anyone going to answer me?” The question drags rough along my tongue, because I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear anything they’re going to tell me.

Charlie’s jaw flexes, and I know he has no intention of speaking to me.

“Aries?” I ask.

She raises those big, beautiful green eyes at me. “Covent Garden…” are all the words she manages.

A horrible pressure swells in my chest as I try to sift through possible explanations. There’s no way Charlie was in Covent Garden. He couldn’t have seen us. He was at home with Alec. I know for sure because Alec sent me pictures of the two of them playing Mario Kart in the cinema room downstairs. And Charlie was asleep when we got back. If not Charlie, then who?

Shit.

The group of boys who kicked cans at us. I frown, trying to remember their faces, but it was so dark, and I’d been more worried about Aries than anything else.

And then, like a cruel flash of lightning in a midnight sky, I remember. “Ben Charlton?”

Aries swallows and says, “Yes. And Hugo. Both of them.”

Charlie pushes his chair away from the table and tosses me a scowl that looks like he wants to murder me and feed my body piece by piece to the pigeons.

“Fuck you, Dad. Fuck. You,” he spits, before striding up to me, his shoulder glancing mine as he pushes past.

The impact jolts me, but I don’t shift. Instead, I grab him by the shoulder, and although he tries to shrug me off, he can’t. “Watch your language. Do you want to talk, or do you want to run away?”

“The latter.”

“Tough. Sit down.” I can hear the threat in my voice, and Charlie resentfully holds my gaze, me physically pinning him in place, until the resistance in his muscles melts, and he takes his seat opposite Aries.

Silence crackles around the table as I take a seat too. My heartbeat throbs around my body, the rush of blood so loud in my ears I feel dizzy.

“This isn’t how I wanted you to find out,” I say. “I’m deeply sorry. But Aries and I…” I break off, searching for the right words, but all that come to mind are inappropriate phrases that would only add crap to this shitfest.

A wry chuckle sounds from Charlie. “I’m not a child, Dad. I get it. And I don’t care.”

“You don’t?”

He shakes his head. “No. I don’t care what you do. But I do care that you gave the Charlton twins another reason to…” His voice fades.

“To what?”

Charlie says nothing, his eyes flicking to Aries, but this time it looks like he’s pleading with her for help.

“They beat him up,” she says. “After the boat race. Said it was his fault they lost. Because of Lucie falling in. Because Charlie jumped out the boat. Because—”

“You knew about this?”

Aries nods, closes her eyes and drags a hand through her long hair. “I only found out who did it today…” She falters, pinning her bottom lip with her teeth as tears well in her eyes. It takes a few seconds before she can continue. “But I knew he’d been beaten up before that.”

Before? She fucking knew before?How could she have kept something like this from me?“How long?”

“Since the holiday.” Her voice is weak; a little broken. “On the boat.”

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