“The guy kidnapped you. End of story.”
“It’s not black and white, Joseph.” I stirred my food with my chopstick, suddenly losing my appetite. “I cared about Crewe. He cared about me. If I had the chance to talk to him about everything, he probably would have let me go.”
“Doubtful.”
“You don’t know him the way I do.”
“And I’m glad I don’t.”
I stared at my brother and felt my rage come to the surface. “I told you not to hurt anyone. I told you not to shoot Crewe.”
“His men fired first. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Because you were ambushing his castle with guns and tanks.”
He shook his head. “They still fired first. And I wasn’t planning on shooting Crewe until I looked at him… Then the anger took over.”
“He didn’t deserve that.”
“And I didn’t deserve to have my sister kidnapped for six months. You just lost your mind in the process.”
“I didn’t lose my mind, Joey. Crewe is a good man.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Have you heard anything about him?”
“What do you mean?”
“How’s he doing? Is he working again?” The doctor told me he would live. I just hoped that meant he would live a normal life.
“As far as I can tell, he’s back to normal. I haven’t seen him with my own eyes, but I hear he’s still running the scotch business with Ariel and taking care of his royal duties like the douchebag that he is.”
I shot him a glare. “Don’t talk about him like that.”
He met my fire with his own. “What the hell is wrong with you? He stole you from your bed in the middle of the night and kept you as a prisoner. As in, he broke international law. Why are you protecting him?”
Joseph would never understand. No one would ever understand. “It was more complicated than that. Crewe and I had a relationship…we were friends. We were close.” There were no words to describe what we had. I wasn’t even entirely sure what the two of us shared.
Joseph set down his chopsticks in the center of his food and looked at me, his expression hard. It was a stare he’d given me countless times as we were growing up. It usually meant he was pondering what he was about to say. “London…did you love this guy?”
I told Crewe I loved him, but I thought it was just an act. I was tricking him into caring about me, being an actress in a play. But maybe those words weren’t meaningless. Maybe I meant them from the bottom of my heart. “I…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” he whispered. “The fact that your answer isn’t a simple no is concerning to me.”
“It’s concerning to me too.”
He’d hardly eaten his food, but he pushed it aside like he was finished with it. “London, I don’t understand, and I’ll never understand. I tried to make it right with Crewe by doubling the amount of money I owed, but he took you anyway. I’ll always hate that man for the way he stabbed me. But…I’m trying to have an open mind about this. I just don’t understand how you can care about a man who took away all of your freedom. Help me understand.”
“I can’t…it’s complicated.”
“Well, try anyway.”
There was a lot of graphic content that would make Joseph upset, and I couldn’t mention that. It would just make us both uncomfortable. “I hated him in the beginning. I fought him every chance I got him and put up a wall that he couldn’t penetrate. But when he said he was going to sell me to Bones…I did what I had to do to stay with Crewe. So I slept with him.” I didn’t look at my brother as I told the story. He probably wasn’t looking at me either. “I think that’s when everything changed. I think that’s when Crewe began to soften. He kept me for himself. And if I’m being honest, I enjoyed being with him.”
Joseph turned his gaze out the window, like he wasn’t listening at all.
“As time went on, we got closer and closer. We started to trust each other. And then it became a routine…a comfortable one. Crewe always treated me with respect, took care of me, and listened to me. He didn’t feel like my captor anymore. Honestly, I miss him and that castle.”
Joseph rubbed his jaw. “You miss him now?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I’ve been on a few dates, and I don’t feel anything. All I can think about is him. I can’t stop thinking about the way we left things. I can only imagine how angry he is…how much he hates me. But I wonder if he misses me as much as I miss him.”
Joseph sat back in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. He released a quiet sigh of irritation. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. But Crewe never laid a hand on me while I was his prisoner. He never took me against my will. The most he ever did was raise his voice when I annoyed him. Honestly, I was safer with him than anywhere else in the world. I know I shouldn’t feel anything for him, but it doesn’t change the fact that I do.”
“Well, I think you answered my question.”
“What question?” Talking about Crewe made me forget why we started talking about him in the first place.
“That you love him.”
It was hard for me to focus at work on Monday. I worked in the emergency room and helped out the physicians with patients with moderate illnesses. I had a lot of patients with pneumonia and one or two diagnosed with sepsis. The weather was changing in New York, and people were catching colds left and right.
I filled out chart after chart, and during my downtime, Crewe came back to my mind.
Did I love him?
I’d been so focused on playing him that I didn’t realize how much my feelings had developed. I just assumed it was lust because the sex was good and he was handsome as hell. I didn’t think anything more serious could develop under the circumstances.
But clearly, it had.
I’d been in New York for over a month, but I wasn’t happy at all.
I was just miserable.
The only place I wanted to be was in that castle with that scotch-drinking man. I missed the bed I used to share with him. I missed the courtyard with all the roses. I missed the way he kissed my hairline when he was being particularly affectionate.
I missed everything.
When I got off work, I met Joseph for coffee because he was still in town. Since he was all I had, I felt obligated to tell him what my plans were. He was the closest thing I had to a best friend too, despite what he did to Crewe.
“What’s up?” He carried his venti coffee to the table and sat down.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking…”
“That’s never good.” He sipped his coffee, wearing a black leather jacket with a gray t-shirt underneath. He definitely didn’t look like an insurance salesman.
“I think I’m going to go to Scotland.”
He gripped his coffee on the table and stilled like a statue. “What?”
“They have an open position in Edinburgh at the embassy. And while I’m there, I can talk to Crewe about everything—”