Page 88 of Pack Rivals: Part Two
“After all this time.”
“But why? Why now?”
“Bea,” Axel says, and my eyes leave the road to find his, “I think you know why.” Do I? I stare at him blankly. He chuckles. “You.”
The words hang in the car and I don’t know why I would have anything to do with this.
“We were assholes to you, Bea, and it cost us our shot with you. But the truth is, we’ve been assholes for the last ten years. It took what happened for us to finally see the damage we were doing. We’ve been trying to put things back together ever since.”
“Is it working?” I ask. Ten years is a long time to hate someone. To go out of your way to hurt them. To fight them at every opportunity. Can the damage they’ve done to each other, to everyone around them, really be repaired?
“I think so, yes. I very much want it to work.” Axel leans against his window and rubs his hand over his chin. “He’s my little brother and I love him. I always did, no matter what bullshit I spouted. And fuck, I missed him. I missed Hardy and Silver too. They were my best friends. It’s about time we mended this shit.”
My heart aches for him and I can’t help but reach over and squeeze his hand. He wraps his fingers around mine so our hands are linked.
I didn’t think a man like Axel Stormgate could ever be honest like that. Not after I discovered all those shady lies. I thought he was all about the front. The flashy sports car, the designer shades and the sharp suits. Underneath all that this man has a heart. One I can see has been hurt just as badly as mine.
“What happened between the two of you? Between all of you?”
This time he doesn’t try to fob me off with some excuse about the story being a long one. This time he tells me everything. Some of it is ugly – a lot of it is ugly. But he doesn’t try to paint himself as the good guy or Angel as the bad. It’s clear they were both hurt by what happened. It’s clear that they both acted poorly, spreading that hurt to the people they love most in the world.
When he’s done, we sit in silence for a moment, our hands still linked, me steering the car with my left hand. We’re drawing closer to the city. More buildings visible along the road, more traffic joining us.
“Now your go, sweetheart,” he tells me.
“My go?”
“Yes, tell me what happened. With the ex.”
So I do. I tell him everything and just like him I don’t hold back. I don’t only tell him about that wedding day, waiting at the altar, finding that note. I tell him about everything that came before, all those unkind words, all the times he’d put me down and belittled me. I know it makes me look like a fool but it seems some honesty is required.
“I should have left him a long long time ago.”
“You should. I wish you had.” He strokes his thumb over my knuckles. “I wish all that shit with my brother had never happened too. I wish we’d never fallen out like that. But then maybe I’d never have met you. I’d go through every piece of shit I have done in the last 29 years of my life, Bea, if it guaranteed I got to meet you again. At that gas station.”
A lump forms in my throat and I swallow it down hard.
“Do you think you can ever forgive us for fucking things up so badly, sweetheart?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I’d like to. I don’t always want to be the victim. At some point in my story, I’d like to be the heroine. You know, the girl who gets her happy ending.”
“Happy ending.” He sniggers and I snatch my hand away and whack him on the shoulder. He chuckles more loudly and the rumble in his chest has my stomach swooping, especially when he meets my eyes and I’m lost for a moment in the myriad of sparkling stars.
“Sweetheart, road,” he says, and I pull my gaze away and back to the road.
The man really is too insanely good looking. And he owns a car like this! He must be irresistible to every woman (and many men) on the planet. It isn’t fair for a mere mortal like me.
I screw up my eyes and glare at the traffic ahead.
“How manyhappy endingshave you gotten in this car exactly?” I say.
“Pardon me?” he splutters.
“Oh, come on, this car is a babe magnet. How many happy endings? And how many,” I glower at him, “blow jobs?”
“That isn’t a question I’m prepared to answer.”
“In other words, many.”
