Page 40 of The Forbidden Bride He Stole

“Your interrogation will have to wait.” At that moment they had pulled up to the private jet.

They were ushered out of the limousine and the stairs were lowered for their embarkation. They climbed the steps and instantly she was awash in comfort. For all that the vehicle was luxurious—because everything Apollo had was luxurious—the jet superseded it. It might as well have been a modern living area. With midcentury furnishings and stonework, that she assumed had to be fake, because surely there was a weight limit on something that had to be airborne.

There was a slim, highly polished wooden bar and gold light fixtures. The walls of the plane were navy and gold geometric design work.

It was lovely. But it would not distract her from the issue at hand.

“Okay. We boarded the plane. So let’s continue.”

“Cameron and I have been friends since we were boys. Your father trusted me enough to put you in my care.”

“You said to me more than once that I was the only good thing you’ve ever done. So on some level you must have conflicting feelings about your relationships with Cameron and my father.”

“Cameron and I helped each other survive. We have a trauma bond more than we have anything else. He is my brother. He is... He is a part of me in many ways. His pain is mine. I don’t know that he will ever fully realize that. When he had his accident and concealed himself even from me, it was like losing a part of myself. And yet I felt his agony. I would not call it a friendship. It is something deeper than that.”

“Your soulmate, perhaps?”

He chuckled. “If I were built differently, perhaps. He might’ve been. But it would never have been easy.”

“My father?”

“We had business ties. He was a good man, your father, but I was using him for connections, and he was using me for mine. In the end, we did connect in many ways, but it was our isolation that perhaps brought us together the most. He knew that if something happened to him he did not have a long list of people he could ask to care for you. He didn’t speak to his family, your mother didn’t speak to hers. It was... Perhaps the same sort of thing as I have with Cameron. Lost lonely people who are isolated from everyone else in the world. Could find a measure of comfort in each other as a result. Trust. Because there is no one else. Because there is nothing else.”

“And you wouldn’t call any of those things friendship. Or even family.”

“I don’t have the understanding of that that you might. My own mother didn’t have the strength to love me or protect me as she should. My own father never met me. I never made friends out of a desire to have companionship, but out of a desire to survive. So perhaps that is the problem. In the absence of comfort, you define things differently. It is not about how you feel, but about how you might live. And so I never knew a relationship that didn’t bear a resemblance to a transaction.”

She felt burdened by her own experience of love—or a lack of it. But what Apollo was telling her painted an extremely bleak picture of his own experiences. That made her feel...a little guilty. For wanting so much from him. If she was damaged by her experiences, how did she expect him to be any better?

She’d felt ignored. He’d been fighting for his survival. Had felt like every relationship was bought and paid for.

“I find that very sad,” she said, her throat constricting.

“Then shed a tear for me,agape. But it will change nothing.”

At that moment, the plane was consumed by motion and so was she. As it hurtled down the runway and propelled itself into the sky. Her stomach dropped, but maybe it was all related to him. Maybe Apollo was the inertia. It was possible. Maybe it was all her. Maybe everything in her had been so upended by these things between them that she had yet to recover. Her words were reckless, dancing on the edge of something she didn’t want to admit to herself, let alone him. It was all fine and good to talk about crushes and girlish longings, and to ignore the fact that he had wrecked her last night in his study. And maybe even more importantly ignore the fact that she had clearly done something to him. It was why he was so set on keeping things the same after all.

Perhaps she did know him. Maybe not all the details of his life, but the substance of who he was.

But she was weighing the cost and benefit of hammering away at Apollo when he wasn’t in the mood to admit the truth. Or worse, maybe he would. That was the thing. Of all the things he’d said, which she felt circled truth enough, she did not think that he had actually told her the most real truth of all. Whatever it was.

“Why does it matter to you if you’re good or not?”

She asked that, because everything felt circular. She asked that, because she didn’t know what else to say. She asked that because she still wanted to dig, but she was tired of talking about sex, her virginity, and getting into her own vulnerabilities.

“Doesn’t everyone worry about their soul at least a little bit?”

“I’m surprised you’re the kind of man who believes in the concept of the soul, if I’m honest. You seem like the type that might want to believe we are nothing but finite beings who live for today and then die. Take nothing with us, so we might as well embrace hedonism while we can.”

He shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”

“Why?”

“Because I felt pieces of my soul die. I cannot explain it. I only know it to be true. Something has to exist to die. And yet I have pieces of it left. I’m certain of that too. But never more certain than when I look at you.”

He was sincere. In that moment, there was none of the cynicism, none of the hardness that was often present in him when they spoke.

“And I’m your redemption?”

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