“That’s work. This is personal.” Her eyes tangled with mine before they dropped to the bag of bread in my hands. “This is Wynter.”
“It’s her birthday soon.”
She tipped up her chin. “I know. Not like I could forget.”
“I sometimes wonder if you have.”
I didn’t say that to be a jerk, just because I didn’t know if she remembered or not.
Rachel’s ability to compartmentalize was terrifying.
Her cheeks blanched, and her mouth turned pinched.
After her conversation with Scott, my comment clearly wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
“Am I really so horrible that you’d think that? That Scott could?” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m even bothering to ask. It’s not like you lie to me.”
“No,” I agreed softly. “I don’t lie to you.”
“If I’m such a bitch, why did you fuck me last week?”
“Because I want more. I want you. You know that.”
“Why? Why would you want more, want me if I’m so…” Her words waned. “I don’t even know what I am.”
“You’re you.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
Frustrated, I ran a hand over my hair. If she’d have shrieked the words at me, I’d probably have felt better. There was something in her expression, something lost. As if she were floundering.
If anyone could understand, it was me.
I was the fixer. I was the Prez. I made shit happen.
Right now, I was none of those things.
Right now, I was a son whose Dad had been in the hospital for months and who was only now being pulled out of a drug-induced coma when I was pretty sure his quality of life would be reduced even further.
And that was saying fucking something.
Right now, up was down and left was right.
Somehow, I had to keep it altogether.
Some-fucking-how.
While I was the only one who’d recognize something was wrong with her, I just wasn’t firing on all cylinders like usual so, tiredly, I stared at her and asked, “What do you want me to say, Rachel?”
Her mouth worked, and her brow puckered.
It was clear she didn’t know what she wanted me to say.
Much as I’d suspected.
“He had no right to use those words against you,” I told her gently. “He had no right to draw a comparison.”
She swallowed. “He was freaking out. He and Craig are having a baby through a surrogate, and he was crying about how he thought the birth mother was trying to steal the baby.” A huff slipped out from between her parted lips. “It was ridiculous. Ludicrous. He was hysterical. Whatever I tried to say to fix it, he just cut me off, and then I guess I was mean too—”
“What did you say?”
“Accused him of wanting free law advice.”
I snorted. “Didn’t know you were an expert in family law too.”
She shot me a glare. “I’m not. He hurt my feelings; I guess that I wanted to attack him right back.”
“Makes sense.”
“Does it? We’re not children,” was her bitter retort. “Yet, here I am, acting like I’m a teenager again, running to you for validation. Pathetic.”
“Not pathetic.” I reached over and cupped her chin. “He’s your friend. He hurt you.”
“He did.”
My touch was firm enough that she couldn’t turn her gaze from me or jerk her chin out of my hold like I knew she wanted to. “What did Craig have to say?”
“He wouldn’t answer his phone when I called him.” She bit out, “It’s not my fault I don’t like kids.”
“No, it isn’t,” I confirmed.
“You don’t like kids either,” she pointed out.
“I don’t.”
“I think I’d have liked Wynter though.”
“She’s ours. That makes sense.”
“Does it? My mom didn’t like me.” She pulled back, tugging her chin from my hold. “I’m being stupid.”
“You’re being human, Rachel,” I said as she moved toward the door. “You can’t always be a block of ice, no matter how hard you try to cut everyone out. Me included.”
She stilled in the doorway. “Is that what you think I do? Cut everyone out?”
“What else could it be?” I drawled. “It’s not like you have a hundred friends beating down your door. You live for your work. And Rain,” I tacked on. “But that’s it—”
It was only as I said the words, that I realized how bitter I’d sounded.
Rachel turned to stare at me. “You think that sums up my life?”
I just shrugged.
“And what about my charities? What about all the goddamn effort I put into those? They don’t earn me a damn cent. If anything, they cost me a fortune. Where does that fit into my life, Rex?”
“That’s guilt and shame talking.”
Her eyes flashed. “Don’t presume to understand my motivations—”
“I don’t presume anything. You feel guilty about Wynter—”
“Actually, I don’t feel guilty about that.” She straightened up. “I would have been a terrible mother at nineteen. That’s without everything else I had going on.
“Wynter deserved the best. She deserved to have a parent who didn’t keep trying to take pills, and she deserved to have a mother who put her first instead of her own selfish needs. That isn’t guilt talking. That’s reality.”
When she stormed off, I stared at her. The exhaustion was pulling at me, and mostly, I wanted to go and crash before I had to head out again. But this was Rachel…
She drove me crazy, but I loved her enough to deal with that.
Just thinking about seeing that bastard, Kian, with his hands on her made my temper surge.
Yeah, this was my fucking Rachel.
No one else could rupture my control like she could, and I knew it worked both ways.
I strode after her, my longer stride catching up to her as she made it down the hall to the part of the property that was her office. She had a waiting room here, an area where a paralegal could sit on the rare occasions Susanne didn’t telecommute, then, just off her study, she had a den as well.
I caught her on her way to the living room. My hand snagged hers and I tugged her around to face me but she dragged her arm out of my hold.
“Let go of me,” she bit off, her tone so cold she might as well have had goddamn icicles dripping off each word.
“No,” I retorted. “You wanted to talk, so talk.”
“I don’t want to discuss your bullshit pseudo-psychology where you try to make me feel bad for what I’ve done in the past.”
“That wasn’t what I was doing, Rachel,” I griped. “I was just saying that Scott tugged on your insecurities.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Do you hate me for Wynter?”
I scowled at her. “Of course I don’t. I wouldn’t have gone through with the adoption if I didn’t realize it was the wisest path.”
“Then what’s the problem? You agreed to it too. So why am I the bad guy?”